paint

DIY: Paint The Town (Nursery) Purple

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Since I haven’t had time to do car things, I’ll post house things! I had the day off today to just try and get some time away from work – it’s been hectic lately and my mind just needed some R&R. I needed to do something other than deal with problems all day and just do something relaxing. “Relaxing” in my world doesn’t mean laying in bed all day – I can’t stand that… Instead, I got to work on the nursery now that we know the gender and spend some quality time in the garage afterward.

Diana and I have been discussing what we wanted to do with the nursery for a while now – we just had to wait until we knew if it was a boy or girl so we could get get the colors. You see, Diana and I are a strangely effective team… Diana just throws out random ideas and I bring them to life. She doesn’t really lift a finger most of the time, but she is a tough critic. A lot of the time, my vision of her ideas work and all is well – I haven’t really come across a time where it hasn’t (lucky me). Until that day comes, we will continue being that strangely effective team where she blurts out ideas and I continue being the laborer without pay. I guess it all works out in the end – the day it doesn’t is the day I stop LOL.

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Here’s how the nursery sat for a few months. We bought all the furniture – more of which you cannot see to the right of me – and we just had it there so we wouldn’t have to worry about the expense later.

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Diana wanted a feature wall and we bounced many ideas back and forth. She knew she wanted purple, but we didn’t really finalize on anything until a few weeks ago… So I went to town. I taped off the surrounding area to get started on the edges…

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I can’t remember what the paint color was called but it’s similar to a very faint lilac purple.

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Edges first! Pro tip: Do the edges first so when you use your roller, you can roll over the brush marks and it looks more seamless.

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This was the first coat. It went on light and as it dried, it got darker. Pretty nice…

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While I was waiting for the paint to dry, I decided to run to Home Depot to pick up a Cedar board and start another project.

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I painted it with a kimono purple – another color we picked up for the walls.

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Here is where my creativity blossomed LOL. Diana wanted polka dots on the wall – and I was free to do whatever I wanted with them. The first problem was how to get perfect circles without using freehand brush.

So, I found my zipties, a Stella Artois glass holder, and an old shirt.

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A few minutes later I come up with this. A cheap and somewhat-effective stamp tool.

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Here’s what the first few circles looked like in the pure kimono purple. The problem with my stamp tool is that it wasn’t doing exactly what I was hoping it would do. Turns out when you go to stamp it, you just get a runny, uneven mess.

As a result, I ended up just stamping the outline and coloring in each circle one by one with a small brush and then running the brush along the other edge of the circle to keep them sharp. I am willing to bet anyone $100 I can now draw perfect circles after this project…

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I decided that I wanted to ombre the shit out of this wall. I know this term because it’s the latest fad for girls to do to their hair in every color imaginable. It’s a fancy word for fading the color – girls just wanted a prettier term I guess.

Anyway, as I made my way down the wall, I just added more and more white to lighten it. I also wanted the polka dots to look like they were raining. I didn’t want the uniformity of perfectly placed dots. Too cliche. LOL

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Anyway, I didn’t take many pictures in between it all because I was on a roll. This was the finished result!

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Here it is without the tape and a bit better lighting. Beautiful.

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After I finished that, I went on to complete the second project. A growth board for baby A. Thought it would be a nice addition to the room… People end up spending $60+ for this. I spent $4.20. SUCK IT

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And it’s all completed! I still have to mount the growth board on the wall but this is how it sits for now. Still lots to go but it’s getting there!

Derrick’s Full Integra Make-Over: Part 3

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Small little update on Derrick’s car… It’s still on its way but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Even though there are dates that he’d like to meet, sometimes it just doesn’t work out – due to certain road blocks or making sure everything is right before moving forward again. A lot more time was spent trying to perfect the paint as much as we can before doing any final polishing. There’s still a bit or orange peel and all that can really be done about it is just manual wet sanding and checking. Eventually you get rid of it, but it’s extremely tedious, like I mentioned before…

A little more was finished and Anthony finally went through most of the car with his rotary and some aggressive cutting polish. It’s really starting to look good now that the paint is clearing up and is feeling more and more proper. Still something to look forward to when it’s finally down and out and about! I know that Derrick is getting super anxious and sort of tired of working on the car and I can totally understand, but just a little while longer and it’ll be done before he knows it.

