After reading for a few months, I finally took the plunge yesterday. I decided to start with my old GMC van's hood, which had a bad case of clear coat peeling, especially on the hood, which was also severely crushed by a falling limb a while back. A few days of polishing up my hammer, dolly and bondo skills (still neds a lot of work)I put the first coat on her yesterday.

My car is a 1993 GMC teal factory color. The Rustoleum 7527 Royal Blue is close, but its not teal, so I decided to try a color match. The original paint is a metallic paint, so I don't expect an exact match. The pictures of the paint can held up to the body make it seem closer than it really is. So, since teal is blue and green, I also bought a can of Rustoleum Hunter Green and proceeded to try small amounts of mixture with blue and green mixed. I finally settled on 2 parts blue and 1 part green, but I may go bluer in the end. The picture with the masking paper makes the paint look a lot lighter than it really is and the last picture makes it look darker. The amount of color variation in these pictures just goes to show how much the camera can fool you, depending on the light quality when the picture was taken. These are all of the first coat of paint!

I mixed 25% mineral spirits, 50% blue and 25% green and got out the rollers. I think the first coat was too thick as it seemed to cover too well. Millions of bubbles showed up, but about 2 minutes later I stroked it with a dry foam brush, and like magic they mostly disappeared. I could see the brush strokes fairly prominently (see the last picture taken as it was getting dark and I was quiting. I was sure I had it too thick, but this morning I can see a color variation where the stokes are, but cant feel any surface lines. I don't see much orange peel yet. I am going to put on the second coat today, unless I decide to wet sand a bit first.

By the way - I bought an empty paint can with a lid at Home Depot because I was mixing colors. When I am done at the end of the day I just pour what is left in that can and put the top on it. I think the metal quart size can costs something like $1 or so.