Did you use a good primmer?

There isn't anything you can do if the adhesion is not good between the first coat of primer and the cabinet except start over. If the adhesion is only poor in some area, you can spot prime those areas and touch up with the top coat. Use at least Zinsser 123 and if possible Zinsser BIN. Ask your reputable paint store guy which Zinsser is compatible with what you already have on your cabinet.

It does no good to prime over a surface that has poor adhesion, but can help if areas are generally well bonded, but some areas are not. One way to tell is to lightly sand and see if all the paint starts to fall off or just small areas.

If you find that all the paint easily flakes off, the messy, but best solution is to strip it off and start over. The good news is the stripper will remove the polyurethane finish of the original finish and once stripped and sanded, you will have a great surface for painting - again starting with a good primer - or, the wood might look so nice that you will stain and finish the wood.

I did strip and refinish my cabinets. It is not hard or expensive. It is very time consuming and messy.

One last thought - look at the can of primer and see how long it takes to cure. You may be bumping the cabinets before the cure time. Some primers take a week or more. You might just need to let the cabinets cure for a few more days.

Painting over existing finishes is always going to be chip prone, as the adhesion is never as good as to bare wood.

To strip the doors, you might want to track down a dip tank stripping operation. These will get the old paint totally off without all the effort. Self stripping also does require quite a bit of expense in materials.

Thanks for the thoughts, both of you. Jhmarie, I think your idea of stripping right down is probably the next step. The cabinets had already been painted by the previous owner, and were looking pretty bad. I sanded them a bit, but was told that the Advance didn't need primer. I even recall looking up Zinsser, but ended up deciding not to based on that advice! David Jensen, I've never heard of a dip tank, but will look around locally to learn more.

Just to see how it looks, I just installed them in spite of the not-so-great finish. Something needed to be done about the previous owners bad paint job, and this is a step up from that, but I'll take your thoughts into consideration as I plan my next move. So many steps in moving a kitchen towards something you might actually like :)

I used CitriStrip mostly but also Zinsser Citrus Strip - both are low odor environmentally safe strippers - I think they might even be the same thing. A dip tank would be so much easier if you can find one. With the CitriStrip, I applied it the night before really thick and scrapped it with a putty knife the next day. I usually needed a second coat, which i put on in the morning and it was usually ready in a few hours. Do it in a garage or unfinished basement. I had two sawhorses in the basement storage room for stripping, a set in the garage for sanding and did the finish work on a table in the finished part of the basement. I had doors in each work area in some stage of work.

You can also look into buying new unfinished doors and painting those - a little more expensive. If you like a cottage style, you could use some open shelving and some curtained cabinets to decrease the amount of doors you need to do. You can also have the panel, if there is one, routed out and replaced with glass - one less thing to paint. A DIY option - very cottage - is to replace with chicken wire and shirr fabric behind.

This kitchen in the guest cottage at French Country Cottage uses curtained cabinets:

https://www.houzz.com/photos/my-pics-work-in-progress-phvw-vp~65270573

Advance normally doesn't need a primer if you are painting walls or trim molding. anytime you are doing wood cabinets, you need a good primer. And you really need a primer if you're going over someone else's crap. do you know what kind of paint they used?

If the previous paint was adhering ok, but your's isn't, there's an adhesion problem. You prob didn't clean them well enough or the paint is not meshing well w/the other paint, hence the need for a primer.

Now you have to strip off yours and prob the previous paint. If you're up for the job, get a good stripper. I like Soy Gel because it cleans up w/water and doesn't have VOC's.

as mentioned, Zinsser oil based primer should be used.

Strip, sand, clean, sand, clean, sand some more, clean several times then prime. If you didn't spend hours and hours prepping you didn't prep correctly.

I am not a big fan of "stripping". It is difficult, and messy, and generally toxic.

You said there are "little chips".

That might suggest an adhesion issue, OR you might need to give the paint time to cure. Acrylic paint can take as long as 30 days to fully harden, and sometimes longer in high humidity.

What that means is that it will be easily damaged from fingernails and other 'bumps' until fully cured.