Dash fitting finally going in. Derrick started slowly putting pieces of the interior back and while it’s generally pretty simple… Sometimes it’s more difficult to put things back in than it is to take it out.

Anthony working in the polish on the rear quarter. You can start to see it looking more and more shiny.

Here you can see Anthony did about 1/4 of the bumper. It turned out really nice with the gold flake and all.

The driver side with the first pass of the polish.

Dash and cluster pretty much in.

Rear seat belts bolted in. Super easy.

Both main seat belts in. Again – super easy.

One of the main roadblocks that we ran into was running the trunk actuator and the rear defrost wires through the hatch. It’s such a narrow opening that it was extremely difficult to get a bunch of plugs through the opening and when we finally got it, the rubber grommet didn’t want to come through either. Derrick finally decided to cut the wires, run them and the solder them back together. That way he could get the rubber grommet on to prevent water from coming into the car and we would be wrecking any plugs or ripping any wires.

A shot of one of the wheels. These wheels have been giving him a headache over the past few weeks. Punit – the original owner of them had them powder coated a teal colour and then they were passed onto Adam for his EK and finally over to Derrick. When Derrick got them, his plan was to revert them back to the polished colour. Little did he know that it wasn’t so simple to take off the powder coating. He tried everything from aircraft grade paint stripper to sand blasting them himself and even using a dremel with a sanding disc and even then, the powder coat didn’t come off completely. His only option at this point is to bring them to the shop for them to sand blast professionally.

For now, he’s sprayed plasti-dip on it with paint on top to just cover over their work until they can get it done properly. It doesn’t look too bad and for now, it’ll have to do.

Anthony’s first pass on the bumper. Looking awesome.

A closer shot. I decreased the exposure so you could see more of the flake.

Things getting dusty from the polish. Got a lot of cleaning to do when this is all over.

Some rear panels in. This was the last shot I took before leaving, but I hope that Derrick is able to make some good strides in the following days and finally gets it running by the weekend… I’ll try my best to keep you guys updated with his progress.

Slow and steady wins the race!

Derrick’s Full Integra Make-Over: Part 2

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Let’s take a small intermission from the illmotion Sunday School Show & Shine posts and take a detour over to Derrick’s progress…

I’m happy to report that Derrick’s car is coming along extremely nicely. When I had swung by, I wanted to see how he was doing and if he needed a hand. The car had just got back from the paint booth a few days ago and he’s been waiting on letting it cure before getting down and dirty to wetsand. Generally, the longer you wait to let it harden, the less headache you’ll run into because you don’t want it to start messing up halfway into sanding.

The car has come a long way and the long and grueling task of wet sanding is just about complete. Anybody who says that painting and body work is quick and easy is a liar. It’s not difficult by any means, but it’s time consuming and tedious. Lots of sanding then wiping then checking your work and repeat. You gotta make sure that you’re taking away enough of the orange peel to make it smooth like glass but you also want to make sure you aren’t going so far so that you end up burning through the clearcoat – which would be a bad, bad thing.

Derrick did an excellent job laying down the paint and clearcoat for his first time and after a few passes of wet sanding, you start to see the beautiful paint underneath… Lots of detail pics below!

For those that are lazy – here’s the first post I made when I stopped by and he was just priming the car.

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As I arrived, Derrick was just getting ready to get started. It looks great from afar…

The bumpers and sideskirts. The plastics are right below.

You can see the CCW mocked up to see what it would look like.

However, upon closer inspection – you’ll see a lot of surface imperfections.

This is the hood. The only way to describe it – as per Derrick – is that it feels like pavement and it really did. It isn’t dust or anything – it’s just because he laid a bunch of clear down to be safe. The hood was by far the worst victim of this “rough” feeling.

Another shot of the hood. When I first saw it I was a bit scared for Derrick to be honest. I personally was extremely anxious to help him out with the wet sanding process because I’m a stickler for the way my paint looks too. Minor imperfections in paint bug the shit out of me. I have some clear coat missing on the LS bumper and door and I have to bite my tongue every time I see it – I should really get it fixed… But I digress…

Here’s a shot of the door and part of the rear quarter. It’s not as bad as the hood in the least bit, but it does require a fair bit of work.

