Put your heart in whatever you do !

I had an old beige Mitsubishi monitor on my desk which I was about to use as a second monitor although my other monitor was a black DELL monitor. I also have a black and silver keyboard, wrist rest, webcam and mouse and now some new 2.1 black speakers, also the top of my desk they all sit on is also black, so there is no way I could have a beige monitor on my desk, it just did not look right, so I spray painted my monitor black and here is how I did it.

All photos are of the monitor after being sprayed, unfortunately I only thought of writing this after I had completed the spraying.

Spray Paints

My journey started off with a visit to the Wilkinsons chain in the high street. They stock a good selection of well priced enamel paints in spray cans. If you do not have a Wilkinsons near you then any hardware store should stock some spray paint. There are a great range of spray paint available including paint for BBQ's, Chalkboards and more. There is also a range of finishes including satin, matt and gloss as well as a wide range of colours. For this task I chose a plasti-kote 'Super Matt' can which was £3.99.

Setting up and Spraying the monitor

After getting home I unscrewed the back off of the monitor and took off the swivel pedestal on the bottom.

Before I sprayed the pedestal and rear case in my shed I covered the serial number and model no. of the monitor with masking tape.

In the shed I covered the floor with cardboard and kept the door open, as its important to have good ventilation when using spray paints.

When spraying make sure you keep an even distance from the object and if you see heavy areas of paint forming or the paint running then you are too close.

Spraying the front of the monitor

I then needed to spray the front of the monitor, I started to use masking tape and newspaper to cover the screen and also used some blue tak to cover up the leds on the front of the monitor.

Using masking tape is one idea, but after a while of it not sticking for me, I found I could unscrew the front of the monitor case away from the tube and board inside the monitor, this allowed me to just leave the guts of the monitor on it's own but have the case completely separate.

Here are the screws holding the monitor to the front of the case:

I would recommend trying this before using asking tape on the monitor screen as saves time and gives a better finish.

Second Can of Spray Paint

Once I started spraying the front of the monitor I found my paint can had run out, so went back to Wilkinsons to get more, but typically found there was none of the 'Super Matt' cans left, so instead I chose a Wilko own make called 'Multi Surface Enamel' and that was only £2.79 a can.

Funnily enough the cheaper Wilko spray can gave a much better finish and went on easier, I recommend these cans.

You may get away with a single can, if doing a 15" monitor, but I would recommend 2 spray cans for 17" monitors and above.

Putting the monitor back together.

After allowing to dry for about 1 hour I then put the monitor back together and gave it a wipe down to make sure there was no black residue on the monitor.

I then removed the blu tak from the leds and removed the masking tape from the serial and model number stickers.

Hey presto a new black monitor.