By Jim H.

Step 1: Save your money and take it to a Paint Shop. If you insist on doing it yourself here is a list of what you will need.

1. (Paint Booth) High tech spray booth to keep your paint from covering everything in your garage. This consists of 4 Mil sheet plastic stapled to the ceiling joist. Tip: cut 1-inch strips of cardboard and roll it in the edge of the plastic before stapling it to the joist. This will keep it from tearing loose and falling on the car just as you finish spraying the last coat of paint!!!!

2. (Ventilation) State of the art ventilation system. This will help keep the over spray from covering your wife's side of the garage and ruining all her business products. The suction device (Bissell carpet vacuum) is placed outside the garage and the hose is run in through the dog (or in my case cat) door to the state of the art filter. (Swamp cooler pad) Also put plastic on the floor or you will have a multi color garage floor like mine.

3. (Air Mask) Do not skimp on: A GOOD dual filter air mask. This is NO joke!! I have painted 7 vehicles so far and if X-rays where in color I'm sure my lungs would look like a tie-dye T-shirt.

4. (Spray Gun) A top quality spray gun (Figure #3) will ensure that mirror finish that everyone wants on their car. I did not mention the air compressor, as I know every real man has an air compressor in his garage.

5. (Sanding) I think that covers all the equipment needed? Now we will fix the chips and scratches. I normally do not sand the car down to the metal or in our case plastic, as then you will need to use correct primers and sealers so your paint will not flake off. If you have a good base leave it alone. If you have a scratch or chip you will have to get it as smooth as you can, because if you can feel it or see it in the old paint it will be a crater in the new shinny paint. Use 400 grit wet/dry sand paper (wet) to smooth out the edges until you can no longer feel them and then apply a primer that is close to the color you will be applying. If it is a light color use gray or if you can find it, white; if dark, you can use red or brown; whatever will be easiest for the paint to cover. Also, be sure you do not use a lacquer primer over enamel, as it will lift the old paint and make a bigger mess than you had to start with. If it does not stay, mist the area, wait a few minutes then mist it again and slowly increase the amount of spray until it is covered. Now use water and 400 grit to smooth out the area again. Continue this process until all areas are repaired before you paint. (You will find at least 10 more chips after you paint, so don't be surprised when you miss some.) Now that the chips are all repaired (you hope) it is time to get the whole car ready to paint. Using a jitter bug with 400 grit paper, wet sand the whole car. (You will now have to go back and repair the half dozen areas that you just sanded through to the surface during this process.) Oh, one more thing, be sure and flush the driveway and gutter often or it will be the same color as your old paint and your neighbors may frown on that. If you are now happy or now do not care, you are ready to move to the spray booth.

6. After you have the plastic dropped down to the floor wipe the car down with a cleaning solution. I use alcohol to get any oil, bugs, tar, and so on off the car. If you are like me you have been driving it through this whole process. I will not go into mixing because the paint store or manufacturer should have told you that. First mist the whole car and then stop and refill your gun. Now mist it again a little heavier this time. Continue this until you have the repairs about the color your applying. Wait a few minutes and then put a finger on a masked off area. Oh, did I forget to tell you to mask off everything except the bottom of the car. TOO LATE!! The tires the bumper and anything that had ANY air getting to it, now has over spray on it. Trust me this will happen. Back to the paint; when you touch the masked off area; the paint should be sticky like glue. Now lay it on. When it starts to shine, put on one more layer and hope it does not run. When you can no longer see (due to the over spray in the air); THEN GUESS. Oh, one more thing. Did I tell you to cover your hair? To late it's red now! Your arms? Should have worn a long sleeve shirt. Also be careful, the plastic on the floor; (now sticking to your shoes) does not pull up and stick to your car as you drag it around. Now that you are finished wait a couple of hours or until the masked off areas are no longer sticky and then put it out in the HOT sun to bake it for you; and hope a bird goes not crap on it. I'm not good enough to get the paint smooth by spraying only, so I wait a day or a week and wet sand the car with 400 grit by hand to smooth out the orange peel in the paint. Now you have to repaint the car as you just sanded through the fresh paint on several of the edges. (Janie can explain how I handled that.) If you're satisfied now, you can start the painting process again and spray the clear coat on the freshly smoothed paint. YOU'RE FINISHED almost. The hardest part is waiting 4 weeks before the clear coat is fully dry so you can wash it with soap and use 1500 grit sand paper to hand buff out the orange peel in the clear coat. Now that that's done and you have just taken ALL the shine out of the paint you just sprayed, just use several different grit rubbing compounds to get the shine back. I thought I was going to die doing this.

7. Well that's what I did; as you can tell I really did not know what I was doing and just got lucky this time. By the way I used Acrylic Enamel Paint. If you live in LA county this is illegal; but not in Kern county. Seriously, I highly recommend you take your car to a PRO, unless you enjoy aggravation, as the VETTE is the best job I've done yet and do not want to do it again. The only reason I did this paint job was Janie insisted it look better for the trip to Bowling Green and I'm too cheap to pay someone else. Total for this paint job was about $550 in painting materials not including the equipment and a month of aggravation. (Aggravation estimate $5,000)