Are you one of the poor unfortunate souls who is stuck with an avocado green refrigerator? Or perhaps you have recently changed the decorating scheme of your kitchen and your appliances no longer match. Maybe you just purchased a new appliance and it doesn’t match with your older appliances so you would like to paint them to match. No matter what your reasoning painting an appliance such as a refrigerator, dishwasher, or oven hood is actually a pretty easy task.
To paint appliances you need to use appliance paint, which just as the name implies is paint specifically designed for painting appliances. The only types of appliances that cannot be painted with standard appliance paint are those that get hot. Appliance paint is not designed to handle heat or to be applied the high temperatures surfaces so you should not use it on your stove or range top. However, appliance paint should work well on any of the other appliances in your kitchen or laundry room. They do make a special high heat paint that can be used on stoves and is available at most home improvement stores.
Appliance paint usually comes in traditional colors such as white, cream or black. Occasionally you can find it in other colors, especially if you look for it at a specialty paint store. Paint stores usually have larger selections of appliance paints than hardware stores or home improvement stores so if you are looking for something unusual check there first.
You can purchase appliance paint either as a spray or as a brush on application. Because it is much more difficult to get a smooth paint finish using the brush on type of appliance paint you probably will want to go with the spray on types of appliance paint instead.
Because of problems with fumes and overspray, spray paint should not be used indoors. If you do choose to paint your appliance indoors be sure to do it in a space with adequate ventilation and to cover anything nearby that could get overspray. Ideally you should haul your appliance outside in order to paint it.
All that is required to prepare the surface for painting is to wash it down thoroughly and make sure it is dry. You will also want to remove any handles from the appliances, or if they cannot be removed you will want to tape them off so that they do not get painted. You should also tape off any other areas of the appliance that you do not want to get paint on. As with any painting project, the more work that you put into preparing the surface the better your results will be.
Once you have cleaned and taped the appliance simply follow the manufacturer’s directions for applying the paint to the appliance. Allow the paint to thoroughly dry and then you can move your appliance back indoors.
Appliance paint can work great to cover up small nicks, dings or scratches in the finish on your appliances. It also can help to transform your kitchen and make it appear more modern or to match your appliances to one another. Appliance paint is cheap but the results that it gives can look like a million bucks.
