Geoff Holden

When I noticed that the case of my keyboard was turning yellow from the sunlight, I decided to paint it. I chose to go with a two tone black and aluminum that will match my case and my mouse.

The stock keyboard, a Microsoft Natural.

Disassembly

The first step was to totally take apart the keyboard. It’s pretty straightforward. For this mod we’ll only be concerned with the main casing. (Painting the keys is far too involved and changing the status LEDs to blue will have to wait for another day.)

Here’s the keyboard in pieces.

Masking

First we mask off the areas we don’t want to paint with tape. For me, this meant masking all the areas on bottom that had any information in them (and the little rubber feet).

All the informational areas are covered in tape.

Painting

I started by spray painting both parts black. It took a couple of coats to get a good covering. At this point the bottom casing was given a few coats of clearcoat.

Drying, after a single coat.
Notice the cracking where the wrist rest meets the rest of the keyboard. The clearcoat is still wet here, it’s not actually that shiney. Here’s the bottom casing, all finished and withthe tape removed.

Masking, revisited

Now that the top casing is painted black (and given enough time to harden) we mask off the wrist rest (which will be the only part to remain black).

This was a trickier mask, what with the curved surface and all.

Painting, again

With the new masking in place, we break out the aluminum paint. A few good coats should do it.

Here’s what we have after the first two coats.
I’m going to do one more, just for good measure. Here the tape has been removed, and we’re close to the final product.
A few coats of clearcoat and we’ll be all done.

Finished

Now that the clearcoat has dried, the keyboard can be reassembled, and we can see the final result.

Here we have the top casing, complete with clearcoat. Here it is, reassembled.
The white keys seem a little off, but I’m happy with the result.