Paint shops/Painters in (or near Seattle)

So........if your looking for a professional paint shop to paint your vehicle they are not going to use anything but quality materials because they cannot afford to have a failure and you be unhappy with the finished job. There's too much gamble involved in labor cost to use cheap materials.

So.......lets consider some numbers. Sandpaper costs me $40/roll for PSA 320, and another $40 for a roll of PSA 400 grit, masking tape is now $20/roll x5, masking paper and plastic drape for over spray, a gallon of automotive UV quality paint, plus activator, plus reducer is an easy $400., you need at least a two part primer for the aluminum, that's $200 (I paid $350 for the last gallon kit I bought three months ago which is a gallon part "A" plus two quarts of part "B"). You not going to have it painted only one color, so you need a quart more ($100.) of a trim color, and more 3M plastic FineLine tape at $20/roll to tape out the graphics. Acetone to clean out your spray gun is $20/gallon. A sign painter is $200 to hand paint the lettering on. Let's just call it $1000 is the absolute minimum cost in materials to do a nice long lasting paint job with quality materials in today's world.

I have painted my own cars/trucks/bronco's/trailers and it's a lot of work. The high cost of painting a trailer is in the time necessary to do the prep work. You need to remove all of the metal trims, the windows, remove all of the putty and gunk. Sanding a trailer with a siding brake pattern is going to require lots of hand sanding after you have exhausted every possibility of machine sanding.

Where are you going to spray it? I have done several in my driveway under a 10 by 10 E-Z-Up with walls. I just tape it off and spray one side in the morning, let it set up, flip the trailer around and paint the other side in the afternoon. The next day, I shoot the front in the morning, and the back in the afternoon. I then tape off the graphic's and repeat the above schedule the next two days painting the second color graphic trim.

I have never found a professional shop paint job for less than $2K, "Plus Materials", which puts the cost at $3K. and YOU DO THE HEAVY WORK. Keep in mind that when I take a trailer to be painted, it's fully sanded, prep'd, graphic's are already taped off, etc. They just put it into the booth, cover the wheels, wipe it down, and shoot. I bring it to them 80% done. I have two different friends that had Breadloft Trailers that were painted during the last year and they were both over $7K.

After you get it back, you will still need to straighten and install the windows, the eyebrows, clean or install new rain rails and awning rail etc. It's an easy 200 hours of labor, or more.

In today's body shop world of high labor costs, very few body shops will even accept a "full paint job" on a car. It takes too much time that they could be doing more profitable insurance collusion work. You need to look for a small shop, or someone that is a body painter and works weekends on the side.

Unless the vintage trailer is a fully restored, a popular year and body model, it's seldom financially worth getting it repainted.

Just my observation.

John Palmer