We have finally painted our bus purple and wanted to share our procedure with any of you who might be interested.
First step - about 16 total hours of sanding....
Next - about 2.5 hours of disassembly and taping
Next - about 6 hours of spraying primer and moving ladders around
Next - about 3 hours of wet sanding and touching up
Next - about 5 hours of spraying paint and moving ladders around
Finally - about 1 hours of removing tape and touching up
Sanding was a royal pain. We finally purchased a Wagnor Paint-Eater from the local Lowes. It made our lives so much easier, but we complete destroyed one of them within the first 3 hours of sanding. Thankfully, Lowes returned it and gave us another one. This tool was vital to sanding around all of the rivits and screws
We sprayed exactly one gallon of Dupont Nason primer. This was enough to cover the bus. We sprayed it on thick on the roof because we wanted to make sure it was covered the first time. After the primer was mixed, it turned out to be exactly 1.5 gallons.
Two gallons of Dupont Nason single stage paint. We chose the paint color MB151 from NAPA's paint books because of the color and the purple metallic in the paint. - Note: painting a bus is not cheap.... This is our most expensive investment to date. (paint total was close to $700 - not counting tape and sandpaper) After mixing, this worked out to be almost 3 gallons of spray-able material. We put two coats of paint on and did a bunch of touch-up work.
Prism Powdercoating in Ayden, NC powder coated out light brackets and side mirrors. They look awesome!!!
Total paint expenses - $120 primer + $600 paint + $150 supplies = about $900. We are very pleased with the results and I cannot image any paint shop being able to match this price given all of the labor involved.
If you are interested... check out our website at
http://www.purpleshortbus.com