I’ve been working on my Baby Pac-Man cabinet for about a week or so. It’s been a struggle, and I learned some things the (very) hard way. Here’s what went down…

I got the cabinet sanded, patched up, and sprayed some Kilz 2 primer on it. I did 2 or 3 coats, sanding after each. It looked pretty good:

I had gotten Behr Premium Plus for the yellow at Home Depot, and couldn’t get it to spray well no matter what I did. I thinned it as much as I thought was reasonable, and used some Floetrol. I wasn’t getting a good sized spray pattern at all, but figured I would give it a shot anyway. Here’s what happened:

The damn thing looked like a mutant zebra.

While painting, my 5 gallon pancake compressor kept running out of air. I didn’t have that problem when I did my Moon Patrol for some reason. I had to wait for it to catch up about 4 times before I finished each side. I figured maybe that waiting period caused those stripes, but I really wasn’t sure.

I couldn’t leave it like that, so I decided to get a new compressor. I got a DeWalt 15 gallon compressor. I would have gone bigger, but my garage is so incredibly small I couldn’t afford to lose much more space. This compressor stores air in the tank at 200 psi, which supposedly gives it an equivalent air capacity to a regular 26 gallon compressor. It works great, btw.

OK, with my new compressor ready I hit it with primer again to cover up the stripes. I went over it again with that same Behr paint and though my compressor didn’t quit on me it still came out looking like the pic above. I was pretty discouraged at that point but decided to push on.

I figured maybe it would help to see a bit better, as I didn’t have much light in my garage. I went and got 2 fluorescent fixtures which you can see in the next picture.

At this point, I was pretty low on the yellow paint and figured I would try a better brand to see if it would help. I ended up going to Sherwin Williams down the street and got their “Duration” brand paint, which is a latex enamel. I took the countless layers of paint off, and brought it right down to bare wood. With that paint in my gun, it sprayed about 5000 times better! I didn’t even have to thin it. With that Behr crap (does a Behr crap in the woods??), I’d guess it took me 20+ passes to get one side done. With this paint, it took me about 6 or 7. Oh, and the biggest plus is THE PAINT *ACTUALLY* CAME OUT OF THE GUN! Behold….a stripe-less cabinet:

I am SO glad I’m done painting. I will never buy Behr paint again. I’d rather cover the whole cabinet using Sharpies.