The process of getting the base coat was not only the most expensive, but the least interesting and I believe the most poorly done stage of the process. Do not be suprised if this happens to you in the future. I may even have gotten angry if I wasn't just going for a relatively blank slate to work my own wonders with.
Thanks to my photostyler-aided doodles, I knew, more or less, that I wanted a pretty light grey to start with. You can always go darker with blast points and such, but taking it the other way is quite a mess. So then. Very light grey.
I pulled out the phone book. Called a few numbers. Asked for a price estimate. The first three looked pretty grim: I didn't want to pay more for a base color than we had shelled out to get the car in the first place. Rather silly.
So, I went for who I knew to be cheap. That's right: Maaco. And let me tell you: Uh-oh is right. But, I could afford it. Talking to the lady over the telephone, I was assured that they would stroll right past 'Quality' and 'Being Thurough' if you wanted a cheap job. Good, I thought. I'd bring it in, and see what they have to say in person.
The Maaco I thought to be only a stone's throw from somewhere I knew turned out to be a Hop, Skip, Jump, and Pole Vault in the opposite direction from where I thought it was. Should have double-checked the address. I checked the address. It didn't help. Finally found the place after having driven in circles for an hour. At least my stereo was functioning at the proper levels.
I talked to the man behind the desk. He took one look at me, and said that the $500.00 paint jobs were on sale: $225.00. Wow, I thought. I was all ready to take the $200.00 paint job at face value. Cool. The desk guy must have been a Star Wars fan. I was wearing my Insider T-shirt. Might have been something else though.
Naturally, I watched the guy like a hawk when he was filling out the form. Yes, it did say to do the medium-quality paint job at the schizzo-quality price. Would I please pick a color, asked the man behind the desk, so he could finish filling out the form? I took a look at the color chart, and immideatly zeroed in on the light grey - interestingly enough, the color's title was "Star Glo Silver". Good start.
After an agonizingly long time without my car (About 4 days. Hey. My car and I are extensions of eachother. 4 days is a long time...), I went to pick it up. Paid. No problemo. Didn't look too closely at it before I hopped in and drove back to work: I was on my lunch break.
Upon my return to work, I took a slightly closer look at the overall paint job. Hmm. Can you say 'Overspray'? Maaco certainly could. They could also say 'Drippage'. If I had actually PAID $500.00 for this "$500.00 paint job," I may have been more than a tiny bit miffed.
I guess the moral of this story is, once again, you generally get what you pay for. If you were going to go for a *Good* paint job, don't go cheap because that's what it will end up looking. However, Maaco suited my purposes nicely. The cheapest paint job out there, and it covered *most* of the surface. Well, at least the bits you can see. Let's just hope it stays put...
[Not two years later, and the Maaco paint just below the windows on both sides of the car is peeling. PEELING! Jerks. Don't go to Maaco unless you're prepared to deal with this sort of thing in less than two years time. Arr.]