Paint dilemma

I would put the paint on a charge card with the intention of paying it off with money from the camper sale.

It will cost you about the same with either spray cans or enamel...primer and paint.

I wonder if the buyer would be interested in choosing the color of the paint? If you're not keeping it, you can advertise as fully restored, just needs paint color of your choosing.

On the other hand, tractor paint is cheap and gives good results. I used one rattle can of primer on bare metal areas, then about half a gallon of base color and a quart of accent color...$50

Wife and I painted our trailer with 1 gallon of high gloss latex exterior house paint, we put the paint on with a roller and brush. It looks good.  I sprayed old paint with laundry bleach, waited 20 minutes rinsed it with the garden hose, let it drive then painted it.  It was dry the next day and we went camping that same day.  A month of hard work striping paint can be better spent camping for a month.

As I've said in the past, we should all do the paint job that makes us happy. If a show quality paint job is your dream, go for it. If a 20' paint job (looks good from twenty feet away) is what you're after, go for it.

IMO a few things have to be considered:
A latex paint job is the same as a sign reading "Half Price Sale". If you hope to get $8K+ for your camper, you better put a couple of hundred into paint and prep it right. If you plan on keeping the camper but have high standards, save up the money for auto paint.

If you're a lousy driver who hits every bush and shrub when backing up, and you plan to keep the camper, don't even waste the money for a gallon of house paint. I'd leave it L'Natural.

I guess it comes down to what will make you happy.

It's the same camper.  Which one do you want?
Before

After


One last thought...if you really want to be camping next weekend, buy a camper from somebody who does restoration work as a labor of love. It's like hiring somebody for $2 an hour. Why bother doing the work if you don't enjoy it?

I agree on latex rolled paint. It just isn't wise to use something that is 1) difficult to remove and 2) doesn't last. Once it fails, the owner has a huge job on his/her hands.

Auto paint is considered to be the best. Many of us don't invest quite that much in our trailers. There are other oil based paints that give good results without paying 100s of dollars.

Spraying is the ONLY method that gives a quality look. A friend of mine rolled his trailer and is now kicking himself because buyers are turning it down due to paint. One offered 5K less because they wanted to repaint.

So, do it right the first time.

A couple hundred hours work for a paint job to get 8K for your trailer is, 200 hours x $20 per hr = $4000.

200 hours is a lot of camping that is 25 days if you never went to work, just stayed home 25 days in a row and worked on it. We could camp our way from TN to Idaho then camp all over the west, Zion, Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Yosemite, we could camp 3 or 4 nights in 10 different places. That is a lot of good camping.

I would gladly sell my camper a few $1000 dollars less not to miss 3 weeks of good camping. By the time I am ready to sell maybe 15 years from now my 8K camper will probably be worth more 15K from inflation.

6 years ago I was shopping for a good used vehicle the insurance company had several hail damaged vehicles price reduced several $1000 below market value. I was looking for a Honda CRV and found one with lots of hail dents it was 10 yrs old with 49K miles not the color I want but I can paint it with a brush. The Honda CRV pulls my tiny Teardrop camper like it is not pulling anything I get 30 mpg with the camper at 70 mph. Few years ago we went to Zion, Brice, Devils tower, Sioux falls, grand canyon, Oatman, death valley, Idaho Falls, silver city, Ely, Tombstone, mount rushmore, rogers spring, great sand dunes NP, all over north and west USA. I don't care how ugly my Honda looks it runs good and gets good gas mileage and pulls my camper. Idaho camping in so nice, wow. My teardrop only weighs 600 lbs.

Thought I'd post a finished paint scheme...starting to add back on all the trim, lights & details. Loads of fun at this point. The colors came out nice and this is all done with single stage automotive urethane.

20180109_095652_HDR by

Now that IS orange over-spray on the drive...hopefully a good powerwash will help!