So Nice. I Did It Twice

How can you describe the feeling you get when completing something that you created with your own hands? For me, it is a type of overwhelming satisfaction and pride that can only be attained through instances such as this. Ever since childhood, I have had a desire to create, whether through art or even writing. At my young ages, I had stuck mostly to drawing pictures, but as I got older I broadened my horizons into the genres of writing, woodworking, blacksmithing, and now, most importantly, automotive restoration. The earliest age I can remember becoming interested in cars was age 12, when I was given a black 1970 SS El Camino model car with racing stripes on the hood. I was intrigued with its style and beauty, probably because I had not seen any other vehicle like it in my day. From then on I had made it my decision to search for that car, buy it, and make it look as good as that model did. At approximately age 14, I had found a 1984 El Camino that was in excellent condition, and I spent my entire savings on it. As risky as that decision was (I knew that it may need work eventually), I was determined to do whatever was necessary in order to make that car my everyday, reliable driving car, and make it look like my model. Through the years I did indeed have issues, which caused me to put two engines in it and replace/rebuild things such as the back end, transmission, and (of course) the stereo. Most recently I decided to take on the extensive process of giving it a new paint job. It was my dream to paint the car almost exactly as it is on the model car that I was given. This decision will prove to be more timely and tedious than I would have ever expected.
For those who are not aware of the process involved in painting a car, the first step is to choose paint and buy all of the needed components for the paint such as primer, hardener, reducer, and possibly clear coat. I, being an upper-classmen in high school at the time, did not have any large sums of money to dump into a high class exterior restoration, so I acquired the help of a friend who happened to be a professional automotive restorer (lucky, right?). Well with his help I discovered a car event in Carlisle, Pennsylvania that sold car paint for a relatively affordable price of 90 dollars. This may sound like an expensive can of paint, but in truth a good quality, respectable can of car paint can run an average of 300 dollars per can! I felt as though I was the luckiest kid around, beings how I was going to paint my historic car in the dream design for free with a professional. I could already picture the sleek, black shine with the two signature style SS stripes on the hood. The second [two-part] step in the painting process is to sand off the layer of paint on the car and fill the minor dents and imperfections with body filler. This, I was told, would be the most important part in the entire process because with black paint every imperfection will be noticeable and, unfortunately, I had a fender bender that had dented the tailgate to about the size of a basketball. After many days of this tedious and somewhat frustrating work, the third step comes into effect, which is to prime the entire car with a simple spray can bought at Wal-mart or Ace Hardware.
With the car body perfected and primed, the final step is to spray the car with paint. The day had come when the painting was done, and the car had been dropped off at my house with its fresh coat of black paint. I came out and took a look at it. At about 40 feet the car looked great. As I approached the car I began to notice that it had the texture that you would see on a really shiny orange peel. I was curious, but my friend reassured me and said that the car will need a final wet-sanding (sanding the car with water or some other type of lubricant) and then will need to be buffed in order to bring out the shine. I was eager to see it perfected so I started the sanding within the next week. Again, it was tedious, but I kept my mind on the final outcome. With the sanding done, I began to buff. That is when I noticed something very disappointing: the car looked clouded and smudgy. The paint was a jet black when it was sprayed on but after the sanding and buffing it looked like a cloudy, imperfect dark grey. My patience just about had it at that point. When I took the car back to my friend’s garage to paint the stripes on the hood, I asked about the disappointing result of the paint, and he simply said that it requires more buffing and everything will turn out fine. This reassured me, as I reminded myself of his extensive background in historic car restoration. Anyway, I began to lay out the tape in order to shape the stripes in an extremely meticulous fashion, which ended up taking a grand total of almost 2 hours to complete. The day ended with him spraying the white and then both of us taking the tape off to reveal a rather astonishing set of stripes that I was indeed proud of.
The next day was Labor Day, a mere two days before I began writing this, and that was the day that changed everything. My father and I devoted all day to giving the car a final buff and attempting to make it look like it should. After about two long hours of buffing the car, it didn’t look any better than when we had started. I was to the point of being infuriated and so was my father, so we decided to take the car to a professional that we had dealt with in the past that we knew to be an excellent painter. When we brought him outside, the first thing he said was, “What happened??” At that point I was full to burst with anger and knew that it wasn’t just me that knew something was up with this paint job. We asked what caused this to happen and how we can fix it. He continued to ask what kind of paint we used. The type of paint was called acrylic enamel which, he told us, was the type of paint that takes 90 days to set properly before sanding and buffing. We waited a week after spraying it to start sanding, and there in lies the problem. He also asked how much we paid for the paint. After we responded, he said rather nonchalantly something that filled me not with anger, but with sadness: “The type of paint you bought is the paint someone would use to paint a dumpster, or a mailbox, or even a car that would be used to take trips to the dump every week.” As horrible and pathetic as I felt, I continued and asked what we should do. “Well, if you did manage to fix this paint job, it would look like crap in about a year, and you’ve already sanded and buffed the heck out of it to the point that about 75% of the layer of black is gone, so it’s simply too thin to work with” continued the man. One specific sentence struck me very hard and will probably stick with me every time I look at that car: “That’s a shame because it seems like you guys meant good and, if it was done right, you could’ve had a show car.” Feeling bad for us and our attempt at making a beautiful car, he offered to re-paint the car for free if we sanded it all to a new, smooth, clean surface and supplied the paint. I immediately took his generous offer and was completely rejuvenated. I actually had hope now, and it felt as though that burden was lifted off my shoulders. I might actually get to see my car the way I pictured it as a child.
This experience has taught me more than I would expect an average person my age to know, which is that if you work and strive for something, and it doesn’t come out the way you expected, it is simply a learning experience and something that a person must go through in order to understand the way the world works. In my case, the experience was with my car. In other’s cases it might be something different, but either way the fact still remains that if it hadn’t happened the way it did, you or I wouldn’t have learned much of anything from the experience.