The 90’s almond-colored laminate Formica countertops in the kitchen of our small cabin were looking tiiired! With supply issues rising and the costs of building materials increasing, I decided to paint laminate countertops with a new coat of white paint to freshen them up, and decided to use the paint I had on hand: Rust-Oleum Appliance Epoxy in white. I know that sounds weird, but it turned out great. Let me show you.
Here are the countertops before. You can see a janky edge on the small cabinet on the left. I’ll fix that too.
I wanted the round countertop edge for that small cabinet section. So I used a crowbar and popped the small janky countertop section off the cabinet. Then I found a small laminate countertop for sale on Craigslist for $19, cut it to size with a skill saw and a straight edge, and used Liquid Nails to glue it to the small cabinet. Here is the new section.
Oh yeah, it’s green! Lol, don’t worry. When we paint laminate countertops, it will make everything match.
Painting Prep Work:
The first thing I did to get the countertops ready for paint was dig out all the caulking along the wall line. It was easiest to do that with a painters tool. Then, I gave the counters a quick sanding with 120 grit sandpaper, wiped any dust off with a tack cloth, and used blue tape at all edges.
Here is a close-up of the tape around the sink. It was going to be too tricky to take the sink off, so I was very careful to get the tape riiight along the edge.
This is the full taped-up sink. We’re ready to paint!
Painting Laminate Countertops:
I had this Rust-Oleum Appliance Epoxy paint on hand and heard it also works great on laminate countertops, so I decided to give this a try.
I used a small 4 inch foam roller for the main body of the counters and a foam brush in the corners and harder to reach areas.
The paint is kind of watery or fluid. I kept the first coat pretty light and got more liberal with it as I applied more coats. Here’s everything after that first coat.
One coat and that green countertop is looking better already. More coats needed though.
It looked a bit streaky. You can see the roller lines with the first coat. Don’t worry, that all goes away with more coats. Make sure to let each coat dry properly before the next coat. And paint with good ventilation! This stuff is strong.
Ok, here is that green section after a few more coats.
It’s looking a lot better! But not quite done. I painted 3 coats on the main section and at least 4 coats on this little green guy. The coats cover the roller lines and eventually the color looks really solid.
Here’s the final look!
From the side.
Let’s do some closeups. Here is the right sink edge.
This is the left sink edge.
Sink edge.
This is the counter inside corner.
Painted Laminate Countertops:
I love how these countertops turned out! It’s been about 4 months since I painted them and they are holding up great.
Let me show you one nick that happened while I was putting up some opening shelving. I dropped a level and tried to grab it as it was falling. Instead of catching it, I slapped it hard into the counter, lol. Oh well, the good news is you can easily re-touch the paint. Here’s the touched up nick. I plan to sand it down a bit more a bit and add a second touch-up. But it’s pretty minor. You don’t see it unless you get up close.
One thing I also want to point out is the super bright white color of these counters. The walls, upper cabinet, wall organizer, and window sill are all a standard white. But be warned, the Rust-Oleum Appliance Epoxy white is the next step up – super-ultra bright – with a gloss. It looks very clean but also very bright.
Overall, I am very happy with how these counters turned out! I think they look great and they are holding up well. Plus the paint was under $20, and I still have some leftover for touchups if I slam any more levels into the countertops.
Here’s one last full-view photo of the finished kitchen to really appreciate these countertops. SWOON!
I’ll add a post for the open shelving soon! If you want to see how I made the wall-mounted organizer, you can check it out here. The first round of the kitchen remodel is here.
Let me know your thoughts on the countertops in the comments below. Hope you enjoyed this post.
