First Look at Patriot Blue Paint!

We spent a lot more time putting the plastic sheeting up on the paint booth than we thought we would, but it turned out pretty well. The little duct-tape pieces on the door keep some magnets in place. The door has two flaps, one that tucks into the booth and one that stays outside. By sticking the magnets together, the flaps are sealed to the wall, thus sealing the booth. It works well, but takes two people to properly seal the door. The white squares are three furnace filters designed to trap overspray before the air exits the booth.

We sprayed sealer on the doors and the nose of the car (because they both fit in the booth) on Friday, and that evening we had a decision to make:

With rainy weather closing in on Sunday, we were not going to be able to spray sealer on the body AND paint the whole car in one day. We decided to paint the doors on Saturday, figuring we could learn from the experience to be better prepared to spray the rest of the car. So...

We modified the door buck to have less interference when spraying, then we carefully cleaned the doors and fired up the fan...

We mixed up a total of 20 ounces of PPG Patriot Blue paint and covered the doors in just two coats...

Then we mixed another 20 ounces of clear coat and applied three coats to the doors!

These pictures were taken with a flash to show the way light plays on the paint. It was too dark Saturday to take pictures once the doors were dry enough to handle, and today it has been dark and rainy all day.

They look even better in person, and we're pretty proud of the way they turned out. We do have a little bit of trash in the clear coat here and there to clean up, and there are a couple of small runs to be addressed. Still, it was a great weekend!

The 10-day forecast does not look good for paint, so the best we can hope to do is to get sealer onto the body so that we're ready for paint when the weather improves. Maybe by then I'll have the blue paint out of my fingernails! :-)