A Night in the Paint Booth

A couple of years ago there was a kid’s movie with Ben Stiller called A Night at the Museum. Well, today’s blog is entitled A Night in the Paint Booth – for obvious reasons that will be made clear a little further down this page. 

Cleve primes the repaired sides

Much was accomplished on Wednesday. Both short sides of the slide out room were painted and sprayed with clear coat. Tomorrow they will be buffed. All of this work was done in the paint booth.

The paint booth is huge. They can get a 45 foot motorhome
in there.  Moose is only 40 feet long. 

Painting was finished late Wednesday afternoon but they needed to wait as long as possible before moving us outside. We asked if they had any problem with our camping overnight inside the paint booth. After thinking it over for about a minute, the shop foreman thought that was a great idea. If it were to rain overnight then when they brought us back in the morning, they would have to blow the rainwater off the roof and possibly turn on the propane heaters to dry any remaining moisture before painting the roof. At 161˚F that wouldn’t take too long.

So Wednesday night we were in quite possibly the quietest location of the past nine months – the paint booth at Xtreme Paint & Graphics. Good thing neither of us is claustrophobic.

With masking in place,

Moose was ready to be painted.

Today (Thursday) the roof was painted. It takes a lot of preparation. Previously, the entire roof was sanded. Today all sides of the coach has to be masked with a thin film of plastic (just like those thin drop cloths we all have struggled with when painting at home). Anything on the roof that should not be painted was also masked. Then they sprayed two coats of a white urethane with a crushed glass additive mixed within the paint. The crushed glass creates a non-slip surface, making the roof a lot safer to walk on. As soon as the first coat was applied they went back and sprayed a second coat. Then the roof was baked for about 90 minutes in the paint booth. When Moose was backed out of the paint booth three guys washed the entire coach.

Our new white roof will reflect a lot of heat and keep water out.

We spent a lot of time the last few days hanging out in the office at Xtreme.  They have a one year old Cairn Terrier puppy named Dezul, and he is the cutest little guy.  I've been taking him for walks -- much to Trixie's annoyance.  They "exchanged words" a couple of times over ownership of a chew toy and Milk Bone biscuits, but by and large Trixie put up with the young whipper snapper.

Dezul has an endearing trait of falling asleep with a toy in his mouth. 

Sort of like havinga pacifier for canines.

Here the "combatants" sleep almost side by side.

Tomorrow we head drive a few miles south and over to the "Mother Ship": Motorhomes of Texas for some service issues.



Stay tuned.