Last week on Ask This Old House (the episode which played in my area, I mean) they helped a homeowner paint her kitchen cabinets. The professional painter TOH brought in (one they've used on various projects) said he recommends against using oil-based in a kitchen for two reasons: 1) it yellows over time, and if you're going to spend a lot of time doing the prep and painting, you want your paint to stay true, and 2) the fumes are just too strong for a kitchen, a space which needs to be used sooner rather than later, and by various members of a family. He and the homeowner primed, used two - three coats of the (water-based) paint and then two coats of poly over. In our den we used (I mean, the painters used) Cabinet Coat on the cabinets, and it is different than "usual" paint. In our kitchen (on wainscoting) we used BM's (water-based) Impervo and honestly, I like its finish better than the Cabinet Coat. They've both stood up beautifully, although in all fairness the Impervo gets much more of a workout than the CC (I've four and two year-olds) and we scrub it on a frequent basis. No burnishing, no color wiping up. It's really great. Over neither did we put poly. Do check the Painting Forum -- there are so many smart and generous people there. Good luck with your project!

I didn't paint the insides, and really don't regret it at all...I have tons of cabinets (well, not tons, but it seemed that way while I was sanding, priming, painting them!) It took my whole week of vacation, and I was glad to be done with it. Now, some people are bothered by that...one of my dear friends is frantic about everything inside her cabs being perfect, so she would freak if she saw that i didn't "finish!" But I'm not worried about stuff I can't see. I just laid down the loose contact paper for my dishes and never give it a second thought. Do you think it would bother you not to paint them? Then again, you could always go back and do them later on...good luck with your painting! BTW...painting my cabs was the best idea I ever had...I love them now!

My hubby designed and built all of our kitchen cabinetry, he painted it with a spray gun using Benjamin Moore Advance primer and paint... but the doors were painted before we put the hinges on. For the drawer fronts we taped up (tape and paper) what we didn’t want painted so he could spray the drawer fronts (ours were not built with a front that was screwed on). Anyways, for the interior and shelves we left it all unpainted and I used clear Shellac to coat the inside. The shellac is a food safe finish, takes a little getting used to applying it (you can’t do much overlapping when you’re brushing it on) but it’s not that difficult. It smells strongly of alcohol when it’s being applied, but the smell dissipates very quickly and is odorless when dry... it also dries quickly. You can then apply wax over the top of that for better protection against water spots... I didn’t do that step... water spots without the wax kind of turn white, I chose to lay down shelf liners instead because I didn’t want to go to the trouble of waxing the shelves, just saying that you could if you don’t want to use shelf liners. I’ll include some photos of my kitchen and some showing the insides of my cabinetry.

Same as the outside. Clean. Sand. Prime. Paint. With the right products. It’s 10x more work than just painting the outside. And if there’s lead paint there, its time for new cabinets. They aren’t worth the effort of lead abatement to and 30 weeks of work.