Painting motor home cupboards

I painted cabinets in the house using the method described - sand, prime with kilz, and paint. These were builder grade cabinets where the outboard end cabinet was covered in the vinyl wood grain paper. I find this area very prone to scratching by the slightest brush of an object. I would look into getting custom cabinets made. But good luck with your project.

As 2012Coleman says paint does not stick to vinyl very well.
Doesn't matter how good you prep it, still wouldn't be very durable.

Adhesion promoter for plastics. Similar products are available in liquid form.

If you have the typical simulated faux wood with a paper coating, you don't want to sand it. The coating is thinner than paper thin and it's hard to get anything to stick to it.

Painting the doors would be the easy part. See if you have a hidden piece of the faux wood and test some paint, primer or adhesive on it. Perhaps try someone like a Benjamin Moore for suggestions. Even if you could get some type of adhesive wrap to stick, it would be time consuming to get clean joints. You sure don't want to start something and then find out it's not working.

I bought a few 8' lengths of 1x2 of faux wood from our dealer for some custom cabinets I built in the bedroom. The core wood is Ch*nese junk wood with an extremely thin paper coating that just *looks* like cherry. Even with a freshly sharpened blade in the table saw, it was hard to get clean cuts. Not nice stuff to work with. On our old TT I tried just about every glue/adhesive known to mankind on some of the faux wood plywood and it would not stick whatsoever. It's too bad pretty much all RV manufacturers use a wood finish for interior cabinetry instead of solid colors.

I would throw the cabinets out before trying stick on paper. You would never get a clean look.

As stated before, use a deglosser, prime, paint. Don't sand unless you have loose spots, then only on the loose edges. If paper is missing it will show unless you fill in the missing areas with something like water putty, then sand smooth. It will work but takes steps and time. May or may not be worth the effort. I did a whole set of cabinets in a DW mobile home a year ago and they still look nice.

BTW our new Apex luckily does not have this stuff. It is solid wood or at least veneer as best I can tell.

I guess I mis read the OP's question, I thought the shelves and drawer bottoms were in question.

Painting the outside of the cabinets I would just a cleaning de greaser solution and use a QUALITY primer like KILLZ or ZINZER then a good quality 100 percent acrylic paint.

We painted our cabinets and it's been holding up pretty well with us, 4 kids and a dog. There are some areas that are scuffed near the doorway, but nothing out of the norm gives our use/abuse. We scuffed with scotch brite pads, cleaned with TSP, primed with Bullseye 123, and painted. My wife did the same in the house and skipped scuffing and you can peel the paint off in sheets. Take the time to prep the surface before painting.

westend wrote:
Adhesion promoter for plastics. Similar products are available in liquid form.

Adhesion promoter works really well. I've used it when painting plastic motorcycle parts and have even painted vinyl vehicle decals using it with flex agent mixed in the paint.

I painted mine during my remodel here: Click me

I cleaned the cabinets well, primed with zinsser (link on page 6 of my thread) and painted, no sanding. I had about 20 weekends in it this year and it held up great. I would do it again in a heartbeat!

RVcircus wrote:

westend wrote:
Adhesion promoter for plastics. Similar products are available in liquid form.

Adhesion promoter works really well. I've used it when painting plastic motorcycle parts and have even painted vinyl vehicle decals using it with flex agent mixed in the paint.

Yeah, if you get a good product, the results can be amazing. I made one of those fence post cover hose-holders a few years ago and painted black on the white cover. I still don't see any paint removed.

If you need something difficult to paint, try a half empty ammonia tank. I do some painting at a local metal treatment plant. They use ammonia and liquid oxygen for quenching hot metal. I try to get the tanks done when their tanks are low but it's still a chore to get the right stuff on them with -200f product inside.