Advice on how to paint MDF with laminate sections

[ideaswoman]

We had custom furniture made by a cabinet maker and was meant to be raw MDF but instead it came with a laminate finish that normally has 2pac applied. See photo. It is satin finish and very smooth.

We want the same finish for the raw and laminate sections. How do you recommend we tackle this project? We have a Wagner Flexio 585 we were planning on using.

Thank you

Gayle

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[nrb]

It looks like it is primed ,are you sure it is a laminate?

[Arron]

White King makes a laminate paint. It's tintable too. I'm not too sure how well it will go over primed mdf, but assuming it does my strategy would be to use MDF Primer on the mdf (wiping it off the laminate as I go) and then use the laminate paint over all.

Both should be sprayable, though I'm not sure the Wagner is the best choice for a fine finish.

[Alkahestic]

What paint are you using? The Wagner 585 might be a bit so-so with thicker paints.

To paint over the laminate, sand over it lightly, then prime the entire door with Zinsser B-I-N primer. It'll prime MDF like a charm as well. After that you can start painting. You can try rolling on paint using a foam roller if the sprayer isn't doing too good a job. The 585 is a lower end model so it may struggle with thicker paints.

[malb]

It looks like it is primed ,are you sure it is a laminate?

It will be 'Carcass Satin' if the cabinet maker thought it would be used for 2 pack finish. Used to use a lot of it for kitchens etc with 2 pack finished dooors and panels.

With regard to finishing, for the the doors and panels we did, we would break all the edges and corners to give a radius of about 1mm, lightly sand the raw edges and pass them on to our painting contractor. He would then prime the raw edges with a high build auto primer and sand them, then pass them through a wide belt sander at about 100grit for the face, and apply the finish.

Carcass Satin has a mirror smooth surface and will give a truly smooth face when painted, whereas normal MDF sheets can have depressions of up to 1mm in the face that are fairly invisible in the raw state but show up once the surface is painted, higher the finish gloss, the more obvious they would be. This also can have implications for getting adjoining doors etc to mount flush to each other if one has a depression at the edge and the other doesn't.

Another option would be to apply a seal coat of plasterboard jointing topcoat to the raw edges and sand them back for a smooth paintable substrate, and apply a coat of ESP prep material to the face (and back if desired) and then apply a normal interior paint product for finishing. The ESP will stick to the laminate face and provide a paintable face for the interior paint.

When doing 2 pack, the inside of doors etc was generally left unpainted and the Satin surface was the finish, as we were paying about $100 psm for 2 pack prep and paint. Bare satin was more durable than 2 pack and provided an acceptable surface for the door backs, and most of the faces we did were a white colour as well.

[Chris Parks]

I would speak to a paint shop because I had a conversation with a painter today that opened my eyes to the new products now available. He told us he could re-paint our kitchen cabs any colour we wanted using a new water based epoxy that basically sticks to anything and that alone opened our eyes to new opportunities we hadn't considered.