Hand Painting a Reclaimed Pine Kitchen, York – Blog by Lee Simone

The completed hand painted kitchen

For this hand painted kitchen project I travelled to a lovely little hamlet just outside Linton on Ouse near York.
The kitchen was handmade and had been installed some 15 years ago. The cabinet makers had originally used reclaimed pine and the kitchen definitely had a rustic, ‘country’ look. It had also been stained brown and the clients were now were keen to transform it with a hand painted finish, feeling it now looked rather dated and tired.
They had done lots of research online and had decided they wanted me to do the work as they knew what was involved and wanted someone they could trust to do the transformation properly.

The original kitchen

There is often a lot of serious prep work involved in painting a reclaimed kitchen as they have usually designed and made to look rustic. In this particular instance there were literally hundreds and hundreds of holes and gaps that needed careful filling and sanding, as well as lots of work to be done on re-sticking the beading, re-sizing the doors, securing the panels and just making sure everything joined up and have clean lines.

It actually took over two weeks of prep and priming before the top coat painting was started and even then there was some more filling, tweaking and adjusting to ensure the best finish was achieved.

The new kitchen – lighter, brighter and looking much more modern

The original rather dated looking kitchen

I think you’ll agree the finished results speak for themselves and you’d never know that this kitchen was once very dark, very rustic and had hundreds of gaps and holes. The clients were over the moon with the results, with the husband saying that he ‘never knew that painting like that was possible and that the finish was like nothing he had ever seen’, a ringing endorsement from someone nearing their 80th birthday!

Quite the transformation!

Project Details –

Location –
Private house, Linton on Ouse, near York

Kitchen Type –
Reclaimed Pine – stained and waxed

Colour Chosen –
Farrow & Balls ‘Ringwold Ground’ which I had mixed to the equivalent colour in my specialist paints

Paints Used –

Zinsser B-I-N, Otex & Empire from Holman Specialist Paints (Tikkurila).

Time Taken to Complete –
3.5-4 weeks (including stages and drying times).

Stages –

Removing of handles
Thorough clean and degrease
Masking off (floor, worktop, edges)
Fix/glue areas that needed attention (beading, panels etc)
Remove stain and wax coating with sander, meths, wire wool.
Clean down and remove dust.Seal all knots
Remove Doors

Knots sealed

Prep well under way

Apply second coat of primer and lightly sand back.
Apply three coats of oil eggshell, sanding between coats. Each layer being applied with a brush and roller then ‘layed off’ to create a beautifully even finish with no brush marks.
Re-attach handles, didy up, tickety boo and smile at a job done very well 🙂

If you would like to read about my procesess and materials in more detail then please take a look at some of my other Hand Painted Kitchen Blogs.

Thanks for reading.