Lou Painted Our Old Truck!

When we bought this 1998 Toyota Tacoma back in August after just arriving on Maui, Lou immediately hatched a plan to paint it white. But somehow moving across the world, getting our new life setup, finding out we were pregnant, getting a puppy, kept us pretty busy. So now, seven months later, Lou finally found the time to do this project and we both couldn’t be happier with how it turned out!

Before Lou got started painting, he did A LOT of research to figure out the best method. Painting a car is usually a very expensive process that requires a lot of fancy tools, so to do it DIY takes a little effort. We found a great car paint store on Maui called MVR Auto Refinishing Supplies (not sponsored, just loved all their help!). There Lou got the Super White II paint, an epoxy primer and decided to ditch his original plan of spray-painting the truck in favor of using an air compressor and spray gun.

That meant that we had to get our hands on an air compressor, and while the guy at the paint store recommended we go with something that could do 10-15 CFM. We could only find one that did 5, and Lou got a spray gun that would work with that and luckily the paint worked! We still don’t really know much about compressors, but while the process of getting it all set up was quite frustrating for Lou, in the end, he LOVED the actual painting experience once it was ready to go.

We had just gotten back from a trip to the East Coast to visit friends and family, so jet lag combined with me being in my third trimester and us only having one face-mask to protect from the toxic paint fumes, meant that Lou did 99% of this project on his own. And I think you can tell from the look on his face in this photo the happiness and relief he had that it all worked out. We named this truck Ghost when we got it thinking that we would paint him white, and now the name finally fits!