Improper adhesion is a different thing altogether, and we need more information to figure out what's going on and how to treat the problem.

You said the cabinets were already painted? Was previous finish failing? or just your finish? What type of finish was used?

Did you clean the cabinets before painting? Kitchen grease is a problem for paint adhesion, and must be cleaned-off first with liquid TSP substitute (if possible).

How is paint "failing"? All over the place, or just little spots? etc... please be as specific as possible.

pictures please.

I used the same paint as yours on my previous kitchen but primed my cabinets. My finish was rock solid. Make sure to prime no matter what. Also, I did strip my cabinet doors as well, it's was a big toxic mess and left little spots that would not come off which made the final finish a bit messy.

Products such as Advance generally need no primer when going over old finishes in good condition. They are , however, not self priming over bare wood.

If all else fails, FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS on the back of the cans! In all cases, a CLEAN surface is necessary, especially of any grease or oil, such as from handling by human hands. TSP is an old stand by cleaner, but TSP MUST be rinsed away with clean water. A "scuff sanding" with fine sandpaper is always a good idea to assure a good bond.

The issues here, that we don't know because OP didn't tell us, is :

what paint did the previous owners use?

what did you do to prep before applying the Advance?

Did you use any type of degreaser or TSP?

If the previous paint was glossy, did you sand or de-gloss that finish?

did you clean off the residue very well before painting?

How many coats did you give and length of time between coats?

All of these, or failure to do some of these, will cause problems w/adherence.

BM Advanced is a great paint but it is not for a first time painter. First off I will assume you didn't strip your doors and they already had a clear finish on them? Not all primers are for adhesion so just because you prime doesn't mean you have better adhesion.

You can have a chemical or mechanical adhesion. TSP or TSP substitute and a scouring with a 3M scuff pad sold at HD will create both. The color will then dictate if you need a prime coat to lessen the amount of top coats needed to hide the wood tone.

Problem with using latex paints brushed or rolled on cabinet doors is they create a lot of paint film build up. That build up takes about 30 days to fully dry.

Preparation especially with greasy or dirty cabinet doors is the most important step. If you didn't spend a couple hours prepping you didn't prep you doors or frames properly.

Do you know if your cabinets were painted in oil based paint? I'd recommend oil (the more traditional route) over latex. It is much more hardy and best suited for any mill work. Should be able to withstand a lot of wear and tear from there

*if previous coat was oil-based, and Rebecca C. painted using water-based with no primer and minimal sanding there might be an adhesion problem.

I'm not familiar with Advance, but it looks to be a "Urethane emulsion", which might make it "stick" better than most water-based paints.

you can put a water base over oil, but not oil over water. Advance is 100% acrylic, oil hybrid. It has self leveling properties and isn't that difficult to work. the key with brushing any paint is not to overwork it.

Until we hear back from OP, we can guess until the cows come home.

Those rules concerning oil over water based or water based over oil are mainly aimed at exterior use. Oil products are very brittle and get more so with age. Acrylic/latex products are relatively elastomeric. If the two are bonded together well ( and a pure acrylic will bond well to oil ) and the acrylic wants to expand and the oil doesn't, disaster can occur in an exterior use where the sun beats on the surface and causes dramatic and rapid expansion. There are documented cases where acrylic had been placed over years of exterior oil paint coatings and drastic paint failure occured, where whole sheets of paint were stripped off right down to the wood! Indeed, there are water based strippers on the market that use this bond and shrink factor to strip old paint from homes.

It depends on what you mean by 'chipping'. If the paint is coming off down to the last painters job, then your prep was poor. If the paint is coming off down to the previous painters job, then the problem was that painters prep. You need to determine which paint layer is suspect, and then strip down past that layer or you will always have problems. There is nothing you can put on top of failing paint to correct it because the weight and moisture in your new paint will just assist that failing paint to fail some more.

@ Beth H,

LOL!

As i stated before, you will NEVER get the same adhesion to a previous paint job, as to bare wood! The ultimate re-do is to strip down to bare wood and start over. That said, it is a horrible amount of labor and most people will opt for going over the old finish. You must clean it of oils and general schmutz, and a scuff sanding is always a good idea, although the new acrylics and hybrids have amazing adhesion in themselves.

