Follow Our Progress
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May 19th
2004
With the Jeep out of commission today, I decided to get up at 5AM and
paint the bus before the wind came up.
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Becky and Robbyn joined me in the prepping process
and in an hour or so we had everything masked off so I could
just shoot the paint on. |
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I bought a Wagner Power Painter hoping that it
would do a better job of applying the paint than spray cans or a
roller. I quickly found out that it's not designed to do
anything other than spit paint in the general direction of a
fence.
I tried every adjustment I could to get an even coat of
paint, but every time I let off the trigger the painter shot a
stream of paint and caused a big mess.
After I got about 3/4 of the way through the front of the bus
the spitting painter got much worse and turned my somewhat
acceptable paint job into a dripping nightmare... |
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I was almost in tears by the end. I would
have been better off waiting until I could rent or buy some real
painting equipment.
It was too late to stop though, so I finished the job,
knowing that I now have hours of sanding to do to get rid of all
of the drips & splatters before I continue.
For those of you following along - beg, borrow or steal the
right equipment for the job if you don't want to have your bus
look like someone tossed the paint at it in some kind of new age
art attempt. |
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Notice that there are no close up shots of the
bus. It looks OK from about 15-20 feet away. Any
closer than that and it's apparent that the bus was painted with
something similar to a garden hose... OK, that may be a
bit of an exaggeration - Becky and Robbyn think it looks
fine. I see every run and drip...
I call it the "block away babe" paint job. |
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Emily played in the swimming pool under the shade
of the canopy while the paint dried.
About an hour after Emily came back inside the bus, the
wind made a metal sculpture out of our brand new canopy. I
think it's mostly salvageable - we got it back into the storage
bag it came in anyway. |
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