Painted my - Camry Coupe
 

Had the work done at 1-Day Paint, the national chain. White. You never want to do a color change on a car. Unless you like surprises.

The car glistens like a jewel. There was no body work except for about 6 'dimples'. For $725, I would give them a B+ on the painting, and a C on the dimples. You can still detect ripples where the repairs were made. Visible when sighting along surfaces.

Can we get some pictures of the paint job on your Camry? I don't have much experience with this, but I'm considering a new color for my '05.

You're miles ahead if you can stick with the old color. When you change, all the crevices in open cavities become a nightmare to paint. Under the hood, door edges and frames.

And on resale, the buyer will suspect that you had extensive body damage in an accident. Seriously effects the resale value. Can't you live with fresh paint/same color?

I'll take photos and post tomorrow.

Having learning problems with digital camera. This clearly isn't working, as uploads continually fail. Photo taken under foggy sky.

The paint is flawless. Urethane. But have to wait 90 days to rug out (polish) and then wax. I'll practice more with another digital camera and take some new photos. :(

Having trouble uploading images. Which format do you folks use? Tried .jpg, .jpeg,tiff,HTML without luck.

Third Try
 

Screenshots taken from my Desktop. Will post again in 90 days following paint rub out and wax jobs. Photos will be taken in sunlight instead of fog.

Difficult to tell for sure from the pics but I'll take your word for it, looks really sharp from what I see. Did they give you any guarantee that it would last?

As long as the proper prep work was done to insure that it sticks, I'd be very happy with the cost and outcome.

The paint is backed up by Sherwin Williams and by One-Day Paint. We just had our first real rain of the year in Southern California so I'll wipe it down and spend a more time experimenting with the sole dorkey digital camera in the household so I can post more photos.

As I mentioned earlier, the paint won't be cured fully until the 90-day mark. Then i can rub it out with a buffer and I'll post more shots. That will be in 60 days.

It's good to know that you can get a nice paint job for under a grand these days. Did they paint in around the doors, hood and trunk? I asked our local body shop about mine and he said it would be around $1200 and that was without doing around the doors etc.

Needless to say, I decided to rub out the existing oxidized paint and settle for a good coat of wax.

Our Camry is a pale yellow (not my favorite), was wanting to change that to a nice root beer brown which would go well with the interior.
Maybe I'll find the right place/ deal one day and get it done.
We live rural so it's a good long drive to any of the one-day shops.

If I ever do go this route, I'll do a lot of prep work ahead to try to save as much as possible.

Congrats on the nice paint job, I'm sure it feels more like a new car again!

Nope on door jambs and trunk, etc. That's why I chose not to change colors.
I honestly don't know if they would accept me doing light body work. They might back off on offering the guarantee with an unknown clod prepping before the paint is applied. I was a little dissatisfied with a tad of overspray on the radiator and air dam in the front. A bit sloppy, but not crazy.

About cost. A guy in my cycling club owns an upscale body shop 1 mile from my home. I asked him what he would do the job for, and he turned me away. Said it would be too expensive since all his clientel are insurance jobs.

I've painted cars myself before. And after getting the paint and materials through my employer (FedEx air operations) I invested close to $600 in 1997 for a two stage job on my old Mercedes. That was at a big discount. No color change. Materials are that expensive. From my background in old car restoration, I know that the current going rate to paint a classic is about $5000+. Of course that would including removing the glass. And I guess you know that the per gallon cost varies with the pigment. Red and blue are sometimes 2x what white costs.

If you have a friend who can spray a car for you, someone who has access to a spray booth, you could do the prep work yourself and complete the job for about $300 or so. At all costs, avoid a color change. Painting is quite sensitive to temperature and humidity. I waited for the first cool day of Fall, because the paint flows better. I love in Southern California.

any would do, I'd like to more photos too.

In a few days I'll borrow my daughter's digital camera and upload some better shots.

