Painting interior gel coat

[Trillium Girl]

Hi everyone!

My husband and I have a 197? Trillium passed down from my parents. I really want to repaint the interior, as part of it is the original avacado green gelcoat, and the rest is a mixture of spray paint colours that have been done in an attempt to fix chips, but none of them match the gelcoat...

So I am wondering what my best bet is for painting everything, gelcoat included? Is it possible to paint all of this with spray paint? Any primer/sanding required? I am trying to do all of this as cheap as possible, but I don't want it looking like garbage either...

I hope you all can help!

Aubrey

[Sam and Jess]

We just started painting our (yellow-orange!) interior fiberglass with regular Rustoleum (or Tremclad in Canada, I believe) yesterday. We...
1. sanded lightly with 120 grit
2. rolled on a coat of Kilz primer -- spray primer would have been smarter.
3. sanded again to get rid of the terrible roller texture
4. sprayed. Primer and paint are both white, so it only took two coats of spray to get full coverage -- we've used 2 cans of paint so far for two modules (the upper kitchen and one side of the dinette). Our hardware store had larger "33% more free!" cans for $4.99, so price is manageable so far.

Oh, and, we DO have the furniture all out of the trailer right now, so access is pretty easy. Having to work with everything IN the trailer would add a significant amount of prep/masking.

The finish is shockingly nice, especially for such minimal time and investment. Go for it!
I'll try to update with a picture or two later.

[Jeannette N]

Originally Posted by Trillium Girl

Hi everyone!

My husband and I have a 197? Trillium passed down from my parents. I really want to repaint the interior, as part of it is the original avacado green gelcoat, and the rest is a mixture of spray paint colours that have been done in an attempt to fix chips, but none of them match the gelcoat...

So I am wondering what my best bet is for painting everything, gelcoat included? Is it possible to paint all of this with spray paint? Any primer/sanding required? I am trying to do all of this as cheap as possible, but I don't want it looking like garbage either...

I hope you all can help!

Aubrey

Hey Aubrey,
I got info from someone on this site to use appliance paint to paint the fiberglass. It worked great!
I used some acetone to remove the gloss and then sanded with 220 sandpaper.
Then used tack cloth to get the grit off and then just rolled on the appliance paint. It dries nice and hard and seems to be pretty durable and looks great.

Good luck!
Jeannette

[DonDeutsch]

Originally Posted by Jeannette N

Hey Aubrey,
I got info from someone on this site to use appliance paint to paint the fiberglass. It worked great!
I used some acetone to remove the gloss and then sanded with 220 sandpaper.
Then used tack cloth to get the grit off and then just rolled on the appliance paint. It dries nice and hard and seems to be pretty durable and looks great.

Good luck!
Jeannette

I have used spray appliance paint with good results, but who makes the canned paint?

[Jeannette N]

Originally Posted by DonDeutsch

I have used spray appliance paint with good results, but who makes the canned paint?

It's the same as the spray on made by Rustoleum. I had to look a bit to find a can locally. Ace had it then but only one color. They make it in colors but you'd probably have to order it online to find it.

A small can goes a surprisingly long way.