Projects Eight Thousand Dollars for a paint job?

I've actually had good luck with One Day Paint and Body. Removing all the trim myself and bringing my own paint (no body work) and paying the painter extra to spray more coats. Then paying him to cut and buff on weekends when they are slow. 2 tone paint was $900 and took 3 days. This was for a daily driver but that good enough for me.

 

I did a car last year, materials were $6300.......one gallon of the basecoat was $2900...

 

I have a friend who paid $25,000 to have his 39 Packard Roadster painted. It was money well spent as far as he was concerned. And she was beautiful, and BLACK, NOT a RIPPLE. Iceman

 

A truck just plain costs more than a car to paint.
For a non-show paint, the materials alone such as primer, paint (grey and black) satin clear, reducers, hardeners, paper, tape, etc was $5900: it took 33 hours to paint all the pieces for another $2800 (all labour) and that still doesn't include the body prep, which was almost the same cost as the paint labour and materials.
Could I do the prep work, yes, but no space and the paint shop would not give a guarantee on their work if I did the prep. To get a 5 year warranty on the paint was worth them doing the prep, especially since it was waterborne paints and clear they were using.

 

Wowzeewowoww. I love these threads. It's all perspective. You want shiney color, ask your doctor if Maaco is right for you. $5K in material? Right on. I got $1,500 worth in the shop now and 90% of the membership here would be pissed about how few items that is. I ain't spent none of my client's money for color and clear yet! Any guesses as to what pearl yellow and clear over a white base is gonna cost?

Here's some more perspective for ya, and this is that one that everyone's always pissed about when it happens. Have one of us look over what you did. We'll see where you chinced and cheated, where it's gonna fail 1st, where your arms and rotator's started burning real bad. Even a guy who paints every day in a high volume collision shop will start gettin really pissy after he's got a couple hundred hours in a "paint job". And that's it right there. That PERSPECTIVE I mentioned..."paint job". I hated even typing it! I wish I had a Benjy, even a Grant, for every time I've been asked "..who sprayed it?". Sometimes I say I have a trained Orangatan that pulls the trigger for me but he can't do the stuff that counts. Sometimes, but I don't like to insult a good painter by saying it.

I sort of also figure that the month-long cut n buff gig was part time. Show work can consume a couple weeks just in the final finish. Some even more just due to complicated shapes or square footage. A 33-34 Packard front fender can take 2-3 days before it's 100% ready for the show field just in the cut n polish. but then again, I surface every layer I apply. That includes the base and the clear. I never understood how some techs can go through all the effort to flatten the surface with pads and blocks and sticks, then soft pad or bare hand the wet sanding. Would I paint any car that way? NFW, but I tend to only do the long-term types. Painting my Model A pickup is gonna kill me. I'm liable to get Packard flashbacks...

 

i have never priced out paint and body. I will now return after i change my underware....im gona do it myself. tune in after that project to find out what i do on the next one.

 

Kind of depends on what's involved in the 8 grand.

 

though this is an off topic car for the hamb (2009 saleen convert) we were able to get to see the owner of miller's ale house down here in south fla. the above mentioned mustang had a $17,000 extra on the window sticker for a custom candy apple red paintjob. no bodywork included as it was brand new. sure was an awesome red so deep you felt like you could jump into it

 

There's spending money and then there's spending money. If you spent $5K on materials, you got what you asked for. No reason you have to spend that much. I restore cars for a living, so don't tell me I don't know what I'n talking about. Yeah I've seen the $4K a gallon of special pearl additive etc. But most people don't even need to be near anything like that. $400 -$600 a gallon is easy to spend on just the color if you go top of the line. But for example , most PPG sprayers will go to the Omni for less than half the cost. I just delivered a '67 Firebird I have been working on for a few months. Total for materials was $1800 and that was everything . . . E V E R Y T H I N G you could imagine for a full body restoration. So . . yes. materials are expensive, but you can spend your money one way or you can spend it another. It's no different than anything else in the world, some people are smart purchasers and some people are just purchasers. Think about that a minute . . . . .

 

Depends on how much work had to be done. I had my car stripped to bare metal and problems were found. I then replaced the hood and deck lid. More work to clean up the lines, gaps, etc. I tell people my car had 60 years worth of body work that's why it cost 6 times as much to fix before paint.

 

AGREED!


you can't cut/buff/reclear/wax flat/satin. once you lay it- thats IT. if there is trash in the paint- your fawked. sand and repaint the whole panel.


We are finishing up a Porsche carrera GT..... it aint no little job, nor is it cheap

 

Are you any relation to 29NASH?
You can't compare the Sam Barris Merc to a Yugo, even though they are both considered cars. Nor can you compare Omni paint squirted on a Firebird, to a truly "custom" paint job on a classic automobile.
Or maybe you are just a "smarter purchaser" than the rest of us?

 

hell- the body shop just burned up about 400 bucks in SPRAY CARDS trying to match a pearl (brown/purple/white) on a fender bender.....

hell yea you can blow some money on supplies!

 

like most stuff, depends on what level of the final job you will accept. some people here still think rolling paint on is the way to go. a lot depends on how deep your pockets are.

 

we say the same thing in the Tattoo industry....

