Now this was a fun part, the styrofoam was "painted" with cellulose thinner with a big brush causing it to dissolve rapidly. Must say the square shapes were gone in an instant, if you get too excited the whole case could be dissolved...

Dissolved styrofoam is not very usable as it is so the solution was to add a layer of Claycrete instant paper mache on top. It did adhere nicely to the rough surface and did add a nice texture itself in the process.

One bag of Claycrete was unfortunately not enough to cover the whole case as you can see at the bottom.

After one more trip to the craft store the case was completely coated.

While the paper mache was drying the chassis itself got a bit more modding done. That the front of the chassis looked like a cheese didn't help the plans to mount the HDD against it. The good old hand nibbler came to the rescue.

With the front clean it could be measured so aluminium sheets could be cut to shape.

A quick test assembly to measure everything a second time.

Normally I'm not too keen on painting as you might have noticed by the lack of it on most previous cases, but this was fun, mainly because no tedious preparation work was needed. The first layer was flat black acrylic to give a good contrast for the following layers. The main reason to go for waterbased paint was simply so it wouldn't dissolve any styrofoam in case some bit wasn't covered 100% with paper mache.

With the black layer done grey acrylic paint was added using drybrushing with a 2" brush. It is nice to see how the texture of the case comes to live.

Drybrushing is a fairly simple concept, you add very little paint to the brush, then you try to rub off as much as possible on a piece of cardboard. When the brush is almost dry you start brushing the intended surface. What will happen is that only sections that are protruding will get any paint. The rule of thumb is to start with dark colours and go to lighter using less and less paint for each layer.