Took the day off yesterday to drive around to body shops with a "flyer" for my car listing all the parts I need painted. Not a good day...ugh
The first shop I went to was small and run by a perfectionist who LOVED to talk. Fine, ok...tell me a story or 20... Yeah, he might do great work, but when he ballparked me a price of $10,000 to $15,000 for a paint job, I knew we weren't a good match! lol Most of his stories involved show cars and complete restorations. Mine isn't that...
Second shop was on their lunchbreak and just took my flyer and said they'd look at it.
Next 5 shops all said it wasn't their cup of tea. The last shop said $10,000 and 6 months. sigh...
Now, I wasn't stopping at the big chains since I knew they wouldn't be interested and just want to work on the "bread and butter" jobs of late model insurance claims, but I decided to stop at Maaco anyways. (I'm not sure how big Maaco is, but they're popular in Minnesota for advertising $400 paint jobs. Nothing fancy for that price; basically they wash your car and spray it - no bodywork, primer or clearcoat for that price!) Anyways, the guy at Maaco was nice enough to not say NO to my face, but also smart enough to not give me a price. He basically said I would have to start with their $2999.95 "Platinum Package" and then add on things from there (like Primer, Door Jambs, Bodywork...). So back to $5000 minimum easily.
Well, needless to say I was pretty disappointed (by not necessarily surprised) by this point. So I stopped by my local farm supply store (Fleet Farm here in MN) and took a look at their "tractor" paint. Hmmm...Massey Ferguson makes a nice shade of gray for $25/gallon!
Satin black for the louvers too!
Not exactly kidding here...why spend $10,000 ($7000 of that which I can't afford) on a professional paint job that goes over $500 worth of amateur bodywork?!? WHEN the bodywork begins to bubble in the sunlight after a few years, how sad do I want to be??
The tractor paint can though talks about either brush/rolling it on (uh, NO), or using an "airless sprayer" to apply it. Also probably not gonna work...but what about a HVLP gun? Hmmm...
Obviously I'd start with the Satin Black and paint my interior panels since my mistakes will be much less obvious.
And with the Pandemic in full swing here and masks beginning to be required everywhere around me, I have nothing else to do and nowhere to go, so I guess I might as well start playing with paint!