You need an autobody shop. You can help to cut costs by doing some of the prep yourself. Like sanding down to bare metal.

Thanks so much for responding. By sanding down, do you mean enough so paint can catch, or completely so I do not see paint anymore (they are white now and in good condition)--I cannot see how that can be done just by manual sanding though?

This post was edited by madteaparty33 on Mon, Dec 31, 12 at 19:19

Random orbit sander. Make sure the paper isn't too coarse and is for metal, not wood. Any auto supply store ought to be able to help you there. Yes, bare metal. They will want bare metal to prime and paint.

"an old farmhouse with original metal cabinets"

Just a quick comment-be aware that prior to 1978 or so painted metal cabinets frequently contained lead. If yours do, you need to consider this before taking them down to bare metal.

You will never get the smooth original type paint job with hand applied paint. Spray paint, maybe. But that will be a lot of spray paint and you'll need to rig a home made spray booth to keep the bugs and debris out of the finish. Wood is a lot more forgiving of a gloppy paint job than is metal. They need a pro paint job to really live up to their potential. Not to mention being durable. You might even consider having them powder coated if you want them to last another 50 years.

Thanks so much everyone, really appreciate the input. Assuning I can find someone willing to do this, any ballpark idea of what it would cost to have a bodyshop do this start to finish? Cabinets are in good shape, I think they just need to spray paint with the fancy tools/materials you have there.

Cost will be depending on how many cabinents need reprainting. My friend has a body shop/spray booth and has a flat hourly rate . The paint ( They call it product in their business) should not be too expensive . I had him repaint my 1950 Philco Refridgerator using some left over Robins Egg Blue paint, which helped save costs, but the expensive stuff was the clear coat and epoxy primer. Just take photos of your cabinents, talk to someone with an old car that has a nice paint job about who did the work on it and do your research of body shops in your area. Once you find a few take your photos to them for a quote and see who gives off a good vibe. And importantly, don't get suckered in by a cheap quote because you definitely will get what you pay for. Good luck , I love metal kitchen cabinents!

MTP, Here is a link that will give you tons of info on metal cabinets and other links. Refinishing, cleaning, their value, etc.

Trail, I too love Rustoleum, the spray though. It is being used successfully for wood cabinets now instead of brushing on. Goes a long way and looks great.

I volunteered at Restore and we had a number of metal kitchens come in. Bought one base cabinet for posterity. It was from the home of the original designer who lived in Iowa, but had a home here too and owned part of the golf course surrounding the Broadmoor Hotel. I hesitated, but spray painted it (Rustoleum) to fit in with the kitchen. One coverage and worked beautifully. Although I do worry about lead and putting food in it. Each drawer has fitted metal bins with tops.

These cabinets are so heavy, I have no clue how they stay on the wall. Or how many it takes to move them.

Here is a link that might be useful: Retrorenovation

I painted my original metal cabinets five years ago when we moved into our 1962 house. I sanded to bare metal, used BM primer and paint optimized for metal and yet -- the paint continued to peel. I would definitely go with the autobody shop recommendation -- they have the right equipment for the job and can give you much better results. If you are bound and determined to do this job in house, check out http://retrorenovation.com, it's a great site for metal cabinet enthusiasts (which I discovered too late for my project).

From the experience of others here, it appears that metal cabinets are not all the same. As with wood cabinets. If you can find the manufacturer, run a search. That is how I found out so much about mine. There were probably a myriad of metals and paint techniques used in constructing them. These became very popular after WWII with so much metal available.

The above is why I suggested the link.

If you have functional cabinets that just need a good cleaning, I'd start with doing so. If there isn't any rust, the paint must be quality. Also, think of how cars are maintained. Wax perhaps after cleaning?

My spray painted cabinet is great and very smooth, no knicks or scratches from using the drawers. I didn't even put a final coat on top, just one layer of spray.

I'd strongly recommend having them 'soda blasted' - it's like sand blasting but they use baking soda and it's much less damaging to the base material.

Powder coating would be my next suggestion vs. paint.

Chances are you'd want the same shop to do both jobs - most powder coating operations are set up for media blasting (there is baking soda, glass bead, walnut shell, sand etc. etc. used for this).

An industrial powder coating operation has the necessary racks, conveyors, large ovens etc. to do this job. I've had many motorcycle frames, tables, bed frames etc. all powder coated.

I looked into a number of ways of finishing metal--powder coating, autobody shop painting and even porcelain enameling. It's good to learn about your options here but everything depends on what's available to you locally. I had to call shops that wouldn't do it and couldn't do it and might want to give it a shot to see what happens, before I got the shops that have done it many times before. For what I wanted to do, costs were not prohibitive at all.