I Tried Painting my RV Cabinets | e169

I’ve wanted to paint our RV for years, and now the time has come! I’ll share what I’ve learned and give you a glimpse of the amount of work and a preliminary before and after view, though we’re not quite finished yet.

STUFF WE BOUGHT

PPG Seal Grip

This is the same paint we used on our RV walls. It seems to be a good paint to help adhere to hard-to-paint surfaces like wallpapered RV walls and laminate cabinets.

But do be prepared – 1 or even 2 coats don’t look that great, but they do seem to do the job helping adhere to our RV walls. I’ll have to give our cabinets a bit more time, but I’m hoping they will hold up as well as the walls!

I used 2 coats of the PPG primer before using the Sherwin Williams paint. Although I’m not 100% complete, I *think* I’ll be able to finish all of the cabinets in our RV with just this one gallon.

Emerald Urethane Trim Enamel

After doing a bit of research online, I decided on this paint. I was looking for a paint that would go on smoothly with just brushes. With all of the stuff still in our RV, we didn’t have the option to use sprayers.

I chose Pearly White as the color, in Satin. I chose satin since I prefer a more matte look on our cabinets.

This paint is certainly not cheap, but you can get it on sale regularly, so try to plan to pick some up on sale – I was able to get 25% off, which was a big price break.

Similar to the PPG paint, I’m not 100% completed, but I think I’ll be able to get through all of our cabinets with just one gallon.

Paint Bottles – Since I expect we’ll have periodic touch-ups, I thought these little bottles looked like a good way to keep a smaller amount of paint quickly available. We certainly won’t have the space to keep the 1-gallon paint cans, but I’ll at least have a little to bring along.

Purdy Nylox Cub 2″ Angled Brush (soft) – With all of the small nooks and crannies in a camper, these “shorty” brushes seem like the only reasonable solution. And this brush was supposed to minimize brush strokes. I’m not sure it did that, but I didn’t really have another brush to compare.

Whizz Cabinets, Doors & More Flocked Foam Rollers – I know that’s a mouthful, and I had a hard time finding these at a decent price. Luckily, Lowes did have these and in a kit with the roller.

I read that you didn’t want to use foam rollers on cabinets since it leaves hard edges. These were well-regarded on several sites I was reading, so I thought I’d give them a try. They did a decent job in my opinion and I’d use them again if I ever had to repaint.

Since we’re still in the middle of the painting project, I am hoping to provide some of what we learned in our follow-up video.

Videos we Referenced

Our Camping Locations

If you’re interested in seeing all of the places we’ve stayed, I’m keeping a (mostly) updated list on Google Maps by Month. Enjoy!