Control Panel painting DONE!

I just felt that I needed to get it done over this weekend. I didn't want to be lazy.

So, actually starting on Halloween, I went and bought a paint stripping disc, paint, and some other supplies from Home Depot. I got a pack of  filter masks, drop cloths, and microfiber towels from a dollar store.

I did a quick test on the control panel with the bit when I got home.

This is the disc I got from Home Depot.
I though it was made of some soft material, but it was a hard, coarse material.

This is after taking it for a test run for a few minutes. I didn't have a cloth to wipe it with, but it did take it down to bare metal in no time.

So, on Saturday, after going to the kids' last soccer games for the season and having lunch, I went straight to work on the control panel. I had an elaborate plan to set up a canopy, drape plastic drop cloths around it, then going to work, but I opted not to do it. Instead, I just covered our patio table with paper, got my tools out and the control panel, and went to work.

This is after about 5 minutes of work. Took it down to bare metal in no time. It took some practice to figure out the best way to use the stripping disc.

Here's the top fully stripped down. No paint and, more importantly, no rust!

This was the hardest part to strip down. I had to finesse the curves of the panel to get all the rust off from the edges. The inner curves were even more difficult to finish. What was annoying was all the left over adhesive in the center there, where the headphone jacks and the memory card slot is. That orange one is just a notice that mentions that the money is taken out of the machine every night. That one was easy to remove with the disc. As soon as I stated on the center portion, the old adhesive gummed up the stripping disc! I had just that last bottom bit to do and it clogged up! I had to really lay into the panel while running the disc to get all of the adhesive and paint from the center part.

After about 2 hours or so of work, I finally got it stripped down to bare metal. I took my rotary tool and used a wire brush (note to self: get a new wire brush) to brush out all the rust under the control panel.

I was planning on doing the painting tomorrow, but I was worried about getting surface rust on the bare metal the next day. So, I cleaned up my work area, grabbed a few plastic drop cloths and set up the table on my patio for painting. I covered mainly my window and the table with the drop cloths to protect from over spray.

I cleaned up the panel with 91% alcohol and also took a tack cloth to the surface.

This is the paint I used. It was a 2 in 1 paint (primer and paint), so it saved me a step for painting.

It's been a while since I spray painted anything, so I tried to go slowly, doing light coats several inches away. There was several passes where I got a bit too close and was heavy on the nozzle, so I did end up with some runs. I'm not gonna obsess over it, so I'm gonna let it be.

This is the finished product. Good coverage, even coating, some runs. I'm overall happy with how it turned out. However, one thing I would do differently is use a separate primer (an etching primer) and hammered look black paint to it. Taking my phone's flashlight out, I checked my paint job and noticed there was some swirl marks left in there from the disc. Not too worried about it, though, since it'll be covered by the overlay anyway.

I did hit the underside of the panel as well, mainly hitting the areas that were covered with rust that I removed with my rotary tool.

 Here's a before and after. So much nicer looking!

I let it sit out after painting for about 30 minutes before carrying it from the patio to the garage. I'm letting it sit to dry and out gas for a day or 2. If it's sunny tomorrow, I might take it out and let it sit outside to dry again.

I gotta get used to the formatting here. Excuse the massive spacing between the pics. I'll have it fine tuned by the next post.