Painting Cabinets From White to Distressed Black

If you want a shabby chic look to your home, or if you are interested in a very rustic style, it’s time to give your old white cabinets a paint job. As long as you don’t mind darkening the room, changing a white cabinet to black gives you a wonderfully distressed look and can be very striking.

Drop cloth
Screwdriver
100-grit sandpaper
Clean cloth or vacuum
Black paint
Paintbrush
Mallet

Instructions

- 1
  Put down a drop cloth to protect your work area.
- 2
  Remove all of the cabinet hardware using a screwdriver. Place the hardware together in a location you can remember. Take the cabinet doors off the hinges and set them on the drop cloth.
- 3
  Sand all the surfaces that you want to paint black using 100-grit sandpaper. This should include the doors as well as the cabinet frames.
- 4
  Remove all of the sawdust by wiping it away with a clean cloth or sucking it up with a vacuum.
- 5
  Paint all the surfaces you sanded using black paint and a paintbrush.
- 6
  Allow the paint to dry thoroughly.
- 7
  Reattach the hardware and the doors that you removed.
- 8
  Sand wear spots into the black paint using 100-grit sandpaper. To do this, imagine where your hands go on the cabinets and sand those areas down until you can see glimpses of the white paint showing through.
- 9
  Tap the surface of the cabinet with a mallet to give it dings and dents to look more distressed.

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