You can do it, and melamine's the best paint to use, though it can take up to 3 days to dry enough to not worry about tackiness, then take much longer to 'cure' enough so as not to be afraid of scratches or tiny dents. I would, however, get someone experienced to do it for you because (and this is definitely experience speaking!) the nature of the paint as well as ambient temperature, etc. can make smoothness of application quite hard - the paint's thick and can end up uneven no matter how much you try to feather it.

Thanks. I was worried it might not be a diy project. Maybe I'll just decoupage it.
kathy

For what it's worth, I have a friend whose PO painted his refrigerator w/ cream appliance paint. That was over 10 years ago, and I would never have known it if he hadn't told me.

I have used the spray appliance paint to paint a metal kitchen cabinet and it worked great. I'm not sure an appliance would be that different.

I asked about appliance paint at sw and they didn't have any. I'll try home depot.
thankx
kathy

What are you out? If the paint flops, then you can sheath it with stainless. If you do decide to have it done by an experienced craftsperson, just be sure you aren't able to buy a new one, sell the old one and about break even.

Krylon and Rustoleum both make appliance paint. IME the spray gives a more even finish than the brush/roll kind but it's messy to an extreme and STINKS. Not a large color selection either.

If it's not terribly hard for you to move the fridge (like you have access to muscle and a pickup truck), call a bunch of auto body shops in your area. It's not too expensive to have an appliance painted, especially if they're doing a vehicle or something in the same color, and doubly so if you do a lot of the prep work like removing the door handles, gaskets, hinges, masking the plastic parts, etc. Triply so if they're hurting for business. :-) They have a HUGE range of colors to choose from, pretty much anything you can dream up. I knew someone who had all her perfectly-functional, good-quality "harvest gold" kitchen appliances repainted with automotive paint at a body shop. She took the opportunity to replace the door handles on the fridge and oven and the stove knobs, and everything looked new. It cost her a few hundred bucks to have stove, fridge, and rollaround dishwasher repainted, and it would have cost over a grand to replace it all with absolute-bottom-of-the-line appliances. She did use a little chrome paint, which she bought in a hobby store (model airplanes and cars and such), on some small trim bits rather than having them rechromed, but you had to know it was there and look for it to notice.

Thanks I love this idea, but I couldn't do it without dh knowing in advance, lol.

Kathy, we painted our refrige many years ago, and it lasted for years, with no scratching. But we had a professional do it. If you go to a car body shop, you might find someone there who will do it quite reasonably. I had a shop teacher at a vocational school do mine with a professional spray gun.

I did it; well, I hired someone to do it. He used and electrostatic method, and painted it in the kitchen. It involved applying a charge to the appliance, and then painting it with a special wand. I chose the paint color at Sherwin-Williams, and he picked it up and did the job.

It's a two part paint, epoxy and color, applied at the same time. It looks great, and has held up really well over the past 5 years.

Check yellowpages for 'electrostatic painting'