Like I said a few days ago, “The dishwasher is the only appliance that’s not stainless-looking. We can’t justify buying a new one until this one starts to break down, and we couldn’t order a stainless front panel for this model, so I bought some faux-stainless laminate. It self-adhesive and it really looks like steel paneling.” The product is called SoftMetal faux stainless steel film:
I promised to blog the results and give my opinion on the laminate.
We ordered it online from a company called Glass Decor and More. Their website is a little sketchy, specifically the seemingly-fake reviews made to resemble Amazon’s user comments. And I think they’re running a couple of clone sites, which is good for SEO but doesn’t exactly evince truthfulness and transparency. Still, I figured $55 wasn’t too much money to blow on a product that might be a bust, especially when compared to the thought of buying a whole new dishwasher just to get a stainless-looking front panel to match the rest of our kitchen appliances. Red flags went up when I realized I had to join their community just to place an order, but I think that’s because they’re using freeware or licensing cheap software to handle their shopping cart and billing. As far as customer service goes, they were top notch. I got an email receipt, confirmation when the unit shipped, and the product was on my doorstep in a few days.
Work pulled me away from home early this week, so my wife applied the faux stainless film by herself. When I got back yesterday and saw it, I was very pleasantly surprised. There’s no way anyone would know this isn’t brushed stainless steel just from looking at it. Actually, I would go as far as to say they could touch it and still not know it isn’t real. It looks exactly like the finish on our refrigerator, and it even gives off a good reflection:
The front of the panel is completely smooth and it looks great. The only problem is that the film stretches a little and it’s pretty much impossible to get all the bubbles out of the side edges. I know that no one will ever look closely at the sides of our dishwasher, even on the rare occasions when the door is open. Still, to quiet my internal critic, I’ll try to work the bubbles out and/or pop them with a pin:
I’m very happy with the results and I’m sure we could get it to work better with practice. There’s enough laminate left on the roll to re-coat the dishwasher panel. We’ll see how it holds up to the heat and steam. If we have to apply it again, we’ll definitely do it with two people to cut down on the stretching, and we’ll make note of these tips.
Overall, I would highly recommend this product for anyone who already has black appliances and is trying to match them with new, brushed stainless appliances. I think wrapping this stuff around white appliances would look pretty silly (like the picture on the box), but applying it to black ones seems to mimic the look of so many of the appliances that are popular today.
UPDATE: Kitchen Remodel 9: The X Factor Strikes
That looks so good. You are right. I don’t think if you hadn’t told me that I would have known it wasn’t real.
Margaret
[...] presents Kitchen Remodel 8: Dishwasher posted at Chad Chandler, saying, “A product review of self-adhering, faux stainless steel [...]
Well researched site – love the kitchen gadgets! – Will look to incorporate some of your ideas into my site. Thanks!
Well Chad, I’ve installed the SoftMetal product and got a far different result.
Despite lots of prior experience with installing window film and laminates of all sorts, we found the product impossible to install without developing hundreds, that right, hundreds of air bubbles.
Even going slowly, working from the center out, working half the width at a time, and using a squeegee or plastic spatula, it becomes “bubble city.”
There are inconsistencies with Alkor’s instructions and others. Alkor (the mfg) says to install the product dry. Other suppliers say to install it wet with water sprayed on the surface to be applied before contact.
If you follow Alkor’s instruction you will have a certified mess on you hand — even if you are very skilled and very careful.
As for the wet approach, we haven’t tried it, so we can’t say how that would work out. Glass and More says to make certain that all areas of the film are wet. Well, could somebody tell me how you are going to work with a piece of 35″ wide film on a fridge door, by 4′ in length and are going to be able to have all areas wet, this sounds also impossible. As far as removing air bubble with a pin – forget it – you will still be left with hundreds which won’t go away and the pin will scar the film.
DIY folks beware. Brace yourself for a result which is likely to greatly disappoint.
Thanks for the input, Bo. Like I said in the post, my wife installed it when I was out of town, so I don’t have hands-on experience with the product. She started by wiping the dishwasher panel with a wet paper towel. Next, she got the bubbles out by adhering one section in the top-left corner and then repeatedly stretching it and smoothing it until all the bubbles were gone from the front panel. If you look closely, you can see that the stretching blurred the faux steel “grain” in the top-right corner. It makes it look like the “steel” is a little smudged. It’s one of those things that I’m very aware of, but no one else will ever notice.
I’m glad my wife handled this project and not me. She’s very patient with stuff like this. I probably would have gotten frustrated with the bubbles and thrown the film out the window. I was wary of this product for a few reasons, mainly because I didn’t think it would look like steel and because I thought it would be impossible to adhere smoothly. The last thing I wanted was dishwasher panel that looked like a shoddy DIY tint job. That sounds like what happened to you guys. Maybe you got a defective roll? Or more plausibly, maybe we just got lucky.
thanks for the great post. Best regards
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