Another lower angle.

A little further back on the rear quarter panel.

Here’s the edge of the front of the hood. No part of the hood was spared for the pavement feel, so we made sure each and every inch was taken care of and looked at.

Random shot of his brakes.

Shot of the LS out in the sun. I love it when it’s clean…

Derrick working on the hood.

Here’s a shot of the first pass of 1000 grit on one of the fenders. A lot better, but still a bit of orange peel to address.

One half of the hood after going over it with 1000 grit followed by 2000 grit for a good 45 minutes.

After wiping it up, you can still see the dotty pattern in the clear that needs to be sanding over again. This is what I mean by sanding, wiping, checking and repeating.

 

A shot of the hood after polishing it to get a better feel of how much more work needs to be done.

Here’s a shot with the light reflecting off of the hood. As you can see, this is a HUGE improvement from the first few shots. At this point, we started getting super excited with how it was starting to turn out. The hood was the worst and now it was just like glass. There is a little bit of orange peel left but that is something that we’ll have to tackle as we move forward.

Derrick working on the door.

Derrick got a shot of my dark and burned ass working on the other side.

A shot of the rear quarter. Another important part of a car for me is the rear quarter since a lot of the reflections bounce off of the rear quarters. Made sure to spend extra time on there to make sure it turned out perfect.

Moving on to the hatch…

The hatch also ended up turning out very nice.

You can see the edge of the hatch – it shines right through.

Shot of the rear quarter and door. A lot of that rough texture is now out and all that we have to focus on is getting rid of the orange peel that’s left and smooth everything out.

Shot of the back edge of the rear quarter.

A few of the many sand paper sheets we went through.

The sun started to come through and finally started to hit the hood on the inside of the garage. Derrick’s paint selection is definitely something you have to see in person – pictures do no justice. The gold flake just sparkles in the sun. Makes me even more excited to see the whole car out and finished.

Diana stopped by a little later and helped out a bit too.

Here’s an upclose shot of the hood. This is my favourite shot because this is as close as I can get to capturing the awesome colour. As Derrick said: “It’s like Rihanna says… It shine’s bright like a diamond”. hahahahaha

Derrick finally working on the bumpers while Diana and I worked on polishing the rest of the body.

I did another pass after polishing and marked spots that needed more sanding. I told Derrick that at this point, I refuse to let this car go out until we get the paint as perfect as we can get it.

Some on the other side.

And I’ll end it here. Soon enough, Derrick’s car will be out on the road and looking super fresh. I’m stoked for him to finally get this thing down and driving around again after all the long hours and sleepless nights. I’m glad that I was able to help put some time into helping complete this car. It’ll be one of the nicest in Calgary for sure!

I’ll get more updates soon!

Derrick’s Full Integra Make-Over

/ jasonhoang / 1 Comment

As I’m writing this, I think I’ve decided that this will be one of the best posts that I’ve put up in a long time – let me explain why.

I’ve known Derrick for a few years now and we got acquainted through Diana’s sister, Cindy. Our shared interest in cars naturally meant that we’d probably get to know each other better and become good friends. (Great script for a love story, btw. No homo).

And over the few years, I’ve come to the conclusion that Derrick is one of the most ingenious and craftiest people I know. He can come up with ways around things where many people would just say “nope – can’t be done”. He’s a handyman-type, that’s what they do, and you can’t help but think “how do you think of that stuff?”. In the world of modifying cars and changing things that weren’t supposed to be changed, you often run into many speed bumps along the way. But Derrick is great at avoiding those bumps altogether most of the time – it’s an awesome skill to have, and for that – I’ve always respected his car, the work he’s done, and most importantly, Derrick himself.

The reason I say that is because the whole time I was there, he kept telling me not to take pictures of this or that because it was ghetto. “Ghetto” isn’t the right word, but I’m going to continue using it for the purpose of this post. I’m not sure how else one would make it “not ghetto” if you’re doing it in your garage with the materials you have. I personally thought that it was great that he was doing all of that on his own and the set up was pretty good considering all he had was his garage. You’ll see what I mean as you scroll through the plethora of pictures. Now the main reason why I think this will be one of the best posts is because it’s one of those things where you see a car like Derrick’s all torn apart in basically it’s rawest form. You’re not sure what to make of it, you don’t know what it’s going to look like in the least bit, but you do have faith that it’s going to be awesome.