Hi all, OP here. You've all got a whole lot of great advice for someone to read before attempting a project like this. I really appreciate your feedback and suggestions...Maybe I should have posted ahead of before I did the job :)

Yep, I think there are a number of reasons why the adhesion wasn't good. I did clean them all with soap and water, (but not TSP, which was my first problem) and let them dry, followed by a light sand over all surfaces. I used a foam roller and brush to apply the paint, and was very careful to allow for at least 3 days between coats (the can said 16 hours.) I did it over the course of about 3 months, so I don't think the curing time was the issue.

Paintguy22, there's no doubt that even the layer I was painting over (from the previous owner) had problems, so I think you're right that if I want to salvage this, getting back there is key. I did sand the trouble spots to make sure there were no big peeling parts, but clearly it needed more.

I'm not a pro applicator, and had some trouble with drips, especially along the detailed work on the fronts of the doors, although I did find that the self-levelling properties of the paint were really good. Brush strokes etc weren't the problem.

Did I mention that the paint below was chocolate brown and I was putting cream on top? Clearly, not a well thought out project.

What I'm really looking for now are ideas like what jhmarie suggested though. It's almost the winter here (and I live in a cold and stormy place where my garage workspace won't be much good to me post-November) so rather than going back to square one and making it right, I'm looking for disguises and other ways to live with it until I decide what to do next.

Thanks all!

Rebecca, can you post a pic? Are there a lot of cabinets? Having painted 3 different kitchens cabinets in the past (and honestly, they were 3 too many!) I can attest to the amount of work and prep they require. Painting is actually the easy part. It's the prep work that takes the most time and is a must to get a quality paint job.

disguises? touch up the chips and live with it.

How to fix it? You've got to strip them down to bare wood. Is it worth it? prob not, unless the wood is rare and in perfect shape.

So the next options are,,

pay someone else to do the work of strip, prep and paint. (prob 3-5K)

reface the doors and drawers and strip and paint the boxes.

get all new cabinets. Or get decent used cabinets someone is selling on craigslist and paint those. (like the oak cabs from the 80's and 90's)

Spray them with rustoleum.

Actually TSP would be the wrong cleaner to use. A lot of people think it's right though, and then you know how it goes....bad information spreads like a rumor. TSP has to be rinsed really well, which is difficult to do inside a house. There is a cleaner called Dirtex that works just as well that doesn't need to be rinsed as well.

@paintguy22,

Liquid TSP does not require rinsing.

Hi Beth,

I haven't got any offhand, but I'll snap a couple once I'm home.

Yeah, I knew from the start this was a temporary measure. There's enough that isn't to my taste that I know at some point, I'll be doing a total redo in there.

-Rebecca

I would concur with PaintGuy that Dirtex is a really good general cleaner. However, TSP was used not only for its cleaning ability, but because it dulls the surface, increasing adhesion. It must be rinsed, especially where grease or oils are encountered, because it converts grease to a form of soap. It is not good to paint over soap either! When using TSP, I would often load up a small, handheld pump sprayer with the hot TSP solution, and only use a bucket of clean water and terry towels to rinse it off.

Aaron Holland Painting - do your homework!

Rebecca - here are a some more example of creative ideas that reduce the number of doors you need to deal with. Some time a fail is an opportunity to get creative. After all, one can't experiment with new cabinets, but you have nothing to lose with old ones:) There is an extra discipline needed if you take on any of the open shelving ideas. It is best to use the bottom shelf mainly for everyday items and put less used items or even just kitchen decor on upper shelves - then only the bottom shelf needs to kept obsessively clean. Since open cabinets need to be neat, they hold less stuff - you might be forced to seriously declutter - donate extras and store rarely used items elsewhere. I don't have open shelving - just a plate rail, but my kitchen is smaller and I actually find it very freeing not to have cabinets with lots of stuff in them. This will take two post to get all the pics in:

Frosted or beaded glass:

A few more pics:

This one would take organization discipline:

Jhmarie, these are excellent ideas, and well within the sort of look I'm going for. Thanks so much for your input :)