Questions for Marquiss Experts

[spanewbe]

We took delivery of our 04 SA Euphoria last  Friday.  Final electrical hookup will be Tuesday.  Our wall/pavestone contractor had a schedule change and moved up the completion of our pad and walls by two weeks.  So we were able to move up the spa delivery in front of our electrical appointment.

Our issues/questions:
First off, we love the shell color -- Antique Bronze -- very beautiful in our Arizona sunshine.  However, we selected a charcoal cover and the driftwood (grey) durabase cabinet.  In the dealer showroom, we thought these would look good in our yard, but instead the greys really stand out and contrast too much with all of the earthtones (our house is surrounded by open desert).  The spa cover was an easy fix.  We called our wonderful dealer and simply switched the charcoal cover for the wildwood (brown) cover.  The wildwood cover looks great and blends well into our surroundings.

The cabinet color is more problematic.   In the sunlight, the driftwood is more bright and reflective of light than we prefer (almost looking near white in sunlight).  Since we used 8 men to get the spa into its location -- two from the spa dealer, 5 from the pavestone crew and myself -- switching out the spa for a different cabinet color is not a great option due to the difficult logistics of getting the spa in and out of its location.  We have two ideas to solve our issue:

1) properly prime and paint the durabase cabinet to match the earthtone (light brown) retaining walls that surround the spa on two sides and are prelevant throughout our rear yard, or

2) see if the dealer will allow us to unscrew the driftwood durabase cabinet, switch for the cedar durabase, then reinstall the cedar durabase cabinet.  This will save us from having to physically move the spa again.

If we knew the durabase would receive and hold paint well, our preference would be to paint the durabase to match the spas surroundings perfectly.  The cedar durabase will be better than the driftwood, but still not exactly what we would like.

Questions:

1)  Has anyone heard of anyone painting the durabase and with what results?  

2)  Can the entire cabinet easily be switched by simply removing a few screws?

3)  Can the shiplap cedar (real wood) cabinet be reinstalled in place of the durabase?  I presume the real wood cabinet would be more conducive to painting.

Ideally, we would like to end up with a durabase cabinet painted in exactly the shade of our choosing.  This would give us the color that we want and the lower maintenance (aside from paint touch up) and longevity of the durabase.  The AZ sun can be brutal on wood and I believe the durabase will stand up better to our elements.  Please correct me if I am off base on this belief.

We brought our equipment cover panel into a local Sherwin Williams store to get their opinion on how well primer and paint would adhere to the durabase.  The staff felt that everything would be ok, but would not guarantee with 100% certainty that the paint would not present a maintenence issue.  I have various sorts of conduit and other types of plastic items (sprinkler timer, for instance) that are above ground and attached to the house that I have painted to match the house color with good and lasting results.  This makes me lean towards believing that painting the durabase will work fairly well.  Our dealer has not heard of anyone that has painted the durabase cabinet.  We have not yet posed the cabinet switching questions to our dealer because our preferred solution is to paint and we don't want to torture the man any more than is necessary.

We are excited to get tubbing, but we are patient and want to get everything just right before we push the tub against the walls and fill her up.

Comments from the experts please.

[stuart]

I would pay your dealer to switch the cabinet. He may do it for only the labor, we would. it is anywhere from a 2-3 hour job to do right. Could cost a couple hundered dollars but it sounds like it would be worth it!

[hottubber]

I wouldn't move the spa. Have your dealer switch out the durawood cabinet for another color. It is do-able, shouldn't be too expensive either. Good luck...

[spanewbe]

Well, we decided to go with painting the durawood a custom color to match our setting and we are very pleased with the results.  Marquiss customer service in Oregon and a Dunn-Edwards paint expert gave us comfort that the achieving good paint adhesion would not be a problem if we prepped the surface properly and used the proper materials.  So for an $80 expenditure (primer, paint, etc.) and some sweat equity, we now have exactly the color we want.  The Dunn-Edwards rep says the paint should look good for up to 10 years.  We will keep the board posted on how the paint performs over time.

[wmccall]

Post a picture sometime. In recent memory I've not heard of anyone trying this.

[hottubber]

newbe,

Nice job on selecting the proper color and vendor for your paint. Was Marquis very involved with helping you out with type of paint?
The opens up a whole new source for color for the dealers, custom color spas? This may be a great opportunity for dealers...

[spanewbe]

Our dealer wants pictures also, so I will try to post pictures once the project is final.  I still need to install the landscape plants around the spa enclosure, then we should be ready for pics.  We don't own a digital camera, but are in the market for one when we get some time to shop.  Does scanning conventional pictures work for internet posting or is the quality too poor?

[spanewbe]

Marquis was not overly involved with paint selection other than to give us comfort that they could see no reason why the idea would not work if done properly.  One of our neighbors is a high-end custom home contractor and quite a perfectionist about his work. We needed help sliding the spa away from the walls of our enclosure so we could paint it and he came over to help us slide the spa.  We told him what were undertaking and he said he had a great contact that has worked for Dunn-Edwards for 30 years.  We took the equipment into the Dunn-Edwards store and they told us exactly what to do as far as prep and materials.  The primer and paint went on wonderfully so I am not expecting any adhesion problems.

As I said in the original post, we love the shell color but were a bit disappointed (not the fault of Marquis) as we looked out at the clash of the cabinet color with our setting.  We held up some cedar wood I had in the garage against the spa and did not see that color working either.  So we kept working on solving the painting issue and we are extremely pleased that we persevered becasue we now love everything about the color scheme.

[dsegel]

Scanning should do the trick.