When we first took on the RV re-do project, The Vision of painting the outside was one of the BIGGEST (or most intimidating) parts for us. So after a few YouTube videos, we were feeling confident enough to go for it. And, like most of this project, we weren’t really concerned with producing “showroom quality” stuff… we just wanted to paint!
I have mentioned before that we have been lucky enough to use our good friends auto shop after hours. It has been AWESOME. Since this was all going down in the Utah freezing cold, doing these kinds of renovations would be impossible without the help of Car Finder Utah (I figured it was about time we do a formal shout out!) If you guys need a car, these are the experts. They can find anything for you! Give them a call!
As we decided to tackle the painting project, we knew that we would need some serious manpower. We needed as many hands on deck to help prep that we could get! You know, the RV is small… until you have to remove all the grease and 25 years of nasties from every inch of it! Then it suddenly becomes HUGE!
Another huge part of the paint prep was stripe and label removal. Holy cow, what a job! These stripes were on there to STAY. Some of them came off nicely, but most of the stripes were cracked and weathered and were not going to come off easily.
We attacked the stripes with razors, acetone, wire brushes (DON’T do this, right Landon?)… and NOTHING was working very well. It was just taking for-ev-er.
So, we sent Zach on a Research and Development mission to the University of YouTube. He came back a bit later with a rubber wheel in his hand. He stated that he saw this thing laying on the work bench earlier and was wondering what it was… then, after reading a few pin stripe forums, discovered that it was to remove stripes! Oh man, what a difference!
Here I am going to town on the stripes with the rubber stripe removal tool. What had taken several hours to do before, took a few minutes with this thing. What a difference the right tools make!
After removing all the stripes and lettering (and the fact that we took off all the compartment doors), Our Vie was left looking pretty naked.
So, with everything removed, wiped down, acetoned, vinegared and prepped as well as we could, the next step is TAPE and PAINT!