Painting the front bumper

So finally, I had time to paint! In the previous post I showed the bits I sanded. The next step is to wrap your car in paper or plastic, whatever has your preference. I used newspaper and it proved to be fine.

Wrapping the car up like this took me a few hours. You have to make sure the paper (or tape) doesn't touch any painted areas which was a little tricky because I actually had paper behind the sides of the bumper.

The person(s) who previously painted this car did a shit job on wrapping their car, there is residue everywhere. Take your time and make sure every little gap is closed.

Also make sure that the tape is stuck on really well where it's going to touch wet paint so the paint doesn't crawl underneath!

From the left...

From the right.


When the car is wrapped up nice and tight, get your de-greaser. I had actually washed my bumper with soap already before I started wrapping and now I cleaned the remaining grease and other fatty crap (if any!).

I used this:

Just before painting I removed any dust with a sticky cloth just to make sure there was no dust on the surface anywhere:

Then I got my plastic primer (since it's a rubber bumper instead of metal!) and shook the can for 2-3 minutes.

It's VERY important to shake your cans, wether it's primer or paint!

The primer dried within minutes so I hardly had time to shake my can with white paint. I would like to point out again that it is very important you shake your can well for 2-3 minutes!

When applying paint, do not rush and better spray less than more. Take your time. It's very easy to get drip-lines. If you are uncertain of how to spray-paint, try it out on a piece of cardboard to become familiar with the spraying distance and speed.

One layer of paint.

Six layers of paint.

About 9-10 layers of paint and we're done.

Not...

So, that's what I thought but my sanding was wrong... Not happy but what did I know. The problem was that the "feathers" on the side of the sanded spots were not long enough. Because of this and the original layer of paint and primer being quite thick, the sanded spots showed as holes, if that makes sense? When looking over the bumper, without much effort you could see where the spots had been, or actually still were. They became "dented" areas. I didn't get this far to end up with a shitty paint job so a few days later I got my sander from home and bought 180-240 paper for it. This time I made sure the feathering on the sides was a lot bigger so that the sanded areas would be much less visible.

Bigger feathers = smoother sanded aeas.

Since there were a few days in between, I degreased again and after that I used the sticky cloth again to remove any dust. Then I applied enough layers of paint on the sanded areas only and then a few layers on the whole bumper.

The result was a hell of a lot better than before. Big lesson learned!

It was dark when I finished and I also wanted to apply a clear coat or two which I didn't have so I left it there.

When I had more time and the clear varnish I only dusted with the sticky cloth since there was no grease and then I applied two layers of the clear varnish. It makes the bumper a bit shinier.

It dried real quick so after a short while I carefully removed the paper and tape.

And here is one really lovely first paint-job that I am quite proud of:

Not bad eh?