I just picked myself up one of these things
http://www.justritemfg.com/pix/Originals/25850.jpg

Not in 100% condition. It's spattered with junk, a little rust. In short, it's going to need a refinish and possibly a little body work.


Thought I'd come here for cool ideas. Nothing particularly awesome occurs to me at this time, except for maybe some cool fractal/floral/paisley type pattern done with EL (http://www.coolight.com/category-s/1.htm).


Any tips on refinishing this thing? It's got that baked on kiln finish and it is spattered with all kinds of other shit. Im limited to canned paints, as I have no good sprayer. Im thinking about just taking some paint remover to it, doing a white primer finish, and painting any designs I do in glossy black, then doing a satin clearcoat over that.

I might do some distressed look around the handle. Like sand through the primer and a design lightly, and clearcoat over that.

Cool, I enjoy customising furniture myself

If you've never used paint stripper before, you're in for a shock :D it's nasty stuff.

If you're gonna strip it back to bare metal, you'll need not only paint stripper but a lot of elbow grease. The paint stripper basically turns the paint really soft and blistery, so you'll need something to scrape it off. Using a wire brush is good but it's a bit unit and it'll take forever by hand. If you've got access to an electric drill or angle grinder, you can get wire brushes to fit which are not only about a million times faster but great fun to use too. They'll also make short work of any rusty bits. They make a lot of mess so best to do it outside.

If this sounds like too much work, you can just get some rough sandpaper (250 grit should do it) and roughen all the paint surfaces, before brush painting it like you normally would. With brush painting you're going to end up with small brush marks, which may or may not be an issue for you. Generally speaking, the lighter the colour, the less obvious the brush marks are (if you think of reflections being white, they stand out against dark colours but not so much against light ones).

If you want a smoother, glossier finish than brush painting, you could use a high-density foam roller and thinned paint. A few coats of this, sanded between with 400 grit, with the final coat sanded with progressively finer paper and you'll get a really smooth glossy finish.

A tip when you're sanding is to make sure your paper is wet (add a drop of washing up liquid or hand soap to the water too) - this stops the paper clogging up. Make sure you clean it well afterwards though.

This website is famous for paint jobs like this:
http://www.rickwrench.com/index79master.htm?http://www.rickwrench.com/50dollarpaint.html


If you want a more unique looking thing, you could try a rat-look effect, popular with the old VW fans
http://www.pre67vw.com/blog/images/uploaded/tat-look.jpg
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e214/markriccioni/Jetta1.jpg
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n210/lewisantonearl/IMG_0529.jpg

The last one is my old car.

To do this, strip the cabinet to bare metal (or the outside of it at least), spray or paint a light coat of paint of your choice on it (sky blue works particularly well), rub it back so that big patches of the metal are showing again. Then get some hot water and mix in as much salt as you can, and use a sponge or sprayer to wet the outside of the cabinet. Keep doing this until it's nicely aged and rusted (anywhere from a day upwards really) then wash it with clean water (get the salt off) and dry VERY THOROUGHLY (I'd leave it in a heated garage or in your house for a couple of days to make sure it's completely dry). Then you can get some spray-lacquer (auto parts shops will have this, you'll need two or three cans do spray the outside) and spray over the rusty bits. If you don't like the shine that the lacquer needs, you can roughen it up with some 600 grit sandpaper (leave for a day before sanding though). Then you can add cool stickers, emblems, or maybe while you're painting it you could add checks or something cool.

Another technique you might use is lace paint, which is another car painting technique. Basically you use a piece of lace cloth as a template. Paint the base one colour, rub it down lightly with 600 grit, then secure a nice piece of lace over it and using spray paint, spray over it. You want to use as few coats as possible to do this, because otherwise the paint can soak through the lace - dark colours cover light colours more easily than light colours cover dark ones. Once it's painted you can polish it to a shine, or you can rub it down with 600 grit and lacquer it for more protection.

I think that silver or 'champagne' paint over cream base would look really good, and subtle. If you only laced the doors and left the rest gloss or satin black it would look great.

Lace paint:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v95/fomoco_mofos/TbirdLace2.jpg
http://www.2wheelbodyshop.com/images/Lace1.jpg

No need for the rat effect. It's looking that way right now on it's own. :p

The lace is cool. I may be able to find something cool that will work on this. That might be the easiest way to get an elaborate pattern.

Stripping is a pain in the ass. I remember breathing nasty fumes, getting chemical burns when you aren't careful, and doing repetitive shit for hours on end. I think I'll just rough it up a little like you're talking about, and spray it over.

I think I'll go with pure satin black and white for the outside, and fluorescent on the inside. Maybe a robin egg blue fluorescent on the sides. Not sure about the shelves surface. I might just hit them with some cheap rust-stopping paint, and cover them up with some sort of grippy synthetic surface.

I remember seeing this stuff on one of those fabricating shows where they painted a motorcycle fuel tank with these lizard scales. They used some kind of self-adhering computer cut blue overlay stuff as a stencil.

What is that shit called?

Dunno where to buy it, if there's a sign writing shop near you they might be able to make up some vinyl sheet or something