That customer who told me his paint job should only cost $200 because he saw it on YouTube

Guy walks into my shop with a 1997 Civic covered in duct tape and wants a full respray for $200 because some influencer did it with rattle cans, so I handed him my graveyard of failed DIY paint jobs and asked which one he wanted to match.

3 comments

3 Comments

rubyshah23d ago

And the thing nobody talks about is how these YouTube painters conveniently edit out the part where their clear coat fails six months later or they’ve got orange peel so bad it looks like a golf ball. I had a guy bring me a bumper he did with a Harbor Freight gun and he was so proud until I pointed out the fisheyes and runs that were basically holding the paint together. Then he admitted the video only showed the three coats of paint, not the four hours of wet sanding and buffing that came after. Social media makes it look like you can just spray and walk away, but that finish is gonna start peeling right off when the sun hits it for a summer.

milacraig23d ago

People skip all the boring work in videos then wonder why their real life looks nothing like the screen.

kellyjones23d ago

Laughing at myself because I literally watched a video last night thinking "yeah I could do that" while they skipped the part where they cleaned the gun for an hour after each coat. @rubyshah nailed it with that Harbor Freight story, I've got a buddy who still thinks his orange peel is "texture" and won't let anyone touch his car. My own garage projects usually end up looking like I gave up halfway through and just went inside to watch the rest of the video instead.