the restoration continues ...... with the cabinet's artwork!
after touching up the black color as good as possible, i turned to the other colors which could use some much-needed touchups as well
the yellow color was pretty much spot on and only needed a little tweaking
but the red almost killed me
! the color suggestion that the scan of the original red came up with was not even close, so i had to try my very best to mix the right shade of red manually
however, no matter what i tried, the red color was either way off OR not glossy enough. here's just one example of countless trials and errors i did - and i mean
COUNTLESS!!!
sometimes it was so frustrating that i threw the tools aside and let the work on the cabinet rest for a couple of weeks. i thought about importing the correct shade of red from the usa first, then i found a spray can in england which was suggested to be an almost perfect match, but although the spray can would have cost just around 14 pounds, the postage for that single one can would have been around 30 pounds. i came to my senses and agreed that around 50 euros for a spray can which might not even be the correct color is simply too much! more failed attempts followed ...
then, just a few day ago, i stopped by a new home depot i had never been to before. i wasn't looking for paint at all, but by sheer accident i stumbled upon their automotive corner along with a huuuge selection of automotive paint. they have around 30 different shades of red
! i came home with five small spraycans
on the following picture, the shades of red look almost identical, but believe me: there are differences!
with some new-found enthusiasm, i started testing immediately
and guess what: i had a perfect match! have a look at the color in the middle - can you even see it? it's a red for a renault called rouge flash.
however, while it looked PERFECTLY on that part of the cabinet, it was a little bit off on others, obviously the red must have "aged" differently due to the cabinet's sides being exposed irregularly to light. although i'm a perfectionist most of the time, there are moments in life where even i say "enough is enough" - and this was one of those moments! i had already spent too much time (and money) on that single color and came to the conclusion that i can totally live with the results! so i painted on ...
BEFORE 
AFTER 
to finish the paint job off, i applied a coat of clear on top of everything! although you can see the slightly mismatching colors on close inspection, noone is going to notice those later on (or care about them)!
my final comment on the paint job:
i'm thrilled 
to be continued ...
