After de-greasing, cleaning, rinsing, sanding, scrubbing, and drying my lower kitchen cabinets this past week, it was finally time to start painting!

First with a base coat of KILZ oil-based primer to seal and prime the surface... which made my home smell like a toxic waste dump. It's seriously bad (from what I can tell, the smell is so toxic that they can't even sell the stuff in half the USA or something). But I wouldn't dream of using a water-based primer for kitchen cabinets... it's just not tough enough for the beating they're going to take. And so I open every window in the house and turn on every fan I own to help air things out. The GOOD news about going oil-based is that the stuff is dry and ready for sanding in an hour! Then I could spray another coat of KILZ, wait an hour, sand smooth again, THEN START PAINTING AT LONG LAST!

My worry about the smell led me to feed Jake and Jenny in my bedroom. Since cats will only eat something they can smell, I added stinky fish flakes to make sure they could smell their dinner over any KILZ primer fumes that might have driften upstairs.

I tested five different "whites" for my kitchen cabinets. I ended up using "Simply White," which is on my walls and not the "Cloud White" that's on my trim nor the "Snowfall White" that's on my furniture nor the "Decorator White" that's on my Insets nor the "Oxford White" that's washed on my guest room IKEA. — It's weird how "white" works in paint. In order to match everything, you have to accommodate lighting, gloss, finish, surface, AND matching flooring... it's exhausting.

I am very happy with the Simply White that I ended up with. It's warm enough to not be sterile, but still very, very white...

And tomorrow my countertops get installed.