Painting Cabinets Around Fireplace White

Sometimes I take on a project that is not considered a faux painting job.  This is one example.  I completed painting cabinetry around a fireplace this week.  As you can see in the first photo the cabinets did indeed get painted white.  For this project I used Restoration Hardware's (color - the Right White) paint and I have to say I liked working with it.

Taking on a project like this involves a lot of prep work before you can start to paint.  When the new home owners moved in they wanted to chance the entire color scheme of the home.  The walls were painted a much darker color which matched the wood tone color of the cabinetry.  After all the new furniture arrived and the walls got painted it became clear that the wood cabinetry would have to change and it was decided to go white.

One of the biggest challenges in a job like this is to eliminate all the seams.  I have drawn arrows showing where most of them were but basically everywhere.  When a real wood cabinet gets installed they don't caulk the seams so everywhere that two pieces come together there will be a seam there. Most of them you could slip a business card into.  Now that's all fine and dandy until you paint the cabinets a lighter solid color.  In those cases like this one the seams become very apparent.  So what I did was clean the surface really well then primed with a white oil based primer.  At that point you could really see all the areas that needed caulking.  It took a half a day to caulk it all in good. 

Most of the time I paint cabinets I do not paint the interior of the cabinets but in this case as you can see from the first picture two of the doors have glass so you can see the inside.  So I had to take out the shelves and paint them as well as the inside.

After I completed the job there where no visible seams anywhere.  The big tv is mounted in the center where I haved circled in red.  It's bigger than the niche so the sides fit flush with the area I have indicated with the green line.  I still painted the ends of the mount white in the off chance that you cold see it from the side.