And the painting is done (again)!

I really hope so anyways! I put the last coat on the cabinet the other day, so now I just need the paint to cure. I also painted the control panel; I only had to put one more coat of paint on the top, because I decided to put a piece of polycarbonate (Lexan) on the top to protect it. I came to this decision because I wasn't sure how I wanted to not only make it easy to clean since it is white after all, but also make it durable enough to withstand the constant rubbing/touching that might make the paint wear through to the MDF. The problem I have been running into is that the only size big enough for the control panel is 36" x 48"! I can probably use the extra for the bezel for the TV, but it's pretty flexible, so I'm not sure how well that will work.

MAME Cabinet Status Update

Last Friday, we started to clean out the shop to make room for a new tablesaw and get rid of all the sawdust so I could paint the MAME cabinet. We finally finished cleaning it yesterday, and I put the first coat of new paint on the cabinet today. A lot of the paint soaked in, but it shouldn't take too many more coats.

Look, it has paint!

This time I am using an oil-based enamel for all of the coats, so it will be a lot tougher, but it takes 24 hours between coats. I need more paint anyway, so I will go to Home Depot to get more paint while it dries tomorrow, and add another coat at 2:00.

What I Did Friday

So last Friday, after I was done with classes for the day, I drove back home to (finally!) work on the cabinet some more. On the way home, I stopped at Home Depot to buy a scraper.

Wrong tool for the job!

Once I brought it home, I started working, and I did have the foresight to use it in an inconspicuous spot. I'm glad I did, because it immediately started gouging the MDF. I tried other tools including a block plane and a card scraper. The block plane took strips of paint off the likes of which I have only seen from a finely tuned smoothing plane, but only for about five passes; after that it wouldn't do anything. The card scraper didn't do much of anything. I took the scraper back to HD, and bought the correct one, along with some CitriStrip (paint stripper made for acrylic latex paint), a plastic scraper (CitriStrip recommended it), and a set of painter's pyramids (actually tetrahedrons).
 Once I finally got back to the house, I got cracking!

I started out by trying a test spot in the inside of the cabinet, and applied it with a paper towel. After I did that, and that worked successfully, I started on the rest of the cabinet. For the first side, I used a paper towel; once I finished that side, I decided that the paper towel was too much work.

Swirls don't matter, but work does!

Once again, I went to HD and got a 4" paint brush. That worked a lot better, and sped up the process immensely.

Much better!

 I spent until midnight scraping paint off. I still wasn't done, but decided to wait until morning to finish it. I had a guitar lesson back in Denton at 1:00, so I had to finish it pretty quickly. I ended up getting up at 11:00, so I didn't have much time to finish it, but I did manage.

Mostly done. Also, the scraper.

This was a very nasty job, and I hope I never have to do it again. This is definitely a lesson that a job is worth doing correctly the first time, even if it is harder; because now, I have to do that same job that I didn't want to do, except this time after doing that same job I don't like.

Reconsidering Stripping

Although I am still at college, I still think about this project quite often. Right now, I am once again reconsidering stripping the paint, and I'll tell you why.
To start with, as soon as I put the first coat on, I wasn't very happy with it; as soon as it dried, it felt  rubbery, weak, like I could easily bring it back to the white primer by scratching it with my nails. I ignored this voice in my mind, and kept adding coats, until it was as black as it should be. It was soon after this that I had my wisdom teeth pulled. This kept me from hauling it upstairs, as I am sure you already well know. So there it has been sitting, in my shop, since then. I did put the t-molding on, and strangely enough, that seems to be the main thing holding me back from stripping the paint. I say it's strange because that has probably been the easiest part of this entire build. The other thing that has been keeping me at bay is probably the greatest asset of them all. And that is college. What I mean by that, is that if I do end up repainting, I will use an oil-based epoxy. This takes about 24 hours for each coat to cure, and I don't see why 168 hours (7*24) would be any worse. The implications of this would be that I could come home and apply one coat of paint once a week. By the time I am done with this semester of college, and am home for the winter, everything will be painted. And depending on how ambitious I am, maybe even upstairs in my room, or even totally completed; that sure would be cool!