Van Conversion Roller Painting a Van for £100

1. SQUEAKY CLEAN

After realising the next four days were going to be sunny 🌞 we jumped on the opportunity and decided now was the best time to repaint our van, and we already had the paint sitting in the garage.

Since we were painting it outside in our driveway, we had to get the van as clean as possible, so half of day one was spent cleaning the van with soap and water and cleaning every surface (including the roof and above the windscreen).

2. I HOPE YOU LIKE HAVING NO FINGERPRINTS

In order to get the paint to stick to the van without sanding the van’s paintwork down to the bare metal, we still had to scuff the clear coat surface on the entire van.

We used a mixture of fine sandpapers to achieve this (1200, 1500, 2000), although if we were to do it again, we probably would be braver and use something like 600-800 Grit to give a solid surface for the paint to bond to. Also, having a power sander with adjustable speeds would be highly beneficial since we sanded the whole van by hand. Ouch! 👎

Since the van had vinyl lettering on in its past life, the reminisce of the logo adhesive remained, but sandpaper and acetone (nail varnish remover) removed it no problem.

This took an entire day!

3. FINAL PREPARATIONS

In order to protect the plastics, windows, wing mirrors, number plates and more from being painted, we used a combination of masking tape, painters plastic and Christmas wrapping paper (cause why not) to cover anything we wanted to stay the colour it was.

We also gave the van one last wipe down with acetone and white spirit to ensure the surface was as clean as can be. ✨

4. FIRST COAT

Since Sam went to work, Polly was in charge of applying coat #1.

After spending an hour figuring out the ratio of paint: thinner by mixing and testing the coverage on the metal from the fan cutout – 3:1 seemed good for the base coat since it needed to be thin.

It was time.

It was going well until about 30 minutes in… when the foam roller started disintegrating into tiny fluffy pieces all over our new paintwork!! 🤬 (this was an ongoing problem)

It took a while to figure out how the paint behaved and work with it before it turned sticky and started to dry.

The first coat was complete by sunset. 🌇

It was not even, and the silver was still coming through, but that is what the first coat is meant to look like.

Everywhere was painted, including the roof, forehead and backdoors, all single-handedly…7 hours of pure painting. 🕖

top tip

5. SAND AND COAT #2

Sam spent the next morning sanding the van and picking out all the fluff, bugs and bird poop from the paint, whilst Polly closely followed with a roller filled with paint, applying coat 2.

We used a 4:1 ratio this time, and Sam had to learn how to paint, but otherwise, all was well, and it only took half a day. The paint was looking much better after coat #2 but the imperfections from coat #1 were still showing through. 👌

6. EVEN MORE SANDING + COAT #3

After letting the paint dry (the tin said 4 hours), we cracked on with more aggressive sanding to smooth out the surface and started on coat #3.

The rollers were getting worse and worse. There was an ever-increasing roller graveyard laying to rest in cut-up plastic bottles filled with white spirit. Since now we were approaching our finishing coats, it would be best for the paint to be a bit smoother and we needed to figure out a solution quickly. Might need to order more…

And this is when we ran out of paint, ¾ the way through coat #3 (only the back doors and roof needed a 3rd coat).

At this point, we were both bruised and felt like someone had been kicking us in the ribs so the paint running out was a welcome chance to take a break for a while and order more.

7. 21,600 MINUTES LATER…

Due to COVID-19, the paint shop was closed and it took us around two weeks to get more paint delivered, but luckily the weather stayed unnaturally good for Britain in March. ☀️

Since two weeks of pollen and dust had built up, we gave the van a quick clean and instead of re-masking the whole van (the wind and weather had taken their toll), we just unbolted most of the plastics and just tapped off the windows and anything we couldn’t remove.

Probably should have done that to begin with.

8. POOF GO THE ROLLERS

We quickly completed coat #3 and sanded down the van.

Sam left me again for work (how rude), so coat #4 was a solo mission. 🙎

Almost immediately, the new foam rollers disintegrated…oh joy.

We ditched the foam rollers and ended up using hair rollers, which were so much better at manipulating the paint and gave a better finish without all the fluff and drips were much easier to manage since the hair rollers did not absorb as much paint. Lesson learnt.

By sundown, coat #4 was finished, and the van was looking nearly done, probably needs one more coat…

9. MUSCLE PAIN 😩

Coat #5 was a joint effort, and this was the one that would be visible, so we needed it to look as balanced as possible.

Sam sanded the van down one last time, and we both carefully rollered on the final coat, taking special care to keep the streaks going in the same direction as the paint has some gloss to it, which means changes in direction actually reflect light differently.

It turns out painting your van 5 times is enough of a workout to turn your muscles to jelly; the last push was painful! And in all honesty, we were quite nauseous from muscle pain the following days after the painting was done. 😴

But on the other hand, we were burning so many calories we were eating cake and ice cream like there was no tomorrow! 🍰

10. REASSEMBLE

Since we have a tendency to spray paint grey things black, we spray painted our side trims from dull dark grey to jet black and popped them back on the van, along with our front plastic grill and a few other small pieces. It will wear off eventually but looks cool.

We unmasked the van, being careful not to rip it off quickly and destroy the paint around it. 

We bolted everything back on, drove to a remote car park and had a photo shoot in the sun.