When we bought our Winnie, she was full of old light oak cabinets and a lot of fake wood panelling.
Even the fridge had paneling.
I’m not a big fan of light oak or fake wood paneling, so I urged Mark to paint the cabinets. As we were reading up on how to do this, we came across lots of advice.
Most of the instructions we found stressed the importance of sanding and included primer and enough prep work to make me suddenly fond of light oak and fake wood paneling. I had also read about painting with chalkboard paint to cover the need to primer and sand all-in-one.
We had settled on the chalkboard paint method until I came across a pin Pinterest about Giani Granite’s Nuvo Cabinet Paint. I watched the video and was intrigued. Minimal sanding (for fake wood areas). No primer. You didn’t even have to remove the cabinet doors.
I contacted Giani and was thrilled to be able to test their cabinet paint out. This is what came in my kit.
Everything I needed for the job. I figured I’d need more than 2 cans since there are so many cabinets in our RV, but I wanted to test it out before I bought any extra.
We decided to remove the cabinet doors because we were going to update the hardware and hinges. I prepped my surfaces by wiping them clean, (I used diluted orange oil) and also lightly sanded the fake wood. We used wood filler to fill some (though not all) holes.
Over the slide, we had fabric covered cabinet fronts that needed to be removed and there was a little strip of wood that needed to be prepped.
Next we painted like crazy. The paint went on very nicely and had great coverage. This paint is not normal paint. Which is great. When I was trying to wash the paint of my hands, it required some serious elbow grease. Given the fact that was going on cabinets, I was extremely happy about that.
By the time we were done, we needed 5 cans of paint (but we covered all the cabinets in a 37 foot camper with Nuvo! So for about $175, we dramatically changed the appearance of our camper. I think this update was one of the most important updates we did and the Nuvo paint worked wonders. I love that we didn’t have to sand and primer. It was very easy to do.
The before…
And after…
Amazing right??
If you’re interested in Nuvo’s Cabinet Paint it can be found, here. I can’t imagine having to go through all the steps we’d have had to if we’d gone another route.
Hi Julie. Your job looks wonderful. I just purchased a used 21 ft motorhome that the previous owner had been refinishing the wood walls and cabinets. He stained and sprayed some sort of shiny finish on them. Brand unknown. Does this paint go over the top of that, or would I still need to sand?
Thank you! Hmmm…because I’m lazy….I would just paint over it. Sounds like it’s just paint right? If so, I think it would work but any areas that are peeling would need to be sanded.
How does the paint hold up for wiping it down and moisture (ie, if used on bathroom cabinets)?
It held up for us very well Rachel. We had about a year worth of use.
Thanks great blog and your coach looks outstanding. Were getting ready to do our 2004 Damon Challenger and saw this. Started pulling the furniture out already. Going to pick the paint today. Hard to tell from the photos did you paint the walls a little different color or white also.
Great eye Ron! The walls were a light light gray color with stark white cabinets. Hope your remodel goes smooth!
I love the cabinets!! I was wondering how long it took to do this? I want to do this and am wondering how many weekends it will take to do it. We have a 30 ft fifth wheel.
It took quite a while. There are a TON of cabinets in an RV!! LOL! I’d guess 2 weekends of very tedious painting. 🙂
I am looking into buying some for my camper, what color did you use?
We used Titanium Infusion.
Is this a pure white color?
We bought a motorhome that had light wood cabinets. We did the opposite. Stained them dark brown mahogany to where they almost look black. Took off all the original 30 year old wallpaper and painted the ceilings and walls in Behr “Innocence” eggshell which is gorgeous. Pulled up the nasty carpeting and put in light maple floating planks. I contemplated doing white but for me personally, it would have been too much of that one color.
Julie, we just purchased our first rv. It is an older model and has woodblock cabinets and trim. When I say woodblock I mean it has a paper over ? Some paper is peaking away. Please let me know if you had this and if you did, did you remove the paper and sand what you found under? Did you have any surprises?
Our cabinets even has brass strips all around the edge. I thought of removing it. Not sure if it would come off. Did you have something like this and if so what did you do?
Many thanks!
Hi Jackie! We did NOT have woodblook cabinets so I can’t help you there. But we did have those brass strips and we just painted over them.
Love it!! Did you paint the wallpaper too? I want to do this with my 2006. I am a little worried about paint chipping off. Have you had any problems with this? Did you put a final coat or finish?
Thanks!
No, we didn’t have wallpaper in our RV and we didn’t have any problems with chipping. Go for it!! You’ll love the results!
Love this for updating our 1996 trailer. Any suggestions for covering some glass paneled cabinets? They have flowers etched in there, too. Not sure if I do the white cabinets, how the 90’s glass style will look with it? Luckily only 5 cabinets have this.
Hmmmm….any way you can pop the class out and replace them with something paintable.
what color of the Nuvo paint did you use? I see a few different colors and I want it to be as close as possible 🙂
We used Titanium Infusion. 🙂