12 September 2025 · 6 min read
If you take a single thing away from this note, let it be this: a respray is not really about paint. It is about the surface underneath the paint. Booth time and material costs are roughly a third of any quality project. The rest is hours, hand tools and patience.
Stage one — inspection and grading
Before anything is taken apart, the car is washed thoroughly and parked under colour-corrected lighting. Each panel is photographed and graded — A, B or C — based on how much remedial work it needs. Grade A panels need a straight scuff and respray. Grade B need filler work. Grade C usually need welding or replacement before they can hold paint at all.
This grading drives the quote. It is the single most important conversation we have with an owner before booking, because it is where we discover the panels nobody had noticed yet.
Stage two — strip-down
Trim, badges, lights and door handles come off. Where the project warrants it, glass and door cards come off too. The reason is simple: paint cannot reach a perfect edge if it has to dodge a piece of trim. Every piece removed is bagged, labelled and photographed.
Stage three — substrate work
Dents are pulled. Pinholes are filled. Rust is cut out and patch-welded. This is the unglamorous engine room of a respray and the part most likely to add days to a timeline. We do not rush it, and we do not invoice it as a surprise — substrate work is quoted up front based on the inspection grades.
Stage four — flatting
Every panel is block-sanded by hand. Power tools are used only for bulk material removal; the final flat is always done by hand because human pressure follows the contour of a panel in a way machinery does not. A guide coat — a fine dust of contrasting colour — is sprayed across each panel and sanded back. Any low spot left behind keeps the guide coat. That is your low spot, located.
Stage five — masking and priming
The car goes into the booth on a rolling cart. Every shut, every aperture, every hint of glass or rubber is masked. A two-pack high-build primer goes down, gets a bake cycle, and comes back out for one more flat — same blocks, same hand pressure, same guide coat.
Only at this point — typically day five or six of the project — does any colour go onto the car.
Why we are honest about all of this
An owner who understands the prep stages is an owner who can tell a quality respray from a budget one. We would rather spend twenty minutes walking you through this on day one than face a conversation about it after hand-back.
Have a project in mind? Send us a few photos and we will come back with a written estimate and a realistic timeline.