Painting laminate kitchen cupboards... durability?

[Toadster]

Hello,
I am moving into a house with old laminate kitchen cupboards. The kitchen isn't great... The tiles on the floor and wall are all cracked and falling off... but we hope to salvage the cupboards for a year or two until we save up enough money for a new kitchen. The cabinets are laminate with brown wood effect. I have seen online people laminating kitchen cupboards by cleaning with special laminate cleaner, lightly sanding, priming x2 coats, painting x2 coats and in some cases adding clear varnish. The results look good. However I am sceptical because these reviews are usually on blogs and do not mention how long the paint lasts! I do not mind touching up the paint, and do not expect it to last forever, but I would not be happy if it looked a mess after a year.

Has anyone done this... and if they have... has the paint job held up? I would ideally like to know if it will last a couple of years before I paint over them.

Thanks!

 

[opps]

A year or two?

You can apply Zinsser BIN or something similar and then follow up with oil based eggshell.

The basecoat will always be the weakest link though and prone to chipping. It you aren't particularly heavy handed you should easily get two years of use.

BIN (shellac based) is a great product but it dries so quickly that applying it can be difficult. If you aren't overly concerned about a slightly stippled effect, then apply it with a very short nap mini roller. Do not use a mini foam roller. The alcohol in the BIN makes them expand and become floppy. You can clean the rollers with bog standard household ammonia. It stinks but as an alkaline it breaks the residual BIN down rather than just diluting it.

Sanding? Probably not necessary PROVIDED that you de-grease the doors first. I normally use Isopropyl alcohol. You can buy it on the web. I prefer it to meths as it doesn't leave a residue behind. (oh, in theory you can use it to thin the BIN if needed- as a price guide- last year I paid about £12 for 5 one litre bottles including delivery).

I recommended oil based eggshell as the finish coat- waterbased paints can be applied over BIN but they are less durable