Painting

After going over every inch of that camper with sandpaper and primer and filler, we knew the features of that shell like skin.  There are lots of flaws from the original molding that I'd never seen before.  After the intensive body work, though, it looked so much better to me.  Primed, as it were, to step into a new stage of life, renewed by paint.We made one last stop on the way to dropping off the camper to see one more  rack of paint swatches.  That and we'd run out of primer.  We did our final priming and sanding touches in the parking lot of Lowe's.It was really tough to imagine a tiny square of colour over the whole camper, let alone how it would translate in the sunshine.  We were settled on a very tight range of tones in green, but there were still many hesitations. Was it too light?  Too pretty?  Too pastel?The cost had made our decision to have it all one colour.  It was considerably more to have it two tone, so it was an easy choice to go one colour.  It will make it look more like a Boler.Among the many other things I knew nothing about in the realm of automotive body work was something about paint.  Most cars are painted with a two stage process.  One stage for colour, then a clear coat.  This is more expensive (much more), and apparently it's not the right thing to do on fiberglass.  Not everyone does the older style of single stage painting any more, where they mix the clear coat or "glossifying" agent in with the colour.  There's more, about matching colour painted on plastic bumpers versus metal, and "side colour", the tone of paint as seen from the side.  It's a science.  We heard the dramatic price difference and sought out single stage please; one colour, sure.When we brought it in we got good reviews on our bondo work and were approved to drop it off.It was a big step, dropping the whole camper off in the back lot of the body shop and leaving it behind.  Totally different than leaving the chassis to get work done.  We'd spent so much time with it lately, and now we were just going to drive away and wait.  On the other hand, it was a relief to stop vacillating about paint colours.  We'd cast the dye.