Painting a melamine wardrobe - Can it ever look OK?

[Coconutfeet]

We are doing ds's room up on the cheap. He has inherited a white melamine wardrobe with gold piping on the door. It's really unpleasant but perfectly functional so I was considering painting it and changing the handles.

What I don't want to do is spend loads of money on paint and waste time painting it for it to look worse than before. I've got horrible memories of some tiles I painted about 15 years ago which looked dreadful. Has any one done it successfully? And if so, can you please give me any tips?

I painted a melamine chest of drawers - you need to prime it first. It looked fine in a shabby chic way. It won't work if you want it a showroom finish.

you can always use fablon no brush marks at all then.

I seem to remember ages ago a neighbour using something called paint and grain on her cheap kitchen cupboards with impressive results.

Shabby chic is fine Lalalonglegs. What kind of paint did you use once you'd applied the primer?

MrsBucket - I'm not sure that Fablon would work on this as there's a kind of raised gold border. I can see that it would be a good idea on something smooth though. Thanks for the suggestion.

I'll investigate paint and grain, Married. That sounds interesting.

Just normal gloss. It was white and so wad the primer. You might need to undercoat first otherwise.

Annie Sloan paint has worked on everything I've tried it on. Haven't tried melanine but it was fine on veneered chipboard (and that was without primer).

Thanks Lalalonglegs.

I will investigate Annie Sloan paint too MadBuslady. I've seen it mentioned on here a few times and it looks interesting. I've just remembered that we've got a spare wardrobe door from another one that's been dismantled, so I might have a bit of a practice on there first to see how it looks.

Can you replace the doors - or do ala sixties -put some veneer over the front...and then paint that?

Make sure you sand the melamine first or the primer may not stick to it. I'm busy painting something similar right now and so far it seems to be working ok having sanded using 120 grade paper, then zinsser water-based primer. But time will tell if it has actually stuck properly! Think oil-based is supposed to be best but I couldn't stand the smell and mess.

There is a special primer made by International Paints for melamine. Their speciality paints are usually in red tins.

For a large flat surface, taking the doors off and painting them flat will often get the best finish (do the edges first)

clean very well and wipe with white spirit immediarely before you start painting.

I think I would go for a satinwood. Does not hold the dirt from fingerprints as badly as matt or eggshell, and can be cleaned easier, but will not emphasise defects like gloss.

Two thin coats are always more smooth and durable than one thick one.

I have painted melamine cupboard doors with gold trim, and melamine kitchen cupboards. In neither case was the end result exquisite, but it was way better than before, and well worth doing at a time when I couldn't afford to replace them.

The trick is to prime well, cleaning very thoroughly and sanding down a bit (you can't sand much, but just keying it a little will really help). Then use a specialist primer (I used the one by International Paints). You can buy a specialist all-in-one combined primer and topcoat, I think, but not in a great range of colours.

If you prime it properly, you can use any paint on top. I used Homebase kitchen paint for the kitchen cabinets - 18 months on it still looks fine. Of course, you could also take the doors off and spraypaint them in the back garden - I didn't do this, but it would probably give you a better finish.

Oh, and I agree with PJ's tips on satinwood, and two thin coats.

I've used Annie Sloan Chalk Paint successfully. You don't need to prime or sand down, just make sure the piece is clean first.

You will need to rub wax over it once it's dried to get a sealed finished. I just softened some plain Briwax, brushed it on and rubbed it off.

You can make your own chalk paint using very fine plaster of Paris, paint and water. I made my own using fine powdered grout but had to sand the finish, looked great though and very cheap.

If you google ASCP, you'll find lots of good blog posts about it and also about how to make your own. ASCP dries very quickly too which is quite satisfying.

You could 'wrap' it in fabric. How old is your DS? You could do a patchwork effect. Use PVA or Mod Podge and then glue strips or squares or random pieces of fabrics onto the piece. Finish off with a coat of sealer or PVA.

You could do the same with wallpaper. Or say, paint the doors with blackboard paint or attach some cork tiles so that the doors become a pin board. That kind of thing.

I think that if it is white already and looks shit, then paint is not really the way to go.

How about doing something a bit more quirky/arty, and doing some dėcoupage with comic book pages or something? That would just involve PVA or wallpaper paste, some cool mags, and a coat of varnish on top. Even old drawings of the kids', or personal mementos?

*decoupage

Thanks for all these replies. The doors are off at the moment, so I would definitely make sure I did them before we put them back. Thanks for reminding me.

Do you know what, BOF, I had been thinking about doing a decoupage table for him, but for some reason it hadn't occured to me to give the wardrobe the same treatment. I also really like the idea of blackboard paint/cork tiles. Ooh thank you everyone, that's given me loads of ideas.

He's only 4 so I think not as demanding about his decor as an older child, so even if it looks a bit dodgy it'll buy us a bit of time before we need to replace it.

I did a whole wall of sound but nasty white melamine wardrobes with horrible handles. Did rub down first and used special melamine paint, 2 coats. Got nice new handles from Wickes - total cost £65 for a whole wall of them. They looked so much better afterwards.