To Paint or Not to Paint??

I HATE painted cabinets i cant wait to redo my kitchen so i can get rid of them!! let the new owner decide chances are if its out of date they will redo it the way they want

To be honest going into a house and if I saw all new painted cabinets I would wonder if the owner was trying to conceal wood rot.On the appliances unless the cost of replacing them is included in buying the house I say why bother as the new owners can either use what they have or buy what they think looks good. i know I replaced all my stuff when I bought my house. And I think stained wood is so much easier to clean than painted sides then can always paint themselves

Paint.

People who love wood are both in the minority AND people who love wood love TYPES of wood and TYPES of finishes. Which makes the # of people who will love YOUR wood a small fraction of those looking at your house. You do NOT want to narrow you audience.

Similarly big kitchens sell. Your kitchen will stay the same size but LOOK bigger because of the white cabs.

Time to paint.

I would rather see white paint, then dated wood. If the cabinets are from the 70's, they will like they are from the 70's. It's very hard for a lot people (watch house hunters) to get past dated style. They can't picture themselves there, or what it would look like up to date. One of the first things that is make or break with people, is dated kitchens. I'd just do what the realtor says. You aren't going to be living there, so the stain of the wood doesn't impact your style choices.

I wouldnt paint over it, our last house had painted cabinets and I hated them, I love the wood. Plus if you do paint and the buyer prefers wood it is alot harder to get them back to their natural state. If the want them painted they can paint them after the purchase the home! Good Luck!

I HATE white painted cabinets! When I saw then in houses I would cringe. They never look clean. Always get scratched up quickly. They look like you put a bandaid on a deep wound. They have no character or warmth. I don't see them as a blank canvas like I see a white wall, I see them as someone already chose the canvas for me. It's not as easy to go back to wood as it is to paint them white if they are wood if you so choose.
For the record, I HATE beige carpet. I don't like wood floors. I like carpet with color and not berber, that stuff is so horrible and scratchy feeling and industrial looking. I like a nice wood cabinet. In other words..all these things "All the buyers want", I and my husband don't.
The color of cabinets is a personal thing. You are going to turn off people if they are wood, you are going to turn them off if they are white. You really can't win and you can't guess what someone is going to like.
Make sure they are clean and look nice and leave them alone is my advice. Sinking large amounts of money guessing what someone might like is insane IMO.
Seriously, I have found that realtors live in a world of their own. They are good at manipulating people into believing this is what you really really want and need so they can get their money.

I would generally listen to your realtor, but not when it comes to painting wood cabinets. Unless they are really, really dated or in bad shape. Painting the kitchen, changing the appliances, and replacing the hardware should suffice.

I would prefer wood to white.

If you're moving, then I'd take the realtor's advice because he knows what buyers are looking for - it's his job. When selling your home, you need to take your emotions out of the equation. So change what he suggests to change and trust that he knows what he's talking about.

Too bad we can't load photos on this site!

I'd say wash and oil them down, change the hinges and pulls and leave it be. Unless you pay a lot for a professional job painted cabinets look tacky to me and they always chip and look worse than they started.

I say paint. When you make the decision to sell your house, you have to look at your house as if it already weren't yours any more.

Your realtor is thinking, "No matter how good that wood stain looks, it's not going to attract buyers the way clean new paint would."

I would not paint over wood cabinets.

I hate the look of painted cabinets. If they buyer wants them painted... let them paint them. They know what color they will want.

White is a horrible color to paint cupboards. With as much as they are touched they get so dirty and look horrible in a short amount of time.

Its amazing how much a good cleaning of wood can make a differnce with some updated hardware. If the hinges are inside the cupboard I wouldn't even worry about them, but make sure the handles are new.

If you want to change the cabinets you can always sand them down and put a new stain on them with a clear coat over it. ( make sure you do a test area on the inside of the door where it wont be noticed if the color doesn't turn out the way you want. The color is darker the longer it sits up to 24 hours) It would take the same amount of time as painting them. But I still think that you should leave them and let the new owners choose what they want done with them.

I would go out and take a look at the homes of competing houses in your neighborhood at your price points with the # of bedrooms you have. Long story short clean, crisp and neat goes a long way. If you wooden cabinets are covered in grease splatters and dust, a faster fix over cleaning them would be painting them.

