What I learned about painting fascias

["Grimsrud, Knut S" <knut.s.grimsrud@xxxx>]

I used some of my holiday to learn how to paint fascias and thought I would
share a couple of the key learnings from my adventure. Thanks to Ken
Koncelick who provided a lot of very helpful tips and gave me the confidence
to give this a try.

I had a lot of fun with it and learned a couple valuable lessons:

1) My shop is not as clean as I like to think -- regardless of how clean I
kept everything, it wasn't clean enought for a flawless finish due to dust
flecks. I didn't get any fisheyes, but I did get some dust flecks. I havent
cut the clearcoat yet to take the orange peel out and expect that the
imperfections from the dust flecks will rub out as well as I cut the
topcoat. I not only had a really clean shop to start with, but built a paint
tent around my work area in order to avoid overspray from getting all over
my shop and to also keep the dust down.

2) Surface preparation is really the name of the game -- I thought I got a
pretty darn good surface as I stripped my fascia down to bare plastic,
however minor scuff marks in the underlying plastic fascia are really hard
to get to disappear by sanding down an overlying paint layer

3) Good tools really help -- I was really happy with the Binks HVLP spray
gun I bought. It really made getting even coverage easy and was a joy to
use. The controls for amount of material and spray pattern were easily
adjustable and were not overly finicky in getting good settings to lay down
an even coat. Although orange peel is expected, I was pleased that I got
what I consider a pretty good coverage with minimal orange peel that can
readily be buffed out.

4) Good protective equipment is essential -- in my paint tent I would have
asphyxiated without a good respirator. I made the mistake of not having a
hood over my head and the clearcoat did a pretty good job of serving as
semi-permanent hairspray. For those of you that have met me and know
my hair situation, you probably realize this is not a pretty picture.

5) Get enough paint on for it to get "wet" and flow properly -- I was a
little too timid on my first coat of basecoat and did not lay down enough
material for the paint to flow and get "wet". Fortunatley I intended to sand
this layer for the purpose of smooting out minor defects and scuffs in the
underlying pastic fascia. The next coat went on properly to yield a good wet
coat without putting so much on that I got any sags.

I have a couple minor defects that I will be fixing through a couple means.
I have very mile orange peel that I have not yet cut and I have a few minor
dust flecks in the clearcoat that I also expect will be fixed when I cut the
clearcoat. Currently the fascia is also incredibly glossy (looks like it is
totally wet), but I have yet to cut the clearcoat and expect that by
experimenting with a couple different cutting compounds I'll arrive at the
proper grit to yield the satin finish expected for the fascia.

As you can probably tell I had fun with this. I didn't save any money doing
it myself as the cost of materials and equipment completely offset the
cost of a new fascia, but that was not the intent -- I wanted to have fun
acutally doing the repaint. As many of you might already know, with me the
tools are the end and the projects are only the means.

Knut