My Trailer Redo- Day 66- Learning to Paint

 
Today was lovely and warm. I was hoping to do two coats of paint, but that didn't happen because you have to wait 12 hours between coats. However, I finished the primer coat on the areas I'm doing at the current time.

Since this is both a record of what I did for me and perhaps a tutorial for others, here's the blow by blow. The paintbrush I'm using for this is a polyester Pro-Edge. I bought 1.5 inchers. I have small hands and prefer the narrower size. Also, most of the body of the trailer will be done with a roller and just tiffed or feathered with a brush. More on that later.



This has nice soft bristles, but with some body. It wasn't the most expensive, but certainly not the cheapest.



Last summer, I did order the recommended brush for the tiffing, which is an expensive one with badger bristles. I'm saving it for the topcoat. I suppose you could make a case for using it on the undercoats, since if they aren't good, the top one can't possibly be. But, anyway, this is what I'm doing.

Rather that use that really expensive thinner (Interlux 333 for brushing) to clean the brush last night, I wrapped it in foil and put it in the refrigerator. It was fine today. I'll let you know if you can keep it for longer periods that way. I suspect, at the price of the thinner, I can buy several brushes.



Today I finished putting the undercoat on the selected areas. As a reminder, this is the Interlux Pre-Kote that goes with their Brightside Marine Enamel.

After you do all the steps to get the surface ready, then at the very last you wipe the area with the Interlux 333 thinner (if you are rolling/brushing) or their 216 thinner if you are spraying. Then you can paint.

The texture of this undercoat is odd. It is sort of like Elmer's Glue. Thinner than I expected and gummy. Make sure you put enough on. Don't try to brush it out too thin. So you brush on in one direction and then feather it (tiff) in the other direction. For the undercoat I brushed it on horizontally and tiffed it vertically.

It dries tacky in a couple of hours, and feels dry to the touch in about 4 hours. At the present temperatures, recoating can be done in 12 hours. It's less if warmer. You can find the exact specs on their website.

By the way, the places that I painted yesterday and had to cover too soon are fine. Maybe a couple of tiny specks of stuff to sand out, but no big gouges.

It leveled pretty well, better where I used more paint. Lesson learned.

Here's one of the side panels. I think you can tell that the recessed rectangle around the window is whiter than the rest of the trailer.



And here's the back window. You can tell I've painted over some of that Bondo, and maybe you can see that it's whiter along the center seam. Just as a reminder, or if you just found this one post, I'm choosing to paint these sections first so I can get the windows back in and the Trim-Loc on the seam. The best way is to do the trailer all at once. (But that's really why I did nothing last year. I couldn't see any weather window that would allow me to do all this, alone, at one go. This is my solution. We'll see how it works out.)



After these places were dry to the touch, I went inside to assess what to do about that window framing board that was in the wrong place. I hadn't really looked at it- just assumed these were fiberglassed in place. Nope. Held on with some kind of construction adhesive. Well! I didn't really know there was one that would hold tight to fiberglass. I'm assuming this works because it isn't really holding any weight. The boards are just there to screw the window frames into. I looked up adhesives, and Liquid Nails Heavy Duty says it's good on fiberglass, so I'm thinking a tube of that will be in my near future.

Disappointed that I couldn't do more today, but pleased with what I did accomplish. Small chance it could get warm enough tomorrow. Otherwise, the long range forecast doesn't look good until next Tuesday.



In other news: Well, I had a stomach ache all afternoon; pretty much gone now, but not entirely. Weird. But I did finally get over being annoyed at having to wait for the paint and spent some time continuing to work on sorting crap in my office.

	See Index for Trailer Refurbish Day 65- Bondo
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