Posted by bill connolly on 5, 2000 at 1:37 PM:
In Reply to: How is the best way to paint a cabinet? Newbie question ;) posted by rurdy4me on 4, 2000 at 8:35 PM:
I just painted mine this weekend. I heard you should use a primer first so that the wood soaks up the cheaper primer and you won't have to use as many coats of your more expensive paint. I had some old paint so I used that as a primer, just rolled it on with a roller and used a brush for the spots the roller couldn't reach. One coat worked fine, didn't soak into the wood that much. I then rolled on a flat black. Some people use a semi gloss but I plan to attach pictures to the cabinet and then put a polyeurthane coat over it which should give it a nice gloss.
I did this in the back yard, it was 102 degrees so the paint dried fast. I put on three coats in a matter of hours, but I only poured a little paint in the tray at a time since it was drying so fast. I used spray paint on the speaker grills and I am not sure why but took a lot longer to dry. There was also a lot of waste from the overspray.
I have three doors on my cabinet and I painted the cabinet with them removed. This way I could get in the joints with no problem. I laid the doors on a junk table in the yard and painted them. I painted the control panel before drilling the holes for buttons and joysticks. I don't think this will be a problem as when I drill the holes I will have a piece of scrap wood on top, followed by the plexiglass then the control panel.