Well, I am delighted to see the interest on this subject! I looked at those stucco pics, nmgirl, but they don't resemble them. The closest thing I think I could drum up was a close-up pic of a shearling coat. HARD TO FIND TOO!!! I am posting a link to boots/slippers pic that shows the 'mounded wool' appearance of the Shuba. Fleur, I think you are right about stencils or masking off for that beautiful design. I think that they apply a smoothed coating of stucco and let it cure before they mask ... the stencilled parts look so smooth. Glad you saw that article too. That tufa wall we did was at my girlfriend's place. I don't think she and her husband want to part with the fossilized shell look! lol But that WOULD have been a great project to try this on. I think that gun applicator would work for this although I kinda like the idea of going back in time and beating a broom against a rod! lol Ciao for now! Marly PS - the "shuba" refers to the end result. Shuba means 'fur coat' and the end result looks like the shearling fur/wool. Here is a link that might be useful: Shearling texture

Krylon and Rustoleum both make appliance paint. IME the spray gives a more even finish than the brush/roll kind but it's messy to an extreme and STINKS. Not a large color selection either. If it's not terribly hard for you to move the fridge (like you have access to muscle and a pickup truck), call a bunch of auto body shops in your area. It's not too expensive to have an appliance painted, especially if they're doing a vehicle or something in the same color, and doubly so if you do a lot of the prep work like removing the door handles, gaskets, hinges, masking the plastic parts, etc. Triply so if they're hurting for business. :-) They have a HUGE range of colors to choose from, pretty much anything you can dream up. I knew someone who had all her perfectly-functional, good-quality "harvest gold" kitchen appliances repainted with automotive paint at a body shop. She took the opportunity to replace the door handles on the fridge and oven and the stove knobs, and everything looked new. It cost her a few hundred bucks to have stove, fridge, and rollaround dishwasher repainted, and it would have cost over a grand to replace it all with absolute-bottom-of-the-line appliances. She did use a little chrome paint, which she bought in a hobby store (model airplanes and cars and such), on some small trim bits rather than having them rechromed, but you had to know it was there and look for it to notice.

ponder is absolutely correct. It's about the LRV, Light Reflectance Value of a color. How much light (which is energy) a color absorbs and how much it reflects. If you paint vinyl siding with a color that has too low of an LRV, that absorbs too much light and energy and thus retains too much heat, the siding will warp and get wavy. Paint the siding a color that is similar in value or lighter and you have nothing to worry about as long a proper prep is done and quality product is used. Sherwin Williams is a good source for a specific palette that is suitable for all colors of vinyl siding. Also, a lot of the new non-wood exterior architectural elements that are now available are kind of, well, cheap and can not with stand a color like dark green, navy blue or black. Often, the minimum LRV is listed in the warranty for these products and that's something you want to comply with. This is not something that many people are aware of - professional nor homeowner. A few years down the road when a product starts to look crappy it's often blamed on overall quality. Quality may indeed be an issue, but painting it a darker color than it was manufactured to withstand likely initiated the product's failure. Here is a link that might be useful: LRV

I am using Behr primer with paint on my cabinets and in the process of wet-sanding them down to a nice polish. We like the paint color and just stayed with Behr cause this is what we started with. After a few coats, the paint definitely needs time to dry between coats. I made the mistake of putting one on top of the other after a few days of drying and the paint stuck together. But once their are hung on the cabinets we will use those gel pads on our doors to prevent the doors from rubbing against the bases. All in all- I wish I would have done more research on the paint- but we just stuck with the paint to keep it uniformed. I finally gathered enough courage to talk to a local painter about getting a better polish on my cabinets and he told me about wet-sanding! Do your research and another thing he told me; paint with a brush and THEN back roll... don't dip your roller in the paint- just back roll... Before In the process...