Painting a Fireplace

[Tom]

The earlier post regarding painting PVC has jogged my memory. I am in the process of wallpapering the front room and we have a gas fire with a wooden surround that's looking a bit tired. The wood is the cheap laminated type (found in B&Q and the like) and we don't currently have the funds to upgrade it so i was wondering how i would i go about painting it? If i used gloss would i need some sort of primer or is painting a total no go for this type of wood. I assume its chipboard or mdf laminated with some sort of plastic i guess?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Tom

[Andy Dingley]

Wire wool, then a specialist primer for Formica & melamine. "ESP" is the best one (not too hard to find). International Paints do a melamine promer too, but IMHO it's harder to get a good result with.

If things are really tight, try wirewool than simple gloss paint. It'll probably work acceptably well, if you just try a test piece first.

[RW]

and it will look absolutely f**ing awful to boot if brushed on!

I "refurbished" some tired looking kitchen cabinet doors using a gentle light rub over with wire wool on a pad, cleaned and dried with sugar soap and a clean cloth then MDF primer ROLLED using a fine sponge roller, 2 coats one in either direction. Gentle rub down using 800 wet n dry, then finished off with a standard acrylic topcoat, again rolled on in varying directions until coverage was deep enough.

They look fine, and have attracted complimentary comments from various people that have seen them.

Pleased I didn't use a brush but didn't have a spray gun at the time or would have sprayed them