Never in my life did I think I’d have to learn this much about paint. I had long conversations with PPG reps and salespeople. Spent hours and hours reading forums and watching videos. Drove to 5 or 6 different stores trying to get the best price…

And in the end, I ended up feeling really comfortable spraying both of these products and we are really happy with the finish on our cabinets.

(If you want a super comprehensive post about EXACTLY how to paint Semihandmade cabinet doors, check that out here!)

There are lots of cabinet paints on the market. Everyone swears by a different one. But there are two main reasons we picked these PPG products:

1. Professionals and DIYers both seem to love this product for cabinet doors.

2. The re-coat time and cure time was shorter than any other cabinet paint we were considering. When you have an entire kitchen worth of cabinets to paint in a short amount of time, that makes a difference. 

Below are the products we chose to use, and some tips on spraying each of them!

Our primer: PPG Sealgrip Primer

Great adhesion, great tannin blocking, great finish. This is my new favorite primer for all indoor woodworking projects.

• Thin this primer based on a viscosity test if you need to. We ended up thinning our primer by 15% using water, which fell within the viscosity requirements for our sprayer. We were told by some to not thin the primer, we were told by others to thin the primer even more… Just practice, and always go by viscosity.
• Don’t be afraid to apply a thick coat! You want all the benefits of this primer on wood cabinet doors, and you’ll be sanding some off anyway. 
• Don’t worry too much about making mistakes on your primer coat. You’ll be sanding before you start painting!
• When you sand, keep a putty knife handy to clean your sandpaper off. The paint will sand off in little globs, and those stick to your sandpaper and render it pretty useless… but a putty knife will scrape it off easily!

Our paint: PPG Breakthrough 250, Satin/V50 

Good adhesion, excellent (almost magical) self-leveling properties, sprays like a dream.

• Strain your paint to remove any particulate before you start! If you see any sediment (particularly colored sediment) DO NOT use the paint. You can start to see color separation after just a month or two of the can being opened, and we had to replace a can after about 8 weeks of open time.
• Don’t thin this paint. This paint is thin and viscous. You don’t need to thin it, and it behaves VERY differently than the primer when sprayed. Practice before you start on your actual doors!
• Keep your spray relatively thin, and work your paint up into a thick coat… Almost thick enough that it looks like you may get some dripping/puddling lines. 
• Your working time on this paint is short. Like, REALLY short. Be mindful of that, and work quickly. Break up larger pantry doors into smaller chunks to avoid weird textures when it’s dried.
• This paint will dry in your spray gun if you leave it for more than 15 minutes or so, and cleaning the spray gun is a pain. So once you start, don’t stop!

Our sprayer: Fuji 2250 Hobby-PRO 2 HVLP Spray System

• This bugger is HEAVY and can be a lot to work with in a small space… but it’s heavy duty, and it’s a super consistent sprayer. In the end, it gave us great results and that’s all I really care about.
• For some reason, the seal on the bottom feed cup started leaking about halfway through our project. No matter what we did, we could not fix the problem… I’m sure we could have returned it to have it fixed or replaced, but we were in a rush, so I just wrapped the seal in plastic or a clump of paper towels and all was well.

Is it durable?

I’m going to give this paint an 8/10 for durability. The doors are holding up perfectly. Our island has a few small chips in it (maybe 3 total after a year of pretty heavy use), and I’m guessing that’s because I didn’t apply a very thick coat on the island (that was the first thing we painted, and I just hadn’t learned this product well enough yet). So make sure you do two thick coats of paint, and you won’t have any issues!

Does it clean well?

Very well. I use a bit of Dawn on a wet rag to buff out fingerprints and grease stains, etc., then wipe it dry and everything looks as good as new. We’re not very easy on our cabinets, and I’m impressed with how easy it is to clean even dried-on gunk.

Are water marks a problem?

For us, unfortunately yes. This is my only complain about this paint. I’m not sure if our water is extra hard or something, because I didn’t read any other reviews of this paint that mentioned this before buying this product. So I just try not to sling water around the kitchen too much, and I quickly wipe the cabinets that are near the sink after washing dishes to avoid water drips. The water marks we do have are barely noticeable, though, and there are very few of them.