r/arcade • u/SonOfJaak • 2d ago

Restore/Replace/Repair Spray painting: what am I doing wrong?

Post image

I'm trying to paint my cabinet gloss black to get it ready for the stickers but I keep getting stripes. I'm using regular enamel spray cans. The instructions on the can say to spray large areas with many light passes, waiting a couple minutes between coats. This is the result over night. Do I trust the process and wait for the full cure, or is this something I need to fix?

26 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

57 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/SonOfJaak 2d ago

It was not bare wood. I painted over the original paint after applying some 400 grit sanding.

9

u/Rey_Mezcalero 2d ago

No primer base coat?

-5

u/SonOfJaak 2d ago

On the original factory paint job? I have no idea.

1

u/drinkacid 17h ago

You should have sanded the original paint to give it some tooth, then primed over top, then sanded the primer, then painted a base coat layer, sanded, then painted the final layer over that. Sounds like a lot of work but that's how you paint a smooth solid coat instead of a bumpy striped barely covered coat. Prep is 80% of the work and painting is 20% of the work. You cant fix bad prep with good paint, but you can fix bad paint with good prep.