Perfect keyboard bezel finish, but it has to be white? Ok, I'll take it.

I've enjoyed my Dell Inspiron 9200 immensely for the past 2-1/4 years now, and during that time I've managed to keep it in quite good condition. There are no scuffs or scratches on her, and no chips in the powder coating on the chassis. However, there is that inevitable palmrest wear spot which, despite my efforts to maintain her, developed rather quickly within the first year of use.

Recently I purchased a used 9400/1705 palmrest solely to do a mouse transplant. The 9200 came with an Alps and the 9400 has the Synaptics, and anyone who's compared the two can tell you the Synaptics beats the Alps hands down in configurablitiy.
The 9400 keyboard bezel was cheap; $20 shipped from "nissanzTT90" ( respective business kudos to him; good guy to deal with). At that price, I wasn't expecting it to be great, but I was quite surprised by how good its condition was.

At first I looked at installing the whole bezel, but it's configured juuust differently enough that the mods needed on the 9200 bezel to accept the Synaptics pad were much less work.
To make the 9400 bezel fit, I would need to cut and relocate 2 anchoring pins, shim two others with washers, and "crop n' paste" a section just under the keyboard and including the Start button and indicator lights. To make the Synaptics pad work with the 9200 bezel, I just needed to cut the underside of the mouse button bezel precisely. Aside of that, the mouse pad/media button units are identical.

I had always wished the keyboard bezel wasn't painted because eventually a painted finish would always wear through. But the color of the 9200 bezel plastic is a drab gray that doesn't appeal to me.
The 9400/1705 is white, through & through. -Like, " super" white!
I started thinking. I would prefer black, but the laptop already has white trim on it, and if I could remove the silver paint from the 9400 bezel and customize it to fit, the result would be a pretty decent looking laptop with a keyboard bezel that wouldn't look like crap in 6 months.

I started out by stripping the gray paint off the 9400 bezel with alcohol thinner, which took about an hour and a half. The more time I invested, the more white was revealed, and the more I grew to like this idea. By the time I had stripped it down to white, all apprehension had escaped me, and I was convinced I needed to do this.
What was revealed beneath the silver paint was a glass smooth rich white plastic that somehow appears to be a much more robust material than when it was painted. ( Perhaps because the shadowing on the white accentuates the rather subtle bevels and grooves, making them look deeper, the construction now appears as if it were thicker. [?] )

I did the customization/conversion. This was a bit challenging, even for me, and I'm a jeweler; -I have ALL the kewl toys for a job like this! But, sweating all the while, everything lined up perfectly.
-As a side note, I could tell by the smell that the bezel plastic is made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC). I don't know if that helps readers as far as paint choices. Also, two-part epoxy is everybody's friend! The bezel is structurally fortified with cast magnesium alloy braces, and I had to saw off and relocate one of the mag-alloy pins. I sawed it off using a jewelers saw, which has a blade width less than 1/10mm, and reattached it with epoxy. It's as strong as metal. I also epoxied washers to two other posts that were less than 1mm too short.

Once I got the bezel in place, I had to paint the Start button surround, as that is gray plastic with silver paint. Well, as these things go, one thing leads to another, and I figured I should paint the LCD bezel too, while I was at it.

I dry sanded them with 500 grit wet-dry paper, and applied Gloss White Rustoleum ( spray, of course) to both pieces. In accordance with the directions, within two hours, I applied a second coat. I put the tray that they were drying on in my furnace room I hopes that the heat would accelerate drying. It didn't really help.
20+ hours later, I wet-sanded the pieces for about 1.5 hours using 15 micron paper, trickling water, and an occasional drop of dish detergent. I achieved a very smooth finish, but some tiny area sanded through on corners, so back at went for a second round.
I repeated the process, and today I will dry-rub them to a shine before I reinstall them. In this case, since they are not high "finger traffic" areas, I won't bother to clear coat them. If I were painting the outside of the lid, I certainly would.

Of course, color choice on something like a laptop is a personal preference, and I expect many not to like it. I most certainly would've opted for jet black with about twenty layers of clear coat, but this choice was one of 'function over form.

I'll put up some shots later today.