painted\windowed\lighted monitor
 

Recently I painted my old crappy 15" monitor with Navy Blue Krylon Fusion and cut a window in it, and then added dual yellow 6" SVC Cathode lights. Here are the pics. Any questions, feel free to ask.
http://www.buffalo.edu/~adampumm/images/monitormod1.jpg
http://www.buffalo.edu/~adampumm/images/monitormod2.jpg
http://www.buffalo.edu/~adampumm/images/monitormod3.jpg

Nice paintjob, not sure about the yellow for cathodes though :S

I like it a lot. What, exactly do you have to do to paint a monitor? do you need to take the casing off, and if so, is it hard to do?

yes, you need to take the casing off. it's not hard in itself, but the problem is that there are capacitors inside of it that can kill you. if you want to paint it, you should unplug it for at least a week, and hit the power switch repeatedly before you take it apart. to be really safe, take it to an electronics shop and have them take it apart for you and discharge it.

switching the monitor on while unplugged from the mains supply, (if you can) may discharge the PSU capacitors, but not the tube.

discharging an anode cap, that long wire with the sucker thing that goes into the CRT is easy to do if you are extremely careful, i usually use a real insulated/shielded screwdriver with some heavy gauge insulated wire, you connect the wire to the chassis or metal frame of the monitor or a strong grounding point , making sure its all unplugged and isolated, and slide the screwdriver tip carefully under the cap, itlll spark loudly, dont touch anything other the insulated handle of the driver, dont rest your other hand on the monitor etc. do it a couple of times, when it stops making sparking noise, hold the tip there a while, then leave it for 5 minutes and do it again,

Theres 24 kv inside that CRT, enough to fry anyone

So do you get any image distraction/interference with any of the additional stuff in there?

When I have the lights on (I put them on a switch) there are minute barely noticable lines that go down the screen for a few minutes, but then they go away. I think it's because I didn't put the inverter behind a metal shield (I'm told even aluminum foil would've worked), but I just don't want to take it apart again.

Eh sounds a little to risky for me.

I'm a bit of a clutz.
Plain white works fine ;D