Brush or Spray

[G Smith]

I'll be painting my cabinet in a week or so.  It's a Neo Geo MVS machine.  I've sanded it down to the compressed board.

I was wondering if I should:

A: Brush on semi-gloss latex
B: Spray paint
C: Brush on semi-gloss latex for the first coat or two and finish with spray paint
D: something else

[JimC]

I had sanded down my cabinet and repainted it just two weeks ago. I went with a roller. I wanted the cabinet to have a 'texture' to it. The roller gave a nice random texture to the whole thing, giving it depth. The texture also breaks up the light making the cabinet, to me, look more interesting. Spray paint would have the thing look perfectly smooth and shiny like a giant black obelisk. And brush strokes would have looked too even and the pattern too regular.

Given all that, however, this is my first cabinet attempt, so it's not like I know what I am doing!  

-jim
http://www.cowlishaw.net/~jim/Photo/MAMECabinet/

[RandyT]

Get yourself a GOOD short nap roller.  Don't try to cut costs with a cheap one or you'll have painted-in fuzz all over the thing.

And a good enamel will be more durable than latex.  It smells and doesn't wash up well when you are painting, but you can clean your cabinet a lot easier when it's dry.
Make sure you use a decent primer and hit it with some fine sandpaper before hand if you want a smooth finish.

Also, under no circumstances try to spray something as large as a cabinet with spray cans.  In order for a spray paint finish to look good, the whole surface should be evenly wet, something that's nearly impossible to do with the small fan pattern a spray can produces.  You will also probably end up with some ugly runs and sags

RandyT

[Zapper]

I've had good results painting cabinets with a combination of paint roller and spray cans. I used a roller and white semi-gloss latex for the sides, if you apply several coats be sure to give the paint pleanty of time to dry or the paint might do strange things like bubbling. I used black spray paint for the front and back, I think it was semi-flat. A trick I learned was to finish your spray paint job by spraying a final coat at a distance so a small amount of paint hits the surface. It can give it a duller textured appearance. Make sure the spray paint is warm enough or you might get ugly paint blobs.