How much does it cost paint a motorhome? Many people dream of purchasing an older model RV and renovating it; however, the ancient exterior design of a 20 year old RV can cause a mental block that prevents that vision from becoming a reality. Along with the dreamer, there are thousands of current RV owners that possess out of date travel trailers, fifth wheels, and motor homes with the same mindset. Perhaps one of the aforementioned is you. Renovating the interior of an RV is fairly doable for most DIY renovators, but a full body paint job is intimidating even for the most highly skilled DIY’r. The option to painting your RV yourself is to pay an auto body paint shop to do it.
Is paying a shop to paint your RV really an option because most individuals would not think that it’s not. This belief typically causes them to abandon their dreams of completely renovating their RV but the answer may actually surprise you. Quickly let’s talk about what it would cost to have your RV painted. When thinking of a full body paint job for an RV, compare it to a paint job for a car. It can cost very little or it can cost a lot. You can have your car painted for as little as $150 at some of the economy paint shops but a much better paint job on the same car at a high end shop can cost thousands of dollars. When transferring these costs over to a forty foot motorhome, the “cheap” option and the expensive options both are very expensive because a forty foot motorhome is much larger than a car. We haven’t even taken into consideration yet the expense of striping at this point. When you add custom striping and custom designs to the order, the price skyrockets. We have seen custom paint jobs on motorhomes cost in excess of $100,000. So should you just forget the idea of renovating your RV, grit your teeth, and start paying payments on a new RV or motorhome? Not so fast. Take a look at the average cost of new RVs.
For most DIY renovators, paying someone for a full body paint job is not practical. The cost of the paint job would not offset the cost of simply purchasing a newer model RV and saving money is the entire point of renovating in the first place. What if we told you that the motorhome that you see in the before and after picture of this blog post cost us less than $1,000 to paint. Now what if we told you that we’d never painted anything other than houses before we took on the task. How much did it cost? You may be blown away to know that it cost us approximately $900. Below is a list of materials that we used and how much they cost.
Of the two types of individuals that we mentioned above, we were the dreamers. Although the idea of purchasing an older model motorhome and completely renovating it seemed like it was an unobtainable goal, we were confident that we could learn any skill that we lacked in order to achieve our dream. It’s true that we had never painted any type of automobile before we painted our motorhome; however, we did possess a fairly high level of home manufacture, repair, and remodeling skills. That being said we are confident that if you can use a can of spray paint or if you are like us and have painted houses using a paint sprayer, you can achieve the same outcome that we did.
Though achieving the updated look of a factory paint job was, in a sense, easier than we thought, the prep phase of our project was an immense amount of work. Because of the time it required to complete and the forced meditation that it brought on, sometimes it felt like a spiritual journey. Removing all of the decals, cleaning the RV, sanding the entire surface, and repairing minor blemishes took approximately two weeks. It required a lot of sandpaper and a couple of quarts of GraphxOff decal remover. It was two, long, hot, tiring weeks of the most mundane work imaginable. Since the paint job was a one person task, it sometimes seemed never-ending and the urge to cut corners was almost too tempting to ignore. The fear of failure was always in the back of our mind; however, the confidence that we had in our plan consistently pushed out ideas of failure so, we persevered.
Once the sanding was completed, we thought to ourselves that the hard part was over. We did not fully grasp the reality of how much taping and plastic it would require for us to put multiple colored stripes over multiple base colors. The Black and white base color required taping off with plastic twice; once for each color. Each stripe required the motorhome to be completely taped off each time one of them was painted. The roof and tires required plastic and tape. More simply put, each stage of paint and every individual stripe that was painted, required the motorhome to be re-taped and re-covered with plastic. We made it through this phase of the paint job by finding peace in knowing how close we were to having the motorhome that we had envisioned for a small fraction of what it would have cost us to buy one.
Spraying our motorhome was the easiest and most satisfying part of the entire renovation. At this point we knew that we were going to accomplish what we’d set out to do; however, we were coming to the realization that we were actually exceeding our expectations. After applying the black and white base coat, every stripe or design that we added reignited the fire and excitement that we had when we initially made the decision to go for it and buy and renovate a motorhome. The same excitement we had when we first purchased it and began designing the interior was multiplied as we reached the last phase of the paint job.
We re-coated the roof, applied new Fleetwood and Bounder decals, and polished the headlights and wheel simulators. We had a motorhome that far surpassed what we had envisioned. Our motorhome was brand new inside and out at this point and we had $0 in monthly payments. It was ours!
We get tons of compliments on our renovation but people are blown away with the exterior renovation more than any other aspect. We receive just as many questions as we do compliments. One of the main questions that we receive is what type of paint did you use? While we do not wish to endorse any one specific paint, it’s our opinion that any budget single stage paint on the market is as good as the other. Ours has held up quite well at this point and it has been almost three years since we painted it. It actually seems to look better with every wash of Meguiar’s Wash and Wax. Kirker makes a good single stage paint as does Eastwood. We have a theory that most of the budget single stage paints are all manufactured by essentially the same company or process; however, here is a link to Eastwood Paint, Reducer, Activator, and Clear Coat to help save you some time and effort researching.
One question that we have gotten on our YouTube video is, and we will paraphrase this, can you please explain the entire process step by step start to finish and provide me a link to all of the materials that you used? Lol yes. Someone actually asked us to explain how to give a 40 foot motorhome what is a seemingly factory paint job in a YouTube video comment. As much as we wish that we could, and although our goal is to help others reach their dreams of owning an RV that they are proud of, it’s not something that is practical for us to do for every individual that asks. Answering such a complex question for each individual that asks us would be too time consuming. When she commented asking for our insight, we were just finishing our eBook “RV Renovation 101” and we responded that we would offer her a free copy once we we’d completed it. If you have the same or similar questions, consider purchasing a copy on this website. We go through the entire process of renovating our motorhome inside and out so if you’ve decided to take on a renovation of your own, you may find some helpful ideas. You can also watch our renovation videos on YouTube. There you can get a more visual sense for what the process was like.
Is the intimidation of painting an RV the only thing that is stopping you from renovating instead of buying a new one? Do you own an older motorhome that you love and trust but just can’t stand the look of any longer? Painting your RV may or may not be the best choice for you. There are lot’s of different variables that may prevent you from taking on such a large task but we want you to know that it can be done and you do not have to be a professional auto body expert to achieve the look that you want.
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