After much consideration, I finally decided to have someone else paint my Kraylix cabinet for me (although I did the prep). The decision came down to not having a great space to do the paint in, and the desire to use automotive paint which is far more durable than rattle-can spray paint. I’m particularly concerned with the edges of the MDF, which can soak up quite a bit of paint – thankfully my cabinet will be in good hands with someone who’s done this sort of project before. I wrapped the top bezel in plastic and slid it into the bed of the truck on some foam sheets: 

A cargo strap went around the whole lot to secure it, and off it goes! Can’t wait to see what it looks like when the paint is done.

That said, I couldn’t help myself – I kept a few pieces that won’t be visible when playing to paint myself. These are the marquee back panel, the monitor mounting bracket, and the cabinet back panel (from bottom to top, below). The first of these three pieces will be painted white – it will get white LEDs later to light up the marquee, and the white paint should help spread & diffuse the light better. The latter two parts will get painted black, just like the rest of the cabinet.

My poor-man’s paint booth? The back yard 🙂 Thankfully it was a very calm winds day, so the parts would stand up on the sawhorses without any fuss.

Here are the parts after a few layers of primer. The biggest problem when painting anything outside a proper spray booth is dust & contamination ruining your finish, but I’ve found that as long as what you’re painting is a vertical surface, contamination is greatly minimized (especially on a calm winds day). Spray paint on a part makes for an extremely sticky surface until the paint is cured, of course, so it’d be much more difficult to get decent results with a horizontal surface.

The primer dried relatively quickly in the sun, and after a light sand it looked pretty good! The marquee back panel got some gloss white, and the other two got gloss black. It’s hard to tell from photos, of course, but here are the two black panels after a few layers – they look pretty respectable!

I’m already counting the days until the cabinet is ready to be picked up, but in the meantime I have plenty of other parts of the build to focus on – getting the marquee & control panel art finalized and printed, and getting all the controls & electronics ready.