Painted laptop

[pictures below]

For some reason, I decided I wanted to paint the shell of one of my laptops. It's an old machine and it's not really used much "in public", so I wasn't too worried about stuffing it up.

It was a tossup between navy blue aqua/oil based, and "satin" red oil based. I chose blue, because I wasn't sure if the red would work. Well, the blue didn't work. It covered the shell perfectly, but several days later it was still sticky. By then it had accumulated a fair amount of dust and cat fur. Washing in mild detergent didn't get rid of the stickiness.

A lot of methylated spirits and a bit of elbow grease got most of the blue paint off. This time it was a choice between the "satin" red again, and something a little more daring: fluoroescent green. I wasn't sure about the green paint, because it needed enamel thinner to remove, and I didn't know if that would damage the plastic. Again it was a tough choice, but I chose the green.

Mistake!

Even a light coat of this stuff turned out all powdery, and in some areas cracks formed as it dried. It was more a deep green rather than fluoro green - I probably should have used a white undercoat. I managed to hide most of the cracks with subsequent coats, but I ran out of paint when doing the bottom. I wasn't going to buy another can just to do one more coat, so I left it. I washed the dried shell in meth, then coated it with a clear gloss spray to seal it and give it some shine. Unfortunately this also made the colour even darker...

In the end it didn't turn out too bad, although something keeps telling me I should have just gone for the red!

Here are some shots I just took.


Here are my 2 laptops; one a Compaq Armada 1520 (P133/32Mb/1Gb) and the other the older Compaq Contura Aero 4/25 (486sx25/4Mb/160Mb). The greenie might be old and slow, but it's small. I use it for programming and burning microcontroller chips, and also DOS based programming. Perfect lap size.


Another view of big brother and his little friend. Yes, they're on the kitchen floor, it's the only large flat surface close enough to the webcam.


A closeup of the greenie. Check out the shine!

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Last modified Sep 17, 2001
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