Painting Doorbell Cover for Better Appearance

Video

Transcript (Unedited)

what is going on fellow engineers this here is part of my hallway uh as you see here i have the doorbell box up here and you know i have white trim as you see over here on the right hand side and down here at the baseboards and the door but this doorbell box has this ugly tarnished yellow color so this video i'm going to show you how to paint this box to make it blend in with the rest of the environment Music so welcome to the channel if this is your first time checking out videos here just know i do videos every week one on tuesday for technology and videos on saturday for diy and handyman projects so if either of those topics interest you please be sure to subscribe by clicking the subscribe button down below so this is my doorbell box um you know pretty basic uh my house was built in the late 70s so you know this has probably been up here since the house was built and i don't like this tan off-white color especially you know since i'm trying to like modernize things so the box just comes off fairly easy like literally you just pull it off it has these locking tabs in here like right there and right there that connect here and here and then there's two on the top there and so that's it so the next part is to go ahead and get this painted the next step is to get a some sandpaper or i have this on a sanding block and as you see it doesn't quite fit but that's what it is so sandpaper and what you want to do is rough up the surface if you don't have sandpaper you can also use some steel wool or copper wool it may take a little bit more effort to get this to work like sandpaper but it can still do the job and basic the concept that you want to go for is to scratch up the surface because when you go to paint this plastic surface you want the paint to stick to it therefore use sandpaper steel wool copper wool something abrasive that'll scratch up the surface all you're trying to do is to rough up the surface so that it's not shiny you know normally plastic has a shine to it so you want to try to remove that shine and that will allow the paint to stick and i'm only going to do the outside of the box because nobody's going to see the inside of the box unless they take the box off the wall once you have sanded the surface sufficiently just wipe off that excess dust i am using a tack cloth but if you don't have one of those you know if you know something similar paper towel with like alcohol on it or something of that nature can also do the same job then you want to get as you want to get all the dust off of here otherwise that dust will inhibit the paint from sticking to the surface all right now that that is done next step is to paint i just have white paint so that it can match the rest of the trim this paint has a paint and primer and it's designed for indoor and outdoors but obviously i'm using the indoor so it doesn't matter you don't necessarily need to have indoor and outdoor paint this just so happens to be able to do both um and depending on your box you may not even need the paint and primer you probably just need the paint but because paint and primer wasn't that much more expensive than just paint i got the paint and primer as always shake your spray paint can up before you use it and shake it while you're using it that's what the instructions say so just follow the instructions when it comes to applying this paint nothing special to it depending on the color change that you're trying to do like you're trying to go from like a black to a white you may have to do more than one or two coats to get that black to actually be white this should not be take too many more coats maybe two probably three and that's it so like i said check your paint and start applying it and make sure you're doing this i'm in my garage with the door open but you can also do this outside you don't want to do this indoors entirely because the fumes from the paint are they can cause you know you to become light-headed and all the other things so again open area outside or in a open garage and when you're spraying walk around and spray all of the angles don't try to do this or anything of that nature and the reason i say don't do it that way is because sometimes you'll spray but because you can't see what you're spraying you will miss part or of what you're trying to spray so just walk around it now even with this one coat on here as you can tell it's already made a difference in the appearance of it what i'm gonna do is let this dry according to the instructions on the can and then put another coat on top of here uh the kind of because i can see a little bit of the tan in here um that was originally part of the you know that's part of the original surface so i'm put another coat on top of that and then we'll go back and reinstall it and let you see the final product the doorbell box has now been reinstalled as you see it is white like some of the other items on the wall here and in my opinion i think it was better painted white than it did with that off-white tan looking color so if you think it looks better now than it did before drop a comment down below share your feedback on this particular project that will wrap things up for this video if you have any questions about anything that i've done in this video feel free to drop a comment down in the comment section below if this video has been helpful please give it a thumbs up and until next time peace out Music