So I've Been Painting...

I've been painting for one month, five days, seven hours, fifty one minutes, and twenty three seconds. That's bad enough but the really depressing part is that I haven't even gotten one whole coat on the van. This process is TIME CONSUMING people. When the people who write up their experiences with the $50 paint job on message boards notice that several months pass between posts. This isn't because they are lazy - it is because it takes an insane amount of time. I just want to prepare the people who are considering this route that it takes a while. Now that I've made that clear here is what I've learned so far.

My first step was to sand the front of the van using 60 grit. In hindsight I think this was far too aggressive. I knew I had wavy panels but 60 is a little bit intense and requires a whole lot more sanding to get back to smooth. I then moved on to 120 grit dry. This is more reasonable but I still think it is too intense. Finally I went to 320 grit. This is a little too light for that first pass. I've read that you need to use at least 320 or lower to give the new paint something to key into but 320 is pretty slow going if you are starting with a really bad wavy job. I ended up settling on 220 to do the entire body first pass and I think it is the way to go if you are starting with a crappy paint job. If you are starting with a better job (and seriously you may want to reconsider your approach if you've got a decent job) then use something closer to 300.

Back to my story though. So after I sanded the front for the third time I decided to give body work a try. I got the best body filler I could find (which was still quite crappy Bondo brand professional filler) and decided to just give it a shot. I used the angle grinder to get down to metal on any dents I could feel or any spots of bubbling paint. I then hit up the four spots that I identified as needing work with the filler and I was surprised at how difficult it was to apply evenly before the hardener kicked in. I think either the weather made it difficult (it was hot) or I am just too inexperienced but it was a lot harder than I was expecting. After a few coats and way too much Bondo in the trash can I got some results I could live with. Once the filler dried I sanded it with 120 and then 320 until it couldn't be felt. I can't stress how important patience is with body work. In hindsight I wish I would have taken more time myself. I'll get into patience more in a bit.

With my body work sanded and ready for primer I decided to go with Rustoleum rusty metal primer. I used a 4" high density foam roller to apply it unthinned. It went on looking relatively smooth and gave me surprising coverage. Since I used nothing to cut it, I decided to give the primer almost two weeks to dry before I touched it again. When I returned to the van the primer was good and hard but horrible orange peely and down right cratered. It really didn't look so hot but I decided to forge on and start wet sanding. I wet sanded using 400 I believe. This was my first time wet sanding and I really didn't do the greatest job on it. With wet sanding you need that paper to have soaked for a full day if you want it to be easy to work with. You also need your sanding blocks pre-selected to fit in every space that you need sanded before you start working. I didn't have either and honestly didn't use enough water but I did manage to hit every square inch of the paint with sand paper.

Finally the moment I've been waiting for. Time to hit the car with the actual paint I wanted to use. I selected an almond Rustoleum professional grade oil paint and I thinned it around 15% using odorless mineral spirits. I soaked my roller just like everyone on the Internet said I should and I went to work. The second my roller hit the car I was dumbfounded by how utterly hopeless my cause appeared to become. Instead of nice lovely self-levelling paint I was greeted by a billion air bubbles and drips. I frantically ran my roller over all the bubbles hoping that everything would get better but honestly it didn't help much at all. I then remembered the advice of one online painter that the first coat will give you serious doubts as to the utility of this method and I resolved to press on. And press on I did, covering the entire front of the van in this bubbly concoction. Towards the end I was getting really sloppy and just trying to get paint on the surface. By the time I finished I was beginning to seriously doubt this whole adventure. The van looked worse than ever and I really had no idea what I was going to do about it.

After a few more hours past I decided that I could just sit there looking at this fiasco so I grabbed my roller again and decided to put on a second coat. The second time through went a little bit better. I learned more about how to work the paint to get the bubbles out and I did a much better job of applying the paint smoothly. When all was said and done I had a brutally orange peeling but single color cab. Just having a solid color of paint on my van gave me some hope and I left it to dry for a week.