It looks good, I feel like it would look awesome in light gray or even off whitish yellow - with some white walls maybe. How much does a full color change cost by you?

A color change probably costs about 10% more. I wouldn't even consider it unless all the glass were removed. I've restored 8 antique cars. I did a color change on an old Mercedes and it was successful.

I had people stopping me in the street asking to buy it. On one other car, the finish was so bad I had to sand to bare metal, so a color change was easy. Otherwise, it isn't advisable.

As to choosing a color, it helps to get a small toy car of your model and to paint that and see how it looks. Color can do unexpected things according to body shape. I'm miles ahead with my Camry because it is a 2-door. The lines simply look great.

Wow i am really impressed by how you car turned out and also the price. Thanks for sharing.

If you saw the Rose Parade, you know that my part of the country is experiencing beach weather right now. Blasting sun during the day. I've given the car its 6th washing since the paint job.

The bright light is revealing flaws that don't make me happy. Not the fault of 1-Day Paint. I should have cleaned the car and inspected it carefully to be able to mark all dimples in the body work before it was painted. I did this at night using a strong lamp. But the car wasn't clean, so I missed some. 1-Day charged me an extra $140 to fill in those blemishes. It would have been worth another $100 to get them all. I missed a few, but on a white car, they don't attract attention.

A higher grade paint job would take care of any such annoying blemishes, without me having to mark them out with a grease pencil. All my auto polishing and detailing supplies arrived today from AutoGeeks. So I'll give it the final polish in the next week or two and then seal the finish, take photos with a better camera and then post them here.

One thing is clear, using microfiber mitts and towels during washing eliminates those minor scratches and swirl marks that dull a finish. And that is only a $25 investment.

A decent paint job is possible from the 1-day shops but prep work is the key.

whole body paint cost me 3 days because of limited resources... I'll get my things up this year, hope so ;)

Yea, it's worth it. Just put aside some dough from your paycheck every week. However, when you get a new paint job, add a little flair to it. Maybe a stripe or something, just to show what a unique ride you got. It could run like garbage but at least it would look like cherry.

that's an nice stuff it would help me a lot thanks for the post and good jobs guys.........

Been busy, but I'm back
 

Sorry to have fallen down on the info in this post. I started in January, and now, finally, I own a high end digital camera. So in an hour or two I'll take high resolution photos of the car for you to see. This week it had the interior redone and I'm a little bushed from washing it just now.

As soon as I rest and have a cup of coffee I'll show you what a good paint job looks like. A $700 paint job. Then in a day or so I'm going to buff that out to demonstrated the depth possible in a white finish. It looks good now, but it will resemble a pearl in a few days.

And I learned a few things. I would never again recommend the shop that recovered one leather seat and did an interior detail job. Going to an industrial area south of Los Angeles I thought low prices would go along with low rents. What I got was low quality. A friend living in artsy-fartsy Pacific Palisades just informed me the local car wash will detail a car for less. And they work on Rolls Royces and Maserattis. For $100. Live and learn, as they say.

But I'm pretty happy with the paint job performed by 1-Day Paint at the beginning of October. It is fully cured (90-days required) and is lush. In that time I've picked up a bit of debris in the paint so I have to rub the finish with a clay bar. Very critical before ever buffing out, waxing or repainting. If you don't know what Clay rubbing is, go to autogeeks.com and watch their video.

I've never used sealer on a car before. It's an alternative to waxing and sort of cloaks your finish in armor plating. If you want additional shine, you can follow sealing with a wax finish. That's what they do with show cars.

Anyway, back with pix in an hour or so. I'm old, I'm slow and I'm dangerous because I think I know what I'm doing. Ha!

The Results -- before buffing out repainted finish
 

(a new learning curve-- how to work the camera. It's an expensive camera, but these shots don't do the paint job justice)

more shots
 

Still trying to learn uploads on this forum and camera info.

Interior
 

Only right bucket seat need leather recovered.

do you have some better look for more nearer view :)

Do you want a nearer view of the outside or inside?