Yeah...this almost gets into the "urban-legend" kinda thing! ...a "half (AT BEST...)-truth" gets sorta blended somewhere along the line. After awhile, it just seems to be accepted! ESPECIALLY by people that only have occasional forays into similiar projects. The MAIN reason to avoid clearcoating: (the part that's NEVER addressed anywhere...) >>> CURE TIME. Paints/primers, as a coating-"system", need to fully cure b4 being "trapped" by a clear topcoat(s). * Depending on many factors, this can be a MONTH OR MORE! * If coated too soon, moisture in the paint gets re-wetted by the clear-coat, and may start to peel. * Clouding may also occur if clearcoats are too thick. >>> Soooooo...to summarize...Not many people are gonna want to haul out the painting equipment a month later to do some clearcoats! >>> The benefit is just too small vs. all the re-work. >>> If you've used top-notch paints with a higher-sheen, there's almost ZERO benefit. Faron

Since you're shopping at the cafeteria, Minwax makes a clear product called, Procrylic. That works well for cabinets. Lowes offers Varathane which makes a very nice waterborne poly. Buy only what you need. A quart will go a long way. Michael

Thank you, all. Your responses are helpful. Just a few more follow up questions/comments: - I did try sanding. Not very thoroughly but just to see if there is any improvement in results by doing it. None whatsoever for the MS paints that I used. That said, I do agree that it makes sense to sand even in future for the paints suggested by marti8a and hollysprings. Also, yes the artifacts will be subject to elements, but considering that I am paying $2.00 per piece originally, I can easily sacrifice a few to the elements :-). And for the same reason, I would like to keep my solution cost effective so I do not end up spending more for horse shoe than the horse itself :-) - Annie : regarding Ben moore stix as primer: is this meant to go over powder coating *directly* and then essentially making the surface welcoming to paint layer? Or should this be sanded too? Thanks, and would love to hear from more folks regarding this. It will be great to have a few options because I want to also watch my budget and more options will help me pick the most suitable option.

alinayuriy - Sorry for the delay in responding...I wanted to check on the type of roller we used before I commented. We ended up using Cabinet Coat, mixed at our local BM dealer, with Sherwin Williams Urbane Bronze. They manually matched the color for us. We are using Satin finish. We chose CC for a few reasons, although they might not be the most logical :) First, it was what we knew. I've liked Satin Impervo for trim in the past but didn't know how it would hold up on cabinets. We read a lot of reviews on Advance and CC, including the ones in this thread and ultimately felt there was no real big push for us to switch from a product we had already sampled to a new one. If people had said CC was really hard to work with or didn't hold up, we would have switched but everything we have read is that it was really "user friendly" and good for newbies, like us. We also liked that it is self-priming. I know some people will say "prime anyway!" and we were going to but a test sample showed no difference in coating. We also looked closely at the SW recommended above, especially since we were going with a SW paint color, but since the project is already complicated enough, I decided to just stick with what was working, which was Cabinet Coat. We have coated the base cabinets and 1 coat on the lower doors, so far. I don't know how it would be for others with factory/builder-grade stained cabinets but this is our experience with custom built, pre-painted cabinets. We have cleaned w/ TSP-replacement, de-glossed with a liquid de-glosser/sanding product (I know some people hate this idea but it's been great, esp with the grooves and cracks we have in our cabinets), then sanded as needed, wiped down and painted with Cabinet Coat. We are currently using a brush and roller method. As I mentioned in an earlier thread, we didn't go with a sprayer although I have some great recommendations on one. Our reasons for no sprayer was #1: budget. It's really tight right now. #2: I worried about where we would spray. We live in the NE and we don't have a heated area to spray and I worry that the sprayer would spray too much. This may be a totally silly concern, the reality is that I just *think* that could be an issue and so I decided it was one. Paint sprayers may be totally safe to spray in a small, enclosed area...so really, don't listen to me on this one haha! We are using Purdy brushes to get in the cabinet grooves and do the edges and rolling after. Our assembly line process is for me to brushy and my husband to follow with the roller. We are using 2 different rollers - we aren't sure which we like best. One is the Whizz 4" roller with the standard foam roller that is in the package. We used this for all of the bottom base cabinets (with a brush too). Then, we tried some fancy Whizz roller that someone on a blog or on Houzz recommended as their favorite. I'll post a pic of the package. It's a bit bigger than we need and we worried about coverage but it all smoothed out nicely. We only used it once on the front cab doors, so we are going to try again today and see how it goes. The first coat is very much a base coat, whether we use a roller or a brush. One thing we noticed, not sure if it's b/c of my specific cabinet situation or b/c of the paint...I think it's the cabinet (high gloms painted, deglossed, sanded, no primer per CC instructions) but the initial coat has just "ok coverage". That being said, we could be just bad at painting b/c we are worried about drips so we are doing thin coats. When we go back over with the brush, it will leave streaks. I don't remember this from other paints in different situations (not cabinets). I'm sure it's what we are doing, not so much the paint itself b/c i haven't read this as being an issue for anyone else. I hope this helps!