How I Painted My Bus (for Cheap)
The cheapest way to paint a bus (& still make it pretty)
Plenty of people spend a LOT of time and money painting their buses a professional grade & while that’s great for them, it’s not my style for Wilbur. My priorities were: getting back on the road ASAP, building a beautiful bus that I loved waking up to every day that functioned well and let me continue my travels for cheaper than I’d spend on a years rent, keeping a tiny budget tight. To recap, I opted for this cheap way because it was affordable, fast, and looked good to me. I spent under $75 and 6 hours on my entire paint job & a year later, it still looks great.
There were a few things working for me that helped keep it cheap and fast, that might add a bit of time to yours if conditions differ -
my bus had a 20 year old white paint job on it, so it wasn’t terribly shiny & it served as a great base
Fiberglass shell, paint sticks like mayo on toast to my bus shell
Less stickers/reflectors than some
So, without further ado, here is what I did which worked for my bus & hopefully it might work for yours too…
How to paint a bus for $75 in 6 hours:
Materials:
1 gal Ace Hardware exterior paint in “Best Friends” color - $41
Paint brush for edging - FREE - $10
Metal bucket grid - $4
newspaper for mess - free
sand paper - $5
roller brush - $3
6-pack of beer of choice (O’Connor’s El Guapo in this case) - $11
Materials I already had:
A variety of smaller paint brushes
sanders
A pressure washer
leaf blower
Ladder
extender pole
Steps:
Pressure wash the fuck outta my dirty bus with soap and water (I did this the same day I bought him, then let him dry overnight.)
Adhesive Sticker Removal - I did this entirely with peeling & a sander, but I have friends who’ve used Goo Gone & heat guns with success
Bribe a friend with beer to help
Sand my bus - I did a rough sand to just buff out the bus until everything was a little bit scratchy and nothing was shiny. Again, my bus is old - this was not hard. With 2 sanders, this didn’t take us more than 2 hours.
Leaf blow the bus to get the sanded debris off.
Trim the edges and doors - I’m a professional artist, so I’m well practiced at keeping a straight line, but if you’re a perfectionist or just really shaky, a roll of tape wouldn’t cost more than an hour of your time and $5 to tape off the edges.
Use a roller for the remainder of the bus. (There’s a few spots I needed 2 coats on, but the color I chose was a pretty forgiving color and it stuck to the fiberglass so well.)
Paint job review: After over a year on the road, countless tree limbs and car washes and 25,000 miles, I can attest to how well this method held up for me.