I had white cabinets and hated them. It made cleaning the kitchen that much more work. My new cabinets have a medium wood tone finish to them and are beautiful and I can take a few more passes around the kitchen before I have to wipe them down. I put them in after I purchased the home but I had no intention of living in the home.

Make your decision based on how your home will show in light of your competition. If everyone else has wood go for white paint, if others have white paint and their homes haven't moved it wouldn't necessarily hurt your home to keep the wood and update the hardware.

My first thought is to go with the realtor but I completely understand your un-willingness to paint over wood, I couldn't agree with you more!

So I say, clean them up, put in the new appliances, show your realtor and see how it looks and what he thinks then? Maybe the new appliances will make a big enough difference that you don't need to do anything else?

In the meantime wrap your brain around the fact that you might have to paint over the wood...and tell yourself it will be OK because you are moving and it wont be your house anymore :)

My thoughts are this. Why not clean then extra well and see how it goes. Houses are not selling anywhere right now so it may not even sell if you spend lots of money and time on them.

I would not like painted cabinets. I would not even buy new appliances for a house that was going to sell for less than I paid for it.

A friend of mine had her huge 2 story house on the market a few years ago and the Realtor told her she had to paint the walls in the kitchen and living room a more neutral color. My friend said okay. They also bought new carpet for the rooms that had carpeting. The Realtor told them if someone wanted a carpet allowance it could be up to $20K and to do it before then it would only cost them about $5000. They had a nice well built carpet but with 6 kids it was a bit worn down. So they said okay.

The carpet the Realtor picked out was a brown, rust, and tan Berber. The living room walls went from white to dark rust on one wall and an odd color of cream on the others. The kitchen walls went to the same dark rust from a dark green accent color that was an exact match to the ivy in the floral designs on the tile back-splashes.

Her house was hideous.

Everyone that came in hated the rust colored walls and discussed how much it would cost to have it painted over. They didn't like the cream, it was sort of a dirty golden yellow, and talked about painted it more of an ecru or harvest white.

SO, if you know you are not going to make tons of money on this house regardless why go to all that work to make MAYBE a few more thousand dollars that MABYE won't even make it more sell-able because the people who might like it don't want to have to go in and change it all out.

I think that if the house is old, the carpet is an older style, there are lots of other up-grades needed then just sell it as best as you can and move on to your new life.

If housing sales were picking up and starting to show that a lot more were going quickly then I would say if the cost is very very minimal then do what you can to make it better looking but I would not buy new appliances. I would not even do an appliance allowance either. Some people already have appliances.

I would not paint over the wood. I can't imagine that being a deal breaker for a potential buyer.

As a potential buyer, unless they are brand new beautiful wood cabinets of a wood grain that *I* like, I'd rather have painted cabinets. However, I would not paint them white. If your realtor thinks that a light color would be best, I'd go for a creamy ivory. My brother is a contractor and when they sold their last house he painted his kitchen cabinets a taupe color. They were STUNNING.

Added: I'd check out HGTV's Rate My Space kitchens online. Hmmm ... so many painted cabinets! ;)
http://www.roomzaar.com/rate-my-space/Kitchens/gallery.esi

Don't paint the cabinets white. So many people are put off buy white cabinets, myself included. The home I just bought sat on the market for over a year. At closing the sellers told us that they had quite a few potential buyers, but they were all turned off by the white cabinets. The sellers ended up antiquing the white cabinets and they look much better that way.

I'm actually amazed that my poor realtor didn't give up on me when she helped me find my house. She must have taken me through 100 houses (at least!) not to mention all the ones I did drive-bys on so I could check them out on my own. I was so particular, it was my first home purchase and I wanted it to be MINE! We were wrapping up another long Saturday when she took me to my house, I walked into the kitchen and FELL IN LOVE! She knew by the look on my face that we had finally found "the one". The part that kept holding my attention? The kitchen. The cabinets are a dark cherry color, almost like a burgandy red...they were installed by the original owner who was a cabinet maker (house is almost 60 years old) and are real wood. Absolutely beautiful!! I wouldn't have stopped at that house had the cabinets been painted...odd to say, I know, but the kitchen has a HUGE amount of cabinet space and is visible from the dining room and living room...he even installed wood in the dining room, floor to mid, made out of the same wood as the cabinets...I love my house!!

Don't paint!! Just clean them them up nicely, Murphy's Oil Soap does well...