Customizing your laptop: Paint Job

Secretary of Defense Joined: Feb 16, 2007 Posts: 2379

I recently found this website tutorial for painting a laptop:
http://pages.videotron.com/thief/

I had recently acquired an older laptop from my friend as he bought a new one. The case was pretty scratched up, and was an ugly gray. So I looked around and found this site. A trip to Home Depot and the local automotive store I found all the materials I needed for the job for a little under 30 bucks. But I could have saved myself 10 bucks (I'll explain later).

Before I vested my new laptop into my little project, I decided to follow suit of the guy that made the tutorial and use an old phone as a trainer:

The trainer taught me alot about how to go about professionally painting my laptop

Because I was gonna throw the phone away anyways(the battery was dead) I just ripped out all the internals. I also learned that the clear I had purchased didn't hold up to sanding at all and that when the spray can says spray at 10-12 inches away, it means 10-12 not 8-10 lol. I ended up with waves and pits in the paint.

With my new found knowledge of spray painting, I set off dismantling my laptop. I warn anyone attempting this, keep good track of your parts, and label them for which place they go in(I put them in ziplock bags and wrote on the bag with a sharpie) or you will end up screwing something up. Also never do this without the service manual to your laptop or you can end up ruining it.

Dismantled and all smaller parts labeled

Never seen the inside of a laptop before? Its rather complicated! More so than a desktop computer.

Thus I started painting(had some old cardboard boxes laying around, so i cut them up and hung the parts) applying each color coat every 20-30 mins.

Picture taken after the 4th coat, so good so far!

Final coat applied to the inside-top cover of the laptop(I removed any dust specs with a Xacto knife).

The top of the laptop took a bit longer, but you need patience in order to do this properly.

Removed the dust and preparing for final coat.

Added a decal to the top

The finished product:

The sandpaper was a total waste, as the clear I purchased does not seem to perform well under sanding I'm going to opt out of sanding my laptop. But maybe if you got the clear he recommended it will work.

Secretary of Defense Joined: Feb 16, 2007 Posts: 2379

Don't do this if you don't know wtf you are doing, i had a hella time putting it back together lol