OK so the good part – Derrick has been working day in and day out for the past 2 weeks-ish. He took work off so that he could spend every waking minute to getting the Integra done. I asked him “so when do you think it’ll be done?” and he replied “by the show & shine”. That means he’s got 4 more days from the time you saw this post to get it done. 3 days if you don’t include Sunday, which is the show. He’s scheduled to tow the car into a booth on Thursday evening for 4 hours to finally lay down the paint and clear, then Friday and Saturday to assemble the car back to how it used to be. I feel rude about it now, but I scoffed at the idea about getting it done in time but he insisted it would be…

It’s going to be a pic-heavy post, so wait for it to load and check it out!

As I was walking up to the garage, he was just finishing laying down primer on one of the doors. Here he’s cleaning the gun to prepare for more spraying. The gun has to be cleaned every so often because the paint dries up around it and causes a mess.

The shell. Basically everything – interior wise and exterior wise has been taken off and stripped apart. All that’s left is his internals.

The other side of the garage – you see the hatch and his two doors.

Shot of the inside all gutted and slightly cleaned up.

His steering rack and dash area all covered up.

Here’s the passenger door he just finished priming. He still has a long way to go with wetsanding and getting it nice and even.

The other door that was sanded and waiting for primer.

Hinges hanging in the middle of the garage.

Another shot of the interior/trunk area.

Tail lights and everything off.

His bay all covered up.

Went outside and took a snap of the LS cause the paint fumes were killing me haha

Cleaning…

Some detail shots. His shifter

Derrick also did a lot of work on his rear quarters. He re-welded and fixed it all up. This tab here is actually from a 2011 Mazda 3 that he welded on.

Shot of the rear quarter. He spent a lot of time on this side to get it all fixed up the best he could. He said it was quite messed up while the other side was perfect and required little work.

In the backyard his front and rear bumpers, lip, hood and fenders were all sitting there waiting for paint. These already had their prime coat on.

All his plastic pieces also primed and ready to go.

Fenders.

His junk pile. Cracked windshield and lining. The Integra is going to look as good as new soon…

I told him to smile for the camera so everyone would know the guy in the legendary DIY Integra. He declined but I took it anyway. He was telling me that he hasn’t slept well lately because he’s been up trying to get the car done, he hasn’t had a haircut in weeks and Thy – his girlfriend, makes fun of him and calls him ugly. It will all be worth it in the end, my friend!

Another thing that Derrick pointed out was the trolly he made for the car while he was working on it. The reason he built it was so that he could roll it around easily if he needed to maneuver it and when he was done, he could roll it around so his mom could park back in the garage again. He made the comment “I’m just a bad son now cause I can’t move it anymore and she has to park outside”. LOL

Another shot of it waiting to be put back together.

Getting ready to primer the other door.

Up close shots of the door that was primed. Note – he removed the side moldings and now it’s just a clean door. I know Derrick’s been wanting to get rid of them for quite some time – at one point he even just paint-matched it cause he hated it so much. Glad he was able to get rid of it finally.

He also deleted the wiper.

And the antenna…

I asked why he had some makeshift ventilation system going on at the door in the garage. As I was taking this picture he was yelling at me not to take it because it was ghetto. The reason is because he usually paints with the garage door closed and there needs to be some sort of air flow or else it’ll just get so clogged up.

Lights clamped around the garage…

Wires running across from one end to the other with more painted parts hanging…

This was one thing that caught my eye. I know that last year he had the Wilwood kit, but I never got a chance to see the car with it finally installed until yesterday. Looks great and it should look great behind the new wheels he’s got too.

Another shot of his trolly.

Mixing his primer.

A shot of the back of his hatch. He removed all emblems and filled the holes as well.

Ass shot of the LS. lol

Getting ready to prime. Spraying test shots.

Finally getting back to work. Priming the driver door.

I’ll end it here. This is going to be super exciting to see at the show and shine on Sunday – provided that things go according to schedule. If you’re attending, be on the lookout for his Integra!

Good luck to you, Derrick in getting this done in time. Going to turn out great for sure!