I decided to switch from fleece to Bass pans, because my mother went into assisted living recently, and I no longer have access to rat-friendly laundry machines (I can manage to hand-wash the hammocks, but not the rest of it). Since Bass's stainless steel pans are so much more expensive than the galvanized steel, I settled for the cheaper option, which I was intending to spray-paint.
Interestingly, there is no store in the area that carries Rustolem Painter's Touch Toy Safe paint. A very helpful clerk at Home Depot (they carry Painter's Touch, but don't stock the Toy Safe version) called around to all the local stores and sent me over to an artists' supply shop that thought they might have some. Turns out they don't, and they can't order it for me, either, because they carry Krylon, not Rustoleum. And apparently, Rustoleum is the only brand that sells paint that is guaranteed to be non-toxic.
Fortunately, the manager of the art-supply place was able to give me the number of a couple of local businesses that do powder-coating, and the cost turns out to be far more reasonable than I had expected. It's more expensive than the cost of a couple of cans of spray paint, of course, but the total cost of the pans plus the powder coating is still over a hundred dollars less than what stainless steel pans would have cost me, so I feel I've come out ahead. I dropped the pans off yesterday, and I will be able to pick them up after work tomorrow--no fuss, no muss, and best of all, no waiting time, since powder coat cures in the oven and doesn't release volatiles once it has cooled down. So I will be able to put the pans in the cage immediately, without having to wait two weeks. Plus, I got to pick a custom color for no extra charge!
So the pans cost about $100--I got three-inch deep pans for the levels, and 2-1/2 inch pans for the shelves--and the cost of the powder-coating is $50. (It was going to be more, but the guy lowered the price once he saw the pans. They were less complicated to handle than I had made it sound over the phone, apparently.) All in all, I consider it a good deal, because finding a place to paint the pans would have been a hassle, to say nothing of trying to find a place where I could safely put them while the volatiles were out-gassing--one of the challenges of a studio apartment. And not to mention the extra time and hassle it would have taken to get Home Depot to order the Toy Safe paint specially. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that the extra cost is well worth the time and hassle saved in this case.
So I thought I'd let folks know that powder-coating might be a more-economical option than we had been thinking. It's also good to know that Rustoleum is pretty much the only option for child- and pet-safe paint, when going that route.