 

Aw Pete....I'm not pickin' a fight with ya here, but with all due respect, I can't let that go..."most" PPG schooled painters will not choose Omni unless there's a realrealreal tight budget....and that's because.....(drumroll).......it's just not the same quality as DBU/DBC/DCC. Sorry, brother, it just ain't. Cheaper, yes, but any honest jobber worth their salt will agree it's a lesser quality line. Sometimes buying cheap doesn't equate to buying smart. You're correct that throwing $$ doesn't make it good, but penny-pinching doesn't make it good either.

 

Saving the customer money is one thing, but omni is like playing with fire. It will be a matter of time but you will get burned.

 

I saw this thread and initially thought "$8k isn't bad at all if it's a nice job".

I spent $25,000 painting a small sports car that needed virtually zero body work. No damage or rust whatsoever, never hit, perfect gaps, etc. The original paint (way past saving or preserving) was still on it.

And that was for a VERY nice paint job, but not one that was a Pebble Beach quality one.

 

I work in a collision shop in the SF Bay area. We have a stack of Maaco cards to give to the people who walk in and think a paint job should be $500 or less.
Our "basic" one color paint job is $5000 if there is no bodywork, no extra sanding, no color change for jambs, underhood, inside trunk etc. Being a collision shop in the Bay Area we are not allowed to shoot anything but waterborne base with a urethane clear. Therefore we have to remove all trim, lamps, bumpers and glass unless the glass can be roped to allow the paint to get under the edges. Urethane clear has been known to peel back at taped edges and so we will not give a guarantee on any paint job where all trim has not been loosened to create a gap or removed.
A "complete paint" for an insurance job (vandalism, hailstorm, etc) runs from about $7500 to $10,500 depending on the amount of damage and the size of the car.
Generally a car is in our shop for 3 weeks to a month if it's getting a complete.
Colorsanding and polishing usually takes about 2 days and that's all machine polishing usually starting with 1200 grit,followed by 1500 grit, followed by 3000 grit foam backed pads on a DA before the compound.
We don't make nearly as much profit doing complete paints as we make on a collision repairs. And we don't do any custom paint or full restorations at our shop.

$8000 for a paint job? Sounds reasonable to me.

 

I'm six grand in materials on the F1 I'm almost done with. Granted that's a rotisserie restoration, not just a paint job. But none the less quality isn't cheap. THANK YOU! to the ones that understand it's worth it. I wouldn't even dream of using omni, or any second line materials one one of my builds. But not every car or every owner needs the same quality, or price tag. Hell I can't hardly afford me!

 

a floor mop.....


my weekly metal work blog www.themetalsurgeon.com

 

Yep. Trying to explain the cost and time involved of the job always seems harder than the job itself. About half the people that bring me cars have had cars built or painted before and don't complain. The other half seem to need their hand held while you read them a pop-up book to explain the processes involved.

Also, a very common conversation at my house goes like this-

Her: "Whatchya doin'?"
Me: "Sanding"
Her: "Still!?!?"

And she sees these cars coming and going day in day out!! Still doesn't fully realize what goes into a laser straight paintjob!!

 

x2...make that x3 even

Joe Kress wrote a great editorial article in an early 90s American Rodder on prices of doing metal work and associated bodywork. I too deal with this kinda stuff day and day out..its tedious at times

 

need anything else done? i got room

 

oh boy some eyes are wide open reading this thread,but i know to well the costs involved too...i've owned and operated a shop it is not cheap by no means and gets more expensive every year....and just think mechanic rates are still higher than body tech rates thru collision work....i always loved dealing with the ones that wanted show car paint and body for next to nothing and wanted it done last week to boot

 

I have been building cars for years. My latest project is a chopped 51 Merc. Got an estimate to paint it for $12K. Even though I was prepared and know exactly how much work it is to paint a car, the number still got my attention!. Kind of stalled on that project now. Cars are SO expensive to build nowadays and the money is even more diffiicult to get out of them when you sell. The economy is not helping either.

Sometimes this hobby is not "fun" anymore because of the costs involved....

 

I just had a quote for my '49 Caddy, $27K,...that's a crap load of money for me (unfortunately I am not loaded) however after thinking of what's involved, the persons skill level required to do it properly and thinking of how it will look after,..I sure wish it was $8K, however I can definitely see why it costs as much as it does. Do it once and do it properly!

 

Had to be.. crack open a 55-gallon drum and go for it.

Monday.. white, Tuesday.. black, Wednesday.. blue and so on.

Bob

 

in defense of what peteponies wrote, but not arguing your point, a lot of hobby cars don't see the wear and tear that an everyday car does, they don't go out in the rain, they don't see salt and snow, they aren't left in the baking sun in a parking lot and depending on [here in new england] the number of weekends that we can't drive them do to weather, family events etc..., the cars don't need top of the line paint materials. that said, i hate the omni line, it doesn't cover well, the metallic is "odd" and the color matching is weak. i have painted cars with both high end and base line paints, sometimes there is no need for a "indestructable" paint job on a car that sees 15 sunny days a year, and a dozen trips to the local cruise.
the old "yankee" in me tells me when to wear a parka or when to to throw some sun screen on.