Quality grades of stainless steel dont rust, not easily anyway, but are more expensive to produce. So lower grades are used these days for many domestic products. Interested to know, whats the brand on that laundry tub Rob? Australian made or not?

Also, if you go with acrylic satin as Byron suggests (thats what I'll be doing) I dont see why you need to scuff the trim up first, the paint should easily stick to the stainless trim and you'll probably get a better finish leaving it flat, (maybe go as far as a green nylon scourer) but clean it well of course and use prepsol for the clean just before the paint. Also, using acrylic is way cheaper, and as Byron points out, easily repairable. Intrerestingly, a little while back, I found 3M made a black paint in both gloss or satin, the satin seems made for this sort of job, I saw it being sold at a discontinued run out price in a local paint supplier last year. I got it to use for the top of the dashboard, 10 bucks a large aerosol can, seemed really sticky stuff, i reckon its good paint, slightly annoying nozle on the can though, (tendancy to drip on to the job just as you finish) I dunno if its still available, but the top of my dash looks like the original paint - if you can still get it, its good stuff, maybe they got a new nozzle design.