Back at the house, it was time for some paint. I had spent a day shooting the final shots of primer and sanding it all down with 400 grit. I blasted out the garage with the leaf blower and headed over to Portage Paint in the city. Traffic was a mess and when I got there they were having trouble with their mixing machine, not a good thing when you are spending $250 on a gallon of red paint. You heard me right (or at least you read me right) $250 for just the gallon of red paint. Another $60 for the two gallons of reactive reducer and $120 for the clear coat. I had stopped at the bank on the way and withdrawn $600 thinking I would have some spending cash when I was done - well har-de-har-har! The total ended up to be $580! And I didn't even get fries with that! Nor a massage with a happy ending! Oh well, what are you going to do? It's the cost of doing business if you want quality paint. I had done some research on the internet and found places where you can get a paint kit to paint your whole car for about $200. But they only have generic colors and I would imagine that just like an Earl Sheib paint job, the paint would be fading in about a year. So I got the two boxes of stuff home and prepared myself for a long day of painting. I finished washing the main body and body parts with clean water and took a mop to the garage floor. Enough for one day (14 hours in the garage) time to start fresh in the morning.
The next morning I did another wipe down of the body and body parts (car body, not my body) and took things out of the garage that I didn't want painted red from the over-spray. Things like bicycles, clean towels and the other cars. At this point I have done enough paint jobs in the garage that I'm not real picky about moving stuff or covering stuff. Everything is dirty anyway so why bother. The next garage will remain sterile. I may even find some time someday to do a garage restoration!
I tacked everything off with the tack rag, mixed my first batch of red and donned my human fly gas mask. I had propped an old box fan under the single garage door and opened a screened window to get a little air flow. I had learned the hard way that you need to get rid of that paint cloud. If you don't you can't see anything! The first coat went on fine, moving about the garage bending, twisting, stooping, kneeling, getting up on milk crates and sometimes actually standing up straight as I sprayed away. When the gun would sputter I'd stop and mix up another batch. I waited about 30 minutes and started coat number 2. No problem there, and so after about an hour I was all done, cleaning out the gun and going outside to dry off my sweaty forehead and get some fresh air. Even though you have a good mask, you can still smell the paint and your breathing is a bit constricted. You always have to blow your nose when you are done and then check the Kleenex to see how much paint got through - ewwww!
The red looked good with coverage everywhere (on the car body, not on the Kleenex) so I tacked everything down and started the same prep process with the clear coat. The clear shoots a lot different than the color; kind of like enamel in thickness but it does run if you are not careful. I tried to not overdo it because I have had problems with runs and curtains before on previous paint jobs. You spray the clear on too thick and everything looks good and an hour later it starts to run! The problem with being conservative in shooting clear is that you end up with orange peel or too thin a coat of clear coat. The pros do it enough that they know how much is just enough. Amateurs like me spend a lot of time with sandpaper later. And I have lots of 600, 1200 and 2000 grit so I am ready! So as I'm shooting the second coat of clear I had to be extra careful that I didn't lean onto a painted part to reach another area. The inside of the front trunk was a little tricky to get at because of the height I had the body at so as I was up on the milk crate I tried to support myself with one hand on the ceiling and then lean over to get the inside edges real good. Unfortunately, by just holding the ceiling I disturbed the dust and some major boogers floated down into the clear on the nose (the car body nose, not my nose). Oh well, everything comes out with a little wet sanding and a rub-a-dub-dub.
Next - Europa Euphoria, Part 19
