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I recently acquired a used FREDDE desk (FREDDE Computer work station - IKEA). I've been after one for a while because I have two monitors and my current desk's setup is such that I cannot utilize them fully, but I am not super keen on having a piece of black furniture in my office, so I was thinking about painting it before assembly. Since I've never done it before, I could use some help. Here's some info from the product page about what it's made out of:
So...thoughts? How difficult would it be and what would I use to paint it? My goal, obviously, would be for the paint not to leave residue on the items placed on it and for the smell to wear off quickly. We also have cats, so need to make sure no harm comes to them.
Also happy to explore alternatives such as vinyl wrapping, but that may be too elaborate and expensive.
I recently acquired a used FREDDE desk (FREDDE Computer work station - IKEA). I've been after one for a while because I have two monitors and my current desk's setup is such that I cannot utilize them fully, but I am not super keen on having a piece of black furniture in my office, so I was thinking about painting it before assembly. Since I've never done it before, I could use some help. Here's some info from the product page about what it's made out of:
So...thoughts? How difficult would it be and what would I use to paint it? My goal, obviously, would be for the paint not to leave residue on the items placed on it and for the smell to wear off quickly. We also have cats, so need to make sure no harm comes to them.
Also happy to explore alternatives such as vinyl wrapping, but that may be too elaborate and expensive.
Thanks!
You can paint anything now. But I would visit a local paint store that sells retail and to pros and ask them for advice. They will a great source for product and procedure advice.
I suspect you will need to use a combination of spray paint for the metal and brush work for the other stuff. Or it might be, that you can spray it all, but might need more than one sort of paint.
If you visit one paint store and don't get good advice, visit another. Find the right resource and all your paint projects will be easier from then on.
The metal parts will paint pretty easily, either with spray paint or a brush. Best practice would be to clean the parts then lightly sand with fine paper before painting. Minimum requirement is to clean thoroughly. Will probably take 2-3 coats to cover black paint.
It will be very very difficult to get any kind of paint to adhere reliably to the parts made of particleboard and covered with genuine imitation fake vinyl woodgrain (what they call "melamine coating"). It will tend to scratch when you breathe on it. And these will be your work surfaces where you are sliding keyboards, mice, pencils, three ring binders, etc.
There may be some extremely complicated and troublesome way to get paint to adhere reliably to this kind of material, but I don't know what it is. You may have reasonable results with contact paper.
The part made of polypropylene will probably be essentially impossible to paint.
It sounds like you have it already partially or completely disassembled; painting or contact-papering will require it to be disassembled. Trying to do anything with it assembled will probably result in it looking terrible.
Is color really that important because this job is going to take a significant amount of effort and some expense just to change the color on a $200 desk.
Yeah, leave well enough alone. It maynot be your favorite color, but if the function is your first priority, you've already won.
Yeah, unfortunately although I really want to come back with a snarky comment (something to the effect of this is not the question I asked, aesthetics, blah blah blah), it does look like a bit of a pain in the tuches to try to do.
Is color really that important because this job is going to take a significant amount of effort and some expense just to change the color on a $200 desk.
On a $60 desk, no less (thank you, Craigslist). Yeah, like I said above, I might just put some colorful adhesives (like drawer lining or vinyl wrapping that Amazon sells cheaply-ish) on the main boards to cover up some imperfections and call it good.
I painted a white Ikea cabinet (several coats of Kilz first after a good cleaning with a degreaser) and it was fine - but it was a cabinet, opened by a pull, so the actual paint surface didn't get used. I moved it once and put a deep scratch in it, fortunately not in a side that showed. The interior I left white.
A desk, which would get a lot of use, might not hold up so well.
Yeah, unfortunately although I really want to come back with a snarky comment (something to the effect of this is not the question I asked, aesthetics, blah blah blah), it does look like a bit of a pain in the tuches to try to do.
"Tokhes"!
Speaking Yiddish is one thing- spelling it, quite another! Mazl-tov!
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