Hello, everyone! I’m so excited for this guest blog spot with Giani! I’ll be chatting with y’all about my experience with Nuvo cabinet paint – I have now used it in both of our upstairs bathrooms, and truly LOVE the product! Giani was gracious enough to send this paint to me free of charge in exchange for my honest review! We used this paint on our master bath vanity during the Fall 2018 One Room Challenge, as well as our guest bathroom during the Spring 2019 One Room Challenge, and let me tell you, it was SO easy (WAY easier than our kitchen cabinets - I honestly wish I would have used this stuff in our kitchen, because not only is it super simple, but it looks gorgeous and has held up great)!

The best thing about Giani's cabinet paint kits (besides that they send you everything you need, including the paint brush), is that it's little to no prep. Let me say it again for the folks in the back - LITTLE TO NO PREP! Basically, for any painted surface, you lightly sand, and then clean like crazy. No trying to sand off every last bit of paint on your cabinets, etc. (Giani has instructions for other types of surfaces, so be sure to follow their instructions if working with stained or untreated wood, etc). You also don’t have to remove the doors – so amazing!

So let’s chat about how we gave our cabinets a much needed makeover, shall we? (This tutorial was completed with the Giani Nuvo Cabinet Paint Kit in Old Sage).

Here goes...

The Giani Nuvo Olde Sage Cabinet Paint Kit is available here for only $69.95. It has absolutely everything you need to makeover your cabinets...minus the tarp and tape. What a steal! We bought the Driftwood kit when we did our master bath last Fall. Read 'til the end and you'll see a pic of that space as well.

Step1: Remove any hardware you may have, and CLEAN!  Before I sanded anything, I cleaned our cabinets with Simple Green – my go to cleaner.  With any all-in-one paint and primer combo, you can never do too much cleaning, truly – it will make or break the application of the paint!

Step 2: Sand – you don’t have to sand off all the prior paint, just enough to scuff up the surface so your paint has something to adhere to. (As noted above, see Giani’s instructions if you are working on top of unpainted wood cabinets, especially those with lots of knots – you’ll have a few preliminary steps to take care of before getting started.)

Here you can see the results of sanding. Again – no need to get all your base paint up, just sand so the shiny surface is dulled!

Step 3: Next, you use Windex or Cinch to clean the heck out of your cabinets. This is the part you DON'T want to skimp on. Think your cabinets are clean? Nope. Clean once more just for good measure. If they aren't clean, and you paint them, you'll see cracking in the paint. I had a few spots where this happened due to not cleaning well enough – it’s hardly noticeable (Especially after the touch ups I did - see below) so not a big deal to us, but learn from my mistakes!

The spots you should focus on are the places where your hands tend to go - drawer and door tops, etc. Anywhere there might be grease from your hands, hair products, makeup, and what not, you want to spend extra time on. The cleaner, the better. Seriously.

Step 4: Tape off your counter, floors, and walls with painters or Frog tape.  You want to be sure your cabinet paint gets only on your cabinets!

Step 5: Now it’s time to paint! Start by using the angled Wooster brush that Giani sends with their Nuvo Kit and paint the cabinet frames, and then tackle the fronts of the doors and then the backs with the roller. I didn’t have any drawers for this project, but I would paint the drawer fronts last if you have them, By the time I finished one coat, everything was close to dry.

I waited about 30 minutes in between coats.  If you have a bigger space, you’ll likely be able to jump right into the second coat once your first one is done!  Be sure to leave your doors and drawers open so they don’t dry shut!

Repeat 2-3 more times, cycling through with the frames, door fronts, backs, drawer fronts, etc. If you DO end up with a bit of cracking, as I did, you can take a small brush and touch up. HOWEVER - Giani warns that if you do touch ups, the finishes may dry differently. So touch up at your own risk! This was sort of true on mine, but I preferred the very slight difference in finish to the cracks. Touching up the spots that cracked seemed to resolve that issue for us, so I'll take no cracks over slight difference in finish! But remember, if you clean like crazy, you’ll have no issues with cracks at all, so strive for that!

Step 6: Let dry for at least 8 hours (I always wait longer - usually 1-2 days just to be safe). Use a sharp utility knife to score and remove your tape, close your cabinet doors, put your drawers back in if you have them, and you're done!

                

XO,
Ana Ochoa
www.fiddleleafblog.com
Instagram: @fiddleleafinteriors