Dodeca’s been on the workbench again – this time refurbishing a paint mod for a gaggia classic. The machine was originally painted black with enamel, by its previous user, Jethro. The current owner, Dani, opted for a mustard yellow finish instead. Here’s a picture of the stealth modded gaggia classic.
Quite the beauty in its natural habitat
The gaggia classic with its parts removed and stripped to casing
The first thing we did was to remove the boiler, pump, and other brew parts from the machine. As most of our community uses the gaggia classic, this part was rather simple. We did a simple maintenance – cleaning the grouphead and steam wands, just short of a short descale and boiler scrub down.
Next, we had to remove the black enamel paint from the casing placed by the gaggia classic’s previous owner. We employed a paint stripper ‘PYE STRIPPA’ for this. If you’re planning to strip paint off a machine on your own, as a caution, do put PPE on while using the paint stripper. It’s incredible corrosive, and effective. We enjoyed a few chemical burns on our limbs but thankfully had the sense to keep goggles and gloves on (one of us had stripper hit our faces, which can be pretty nasty on the eyes).Â
Remember to wear your PPE! This was just wiping down, so goggles were off, but geez… be careful!
Scraping off the paint with a spatula, incredibly satisfying
Not all parts were easy to get, and honestly we could have left the stripper to sit on for much longer
With most layers of the paint stripped, the next step was to chip off any remaining paint and prepare the surface for paint. Typically, paint peels off much more easily if surfaces aren’t sanded down before application… so we got down to sanding the case, leaving us with a really pretty chrome finish (not brushed chrome unfortunately).
Fine sanding with just sandpaper
Our new orbital sander! Pretty noisy… sorry neighbours.. we were quick though!Â
We eventually touched up the inner casing with just sandpaper
Finally we got down to painting. Our owner, Daniele, wanted a mustardly yellow machine and we proceeded with a medium yellow. Results below!
We painted the underside of the top cover red just for fun
Back in operation 🙂
All set up!
All in all this was a quick fun aesthetic repaint. No new parts were added (yet). We hope you’re happy with your new colored machine Daniele!
If you’d like to recolor your machine or install parts but aren’t sure or are a little intimidated by the huge task, reach out! We’d be glad to assist however we can.
Beautiful work!
Thank you!
Nice documentation of the process!