Lessons learned - DIY Arcade Cabinet

It should better read: Learning. Because it's a process with progress, lol.

So here's the thing:

I painted walls in the past. But never wood. Or stuff that pretends to be wood that is. In this case: MDF Panels. And I am learning a lot while preparing this stuff for later assembly.

After I sanded the future control panel, primed it, sanded it, primed it, sanded it, coated it, sanded it, coated it and sanded it again, I added the first layer of clearcoat.

And then I did a mistake.

Two actually.

First of all: While it is kinda okay, using a regular paint role to apply paint, applying clearcoat should be done using some kind of foam role suitable for this task. Why? Well... IT'S CLEAR DAMMIT! And there's loads of fluffy fuzz stuff on these paint roles... and now within the clear coat on my perfectly prepared control panel. ;-(

And then: I am used to clean paint roles using simply water... and my bare hands. Nuff said. THIS was really a bad idea... don't going to go into details.

However.

After I drilled the holes for the buttons, I noticed that the panels are too thick actually for these specific buttons and I needed wider countersink holes from the backside for the locknuts. Thing is, that due to the now already existing smaller holes there was nothing to center the drill bit with which is why I used another panel with a wider hole as a guide. But this process was kinda messy resulting in not so centered countersink holes and some of them even slipped slightly off.. looking like shit. Still working, but not my kind of aspiration if you ask me - although you don't.

So I somehow think that I will be making another control panel - and this time I will apply all of the knowledge I gained throughout this process. ;-)