When we bought our house, the stove and fridge were freebies thrown in with the deal. Which I’m sure was no heartbreaking loss for the sellers, because they’re the ugliest set of appliances you’ll ever see. Ok, maybe not the ugliest – my mother owned an avacado green washing machine. But they’re right up there, all almond and rusted with fake-wood accents.

There’s no room in the budget for a new microwave, let alone a new stove or fridge, but putting our almond beauties back in the revamped kitchen seemed wrong. So while they were all unhooked, I took a few cans of white spray paint to them. Not just any old spray paint, though. For the fridge, I used Rust-Oleum Appliance Epoxy Paint. For the stove, I used a combination of the appliance paint (for the bottom and sides) and High-Heat Paint (good up to 800 degrees) for the stove top.

Clean the surface really well with TSP or another strong cleaner. This is an important step, so take your time on it. After it was clean, I taped off the parts I didn’t want sprayed, and went to town. I don’t recommend spraying indoors like I did – even with good ventilation and a fan, it was pretty awful and extremely messy… but it was pretty chilly outside, so my options were limited.

Here’s the stove before:

And here’s the stove after:

(Click any of the photos for larger images)

The stove top isn’t as shiny as the rest of the stove, which kinda bugs me, but it still looks MUCH better than it used to. And the fridge looks brand new! (Well, until you open it up and find all the brown plastic goodness inside)

I’m not sure how long the paint will hold up, but since we’ll be replacing these appliances at some point anyway I’m not too worried about it.