Painting a brand new wood stove insert

I am about to have a new Osburn 2200 fireplace insert installed. The flat black factory paint is going to be an eyesore compared to the rest of the room so I am going to paint it, probably metallic brown.

Previously I bought, painted, and resold a used Earth Stove Bayview which was really rusted. The only prep I did for it was sanding down the majority of the big rust patches and a wipedown afterwards. It was my first time painting a stove, and the Stove Bright paint was fairly forgiving. Comparatively speaking, it was a good first time effort and definitely improved the appearance.

In my current situation, there is no rust. Do I still need to lightly sand the brand new exterior of my insert in order to get good adhesion? Or is the factory matte finish, flat black paintjob have enough "roughness" to it to disregard the sanding?

(I have read lots of threads about painting stoves, but none of them that I saw addressed this type of issue.)

Thanks much!

Stove Bright brown metallic on both of them. Be careful with that acetone based Stove Bright. Breathing that stuff will hurt ya. Bad.

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I discovered that painting the Bayview in my garage. Even with the door open and a window, I still got light-headed, and felt kinda cruddy for the rest of the day. Lesson learned on that one. Never have felt quite as smart since that day lol.

Thanks for the insights on your experiences. I hadn't thought of firing the stove up first for its breaking in period with the original paint. Probably a good idea to cure the first paint job. The downside is that I'll end up painting inside my house. Send the girls to the mall for the day til the fumes clear out.

That paint job will end up costing twice as much that way lol

great ideas guys, thx!

So would the general concensus be as follows:

Install and cure/break in the stove.
No sanding.
Wipe down so it's clean.
remove glass and tape off areas not to be painted.
Prep work area (covering furniture, proper ventilation established, etc.)
3 coats, fully dried before firing up and curing (with ventilation still).

Watcha think? Multiple opinions welcome. I really don't want to screw up the look of this insert as it was no small chunk of change for us.

Chimney sweep is picking it up from my local osburn retailer, delivering and installing it for me.

I will update as things unfold. If I feel good about my install and tile job, I'll even post pix; befores and afters.

Gonna be a first time on lots of levels for me on this one. Tiling over brick fireplace/wall/hearth, and building out a mantle to tile over, to boot. May be a long slow process, but the payoff could be great... and hopefully save me a wad of money on someone else doing the work.

Wife and I went through the toughest stretch of our 12 year marriage recently... we had to pick out tile for the new hearth and wall.
BUT we settled on a style, and think we'll both be very happy... who'da thunk it?

New update: Installers picked up the stove and pre-painted it for me, getting it installed tomorrow. Weather permitting anyway; we've had lots of high winds lately that may affect the chimney liner installation. fingers crossed.

Installation yesterday. Took about 4.5 hours. They painted it outside and then got to the prep for the install. Re-sized the flue to make room for the chimney liner; capped off the gas line for the quick-starter.
Not completely impressed with the paint job they did. A few spots where they "forgot" to spray at a distance and sweep; came out like a spot instead :/

The stove itself:
Osburn sent the nickel faceplate for an 1800 instead of my 2200. They also sent a black handle instead of a nickel handle. They ALSO forgot a knob for the damper. Uh, who's running the show around there at Osburn?

The steel at the inside bottom lip right inside the door is jagged looking, like they used a spare piece of metal and didn't bother to grind off the unevenness.

Looking up under the top grill area, again it looks like they used jagged metal, thinking the fins would hide the unfinished look. It doesn't.

I am left feeling like I bought a cheaply made insert with some scraps they had lying around. I don't think I will ever buy an Osburn again based on this experience.

Performance:
At this point, I made a small fire after the installation, about 8 pieces of 2x4 & 2x6 endcuts we use for kindling. Just got to the point it was putting of some nice mellow heat, then dampered it down so it burned low and slow. It almost went out after a couple hours, and I re-stoked it with about 6 pieces of kindling, and let it burn completely out (sometime in the night). Fumes were fairly strong, nothing to run me out of the house, but had a box fan right next to our wood pass thru door, and it was exhausting fairly well.

Woke up this AM, started another fire with kindling, and also added a couple pieces of fir this time. Feedback I got from wifey was that it was starting to put out good heat, no more smell according to her. I'll check it out tonight.

So tonight, I'll amp up the heat a bit. We'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, here's some pics. Bear in mind this is the beginning of a tile project, and not one I'm going to move quickly thru. So this is just the jumping off point for me, but you can see what's done so far.

etiger2007 said:

I do like the looks of the stove, what was the color they used?

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I used Stove Bright Metallic Brown. Figure it will work well with the tile choice and the rest of the room... as well as soften the look for any future buyers of the home (when the time comes).

Thanks!

kingquad said:

Osburn is a very good company with good customer service. Have you contacted them? We've seen them come on the forum and back up their product and fix mistakes at no cost to the customer. Mistakes happen. Give them a chance to make this right before you run them down. Could be worse, you could be dealing with PE or Quadrafire (in fact, almost all manufacturers), who basically blow off the customer. They deal almost exclusively through their dealer/distributors for any issues. Responses can take months.

BTW, you're stove looks really good.

If you put your insert name in your thread title, Fyrebug (Osburn employee) should be along pretty quickly. You could also PM him.

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Thanks for the info re: Osburn CS.

My intent is to provide info regarding my experience with my purchase, so that future buyers can make informed decisions about where they're going to spend their money.
Salesmen have heard for many years, there's 3 types of customers... Happy ones, disgruntled ones who are the squeaky wheels, and disgruntled ones who don't bother the company, but never go back. I am the latter.

Too many times in my previous experiences with CS in general, apparently my expectations are too high. The company finds some way to justify their actions, and the CS rep is a minimum wage phone handler who hates their job and hates me even more for disturbing their game of Chuzzle.

So, I've stopped calling CS... saves me $$$ on Prilosec and Ativan.

Really the only resolution I could see to the issues I have with this stove would be full replacement, and I'm sure not paying $500 for another installation.

so anyway, thanks for all the compliments from the group re: the paint job/color... it'll hopefully look even better once the brick is covered up

New slate tile should be here this week. I'll post some pics of it once it comes in... still need to determine the layout... (lazy).
Also still trying to determine the style of mantle to install... tile or wood.