Would it be any different process than the ILEC's use to use to rehab the rental phones? Those repainted ones seemed to last forever. I think they even repainted the black ones to a decorator colour if they were short of factory ones.

I know that Manitoba Telecom Services use to have a paint shop in the Winnipeg distribution complex to paint telephones instead of sending them back to Nortel. I am sure the Bell and GTE operating companies did the same instead of sending to Western and Cortello.