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cshenk cshenk is offline
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Default 1950s Chest Freezer Refurbish

"cybercat" wrote

We have a cool old freezer, a GE Hotpoint 20 that came with our house. I
love it! It still works great, and I like old stuff. It matches the 1949


Great units. We ended up giving one away to the local 'soup kitchen' as we
also had a newer one bought when we were living in Japan.

Thing is, condensation has made the top of it rust. The former owner
obviously did some repainting or something at some point, but it has
rusted through again.
I have it defrosted and cleaned, opened up and drying out now.


It is fixable. How much depends on what you want to spend and if it's in a
highly visible location.

If you were going to refinish the top of this thing, how would you do it?
I want to really seal the rust the best I can, then paint white like the
rest of the thing.


Ours was in the garage so it wasnt critical to have it 'perfect' but the
finished job turned out near enough to that for use inside had we wanted to.

It was bought used and had rust spots. Don used a medium grade sand paper
then a fine one to finish it off. Then he primed it with a regular store
metal primer and used spray paint. That was some 9 years ago and when we
gave it away 3 months ago, no sign of rust returning.

Since he hand sanded it, he took it in small slots of time, say 10-15 mins a
day. We were not in a rush. I think he took perhaps 2 hours total sanding
time over 2-3 weeks. In the interum, we were using it just fine.

He primed it with stuff you just paint on. Came time to spray, we just
turned it off (not sure of sucking any of the spray in and it doesnt take
long) then plugged it back in when done with the spray.

Sure, you can take the door off or the whoile unit to have it powder coated
or done by a car-chop, but if you do not need that much perfection, it's
easy to do at home.