I tackled
painting my
Burro last week. Kind of a mixed bag - I spent a lot of time on prep, sanding and sanding and sanding and sanding.
One fun thing I did with the prep was take off the "fins" on the side of the
Burro. I dunno if there's a better word than that - the narrow ridge that accents the bulge for the
tail lights. I never liked those, they didn't match the other lines on the trailer. Well, 30 seconds with an angle grinder took them right off... and left a 1-inch gash in the side of the trailer. Easy to patch from the inside, however, then fill in with
fiberglass gel from the outside. Took a fair amount of sanding to get it smooth, but I was pleased with the end result.
I was feeling really good about the prep as I began to
paint.
However, I ran into problems with the primer (Interlux) - it went on way too thick and orange peeled and showed lines. Another three days of sanding didn't fix all the damage. I wish I would have skipped primer completely, in retrospect. Thinning it out by about half would have helped, but this is my first
paint job and thinning a high-cover primer seemed counterintuitive.
I top coated with Brightside. That stuff rocks. It covered a fair amount of the damage the primer caused. I really didn't tip much - just rolled gently over the lines a few times as the
paint dried. The only problems I ran into was when I ran out of foam rollers and tried to re-use a partly dried one. That was a mistake. If I were to offer a tip - it would be to thin, thin, thin. I was using mineral spirits on series of hot days. It evaporated so fast that it would go from too thin to too thick in about 10 minutes. What worked was just pouring a splash of thinner in my
painting pan and rolling a little on. If it was too thin, wait five minutes and try again. Better too thin than too thick, though.
I did three coats, sanded between the first two. I would rate the finished product a 5 or a 6 out of 10. If it weren't for the primer problems, I'd think it would rate a 7 or 8. It looks good from 20 feet, decent up to 5, you can see the flaws closer than that.
A day after the final coat, we took it up a four wheel drive road to one of our favorite camping sites. The paint held up well - even though the bikes swung on the rack and busted out one of the back
windows.
I'm satisfied even though I'd hoped for better. It was a lot of work, but it needed to be done and my total cost was about $200.
Oh, one other note. With two coats of primer and three top coats, I ended up using maybe a third of a gallon each of primer and Brightside. I could have gotten away with two quarts of each, although there's not much cost savings there. If I get motivated later in the summer, I may put another coat or two on, since I've got plenty of extra paint.