Your about to paint your caravan, what do you need to do first?!?
When working out the paint, you need to check what sort of paint you are painting with and what primers that needs.
Most people have advised me to use Coach Enamel Paint. I called Craftmaster Paints, to see what primers where needed for Coach Enamel. They informed me of the following -
Etch Primer (on any bare metal, being very careful not to get any on painted areas)
Thinner (to clean any brushes and thin the primer if need)
Primer (over the Etch and any painted areas)
Undercoat (possibly 2 coats)
Coach Enamel top coat (possibly two coats)
Each coat would need to fully dry. This way has been done for years and years, it gives wonderful results.......
After lots of digging on YouTube, lots of reading and some advice from a friend I have gone for a different product.
Rust-Oleum Combicolor, this is only needs one coat of primer and 1 to 2 coats of paint. It works out much cheaper, also a lot less time.
This product is quite new to the UK so only time will tell if I have made the right choice! It is mainly used on cars, often many coats, of thinned paint, each layer being sanded. For the caravan I have picked satin, and not to thin each layer. I know people would tell me off for wanting to save time, as we all know things should be done right in the first place (am fixing/fixed lots of 'quick fixes' on Daisy) but I want to use her!!
I have only just started to paint with Rust-Oleum Combicolor, so I can not confirm the final finish or how well it holds up!) Please do some digging of your own and make sure you are happy with the product you pick! There are many other products which you maybe able to use apart from the two noted above ;)
Once you have picked your paint, you now need to work out how much paint you need!
The best way to do this is to work out the square meter of the area which needs paint. (Most paint companies work on square meters.)
Trying to do this in my head did not work so the best way is to draw out your caravan.
Very basic but you get the idea!
So get the size top to bottom of the panel and then side to side. (width and length)
width 4.42 meters x length 2.06 meters = 9.11 square meters!
This is the total panel size not taking into account windows (you can get the size of the window and subtract that from your total.)
I worked out the total for each panel, the total of the whole van and a total for each colour (The middle panel is a different colour so I worked out just that panel.)
You can see how much more detailed I got with it!
I worked out the total square meter of the van is 33.85 so if I needed two coats that's 67.7 meters squared!
This is the calculator I used to work out the square meter!
So for my caravan which is 14.5ft caravan I need 3.5lt of cream and 2.5lt of green! This is for two coats of colour and leaving a little extra over. You have to take into account the different sizes of tins you can get, so you may need less paint but not get a small size tin. Fingers crossed I will only have/needed 2 tins of primer (750ml) as its so thin!
Hope that helps, work this out before you price up your paint! It is a lot cheaper than spraying it but each tin do add up!
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