This brings us to weekend before last when it was time to try to correct my bumpy van with elbow grease, sand paper, and a lot of water. Nature decided to give my wet sanding a hand and rain all day on Saturday. Undeterred, I pressed on and grabbed my trusty 400 grit wet sand paper and literally stood in the rain wet sanding all day. The surface was so riddled that it took me eight hours to wet sand the driver's, passenger's door, and front of the van. The labor involved was a bit overwhelming but I ended up with the smoothest van 400 grit paper could possibly provide. The sad part is that I ended up sanding through a ton of the work I had done. There were dozens of places where I not only sanded back down to the blue paint but made it all the way to the OG primer. I even hit metal in a couple of spots. It was during this process that I realized just how sensitive body work is. If you really want a level surface on a vehicle that has been abused for 24 years then it is going to take a whole lot of work.

The next morning I woke up and decided I'd learned enough - time to jump in with both feet and tackle the entire van. If I continued in a piece meal fashion then it would take me six or seven months of weekends to do the entire thing. I decided to dry sand the entire untouched portion of the van with 220. This was the dawn of a new strategy. My new strategy would be to make the van all one color at any cost forgetting about the body work here and there. My thinking is that if I can at least get my van looking semi-decent again I will have the patience to do the body work that is needed. This will end up creating more work for me in the long run but right now I just want my van to look semi-normal once more so I'm going to see where this strategy takes me. I did grind all of the paint bubbles just to get rid of the obvious surface rust but I didn't worry at all about dents or dings. Right now I am just painting.

This brings us up to the past weekend. I began the weekend with a "prepped" van. I say prepped in quotes because I was obviously ignoring several spots on the body that will need more work to look nice. Like I said though, the new strategy is to just get the van all one solid color. I also did some more research and gave the paint thinning and mixing process a lot more attention this time around. I used a lot more mineral spirits and put a ton of time into avoiding air bubbles introduced during the missing process. I spent probably 30 minutes just mixing up a tray of paint slowly stirring it to avoid air. Finally the time came for another coat. I decided to start with the area that I lovingly wet sanded in the rain last weekend. This time, for the first time, I finally grasped how this process is supposed to work. I soaked my roller and very carefully rolled out the excess. I then applied it very gently to the metal and quickly worked to spread out the paint. I used around 20-30% mineral spirits this time and could instantly see the paint self-level without running down the side of the van. This time there were far fewer bubbles thanks to my extended mixing session but the ones that did appear popped quickly or could be gently rolled out with my roller. For the first time I was truly seeing a very smooth finish on the van and started to believe that this insane idea just might work. Finally the van was looking like it might one day look like a normal vehicle once again!

The down side is that I was painting painfully slowly. You get paint on and then you spend a good deal of time slowly working what you've applied ever so gently trying to get a smooth mirror-like finish. It is tedious and slow but I now believe in the method. I'll do anything to avoid another marathon wet sanding session that ends up destroying most of the paint that I spent hours applying. I can already tell though that this time I'm going to be able to jump up to something like 800 grit paper and I'm going to be able to keep most of this paint intact.

This brings us to the present. My plan going forward is to apply two complete coats of paint and then wet sand using 600-800 grit wet. While wet sanding I will also be washing the car to avoid any buildup. This is important because the resulting dust will be do fine that unless washed off it will almost adhere to the surface and will hurt the smoothness. I am estimating four coats until 90% of the surface has complete coverage. Alternating one weekend of sanding followed by one weekend of two painting coats I am looking at another month of work to get to a surface that may be ready for buffing and polishing. Man this job takes a long time...

The only other detail that I've left out is that I am contemplating a paint switch for the final few layers. There is a beautiful single stage polyurethane paint designed to be rolled on boat hulls called Interlux Brightside that I may switch to. This paint is designed to be salt and UV resistant and has amazing self-levelling properties. The catch is that it is more expensive than Rustoleum and I hear that it is also softer. So I'm thinking that I'll get a solid base done with the cheaper Rustoleum paint and then top it off with the Brightside. That will give me a very hard base that I can get nice and level that I can then top off with a beautiful UV resistant paint. I haven't made up my mind about that part yet though.

Finally one last thought, if you are doing this in the street in the city then prepare yourself for almost constant humiliation. When you see this job in process it looks like the person executing it is completely and totally insane. Looking at the paint go on it doesn't look like there is any hope what so ever of it every working out well. The van looks like a complete disaster and you're sitting out there painting a car with a roller. Basically you will look like an idiot and people will constantly call you out on it. I've just taken to telling people that I am applying a primer. Seriously you will look like you have no idea what you are doing and you will draw attention to yourself. Just be ready and hope that one day it will all come together and your van will once again look like a regular vehicle. Until that day just press on while quietly chewing on your humble pie.