Tried painting my kitchen cabinets with a foam roller and got orange peel texture instead of smooth

I spent a whole weekend sanding and priming my oak cabinets then used a high-density foam roller thinking it would give me that factory finish... ended up with tiny bumps all over like an orange peel. Did I use the wrong nap size or should I have stuck with a sprayer? Has anyone else had better luck with microfiber rollers for cabinets?

2 comments

2 Comments

umab351mo ago

And the worst part is once that orange peel texture dries it's practically bulletproof, I had to sand my entire kitchen down to the bare wood because trying to smooth it just made everything worse.

the_piper1mo ago

Oh man, isn't that the worst feeling when you realize you've made things way harder than they needed to be? I did the same thing on a cabinet refinishing project last year, tried to just smooth out a bad spot with some extra sanding and suddenly I'm looking at a patch of raw wood in the middle of my kitchen that I had to strip and restain from scratch. It's like the paint knows you're trying to fix it and just laughs at you. By the time I got done with that project I think I spent more time fixing my mistakes than I did on the actual painting part.