Re: The "official" cabinet finishing thread
I have used Duratex and it works well, pretty decent price at $50 / gallon. I currently have a rack, some small trap boxes, and a few other projects covered in it.
I tried the dupli-color DIY bedliner at about $20 / gallon from walmart about 6 years ago and it was ok. It had these little granules of rubber like material mixed in it that were hard to get consistent, but I was using a brush and not a roller so that could have been a lot of it.
I think I did hercu-liner on one of my DIY's back in the day, but I can't recall what it was. That stuff is a bit too expensive for what it is, imho. For about $30 less you can get a gallon of duratex, which I like better.
I saw the rust-oleum spray on bedliner at lowes today when I was picking up bondo putty knives, it seemed tempting to try at $8 / can, but evidently not that good according to what you guys are saying.
I perused the other off the shelf paint options at Lowes to see what was a good compromise between quality and price and became somewhat interested in the "epoxy" garage floor coatings. You can get an expensive kit at about $80 that is a two part mix. Then they also have an "epoxy acrylic" style that is around $30 / gallon that is supposedly tint-able like a regular house paint. I didn't buy it to try because I've had bad experience at Lowes with them getting a good dark black tint. Last batch (of latex paint) I bought was more of a dark olive green.
I have had good luck with Home Depot tints because they apparently have a pure black tint for their paints so they can get it reasonably dark. I'm tempted to see if they have a tint-able acrylic epoxy garage floor paint that's worth trying.
For me, finishing budget depends on the application of the project. My plywood cable trunks get $20 / gallon black paint because they can get repainted and don't have to look nice. My nicer FOH and monitor cabinets get duratex because it looks much more presentable, but at almost $60 / gallon when you factor shipping. I'd like to find something off the shelf that has a fairly hard enamel like finish in the $30-40 / gallon range for basic utility projects.
