How to Properly Prepare a Workspace for Spray Painting Your Car
Spray painting your car is not the easiest task to perform on your own, but it's fully possible with the right preparations and technique and can prove to be a very rewarding project in the end. If you're not accustomed to working with spray paint or have no experience in paintwork whatsoever, you should probably leave spray painting your car to a professional. However, if you do want to spray paint your car on your own, you should first make sure you have an appropriate space to paint it in.
Work indoors
The most important thing when choosing a place to spray paint your car is that you can do it indoors. If you don't have a garage on your property, you should look into the option of hiring a garage, or ask a friend to work in theirs for a couple of days. If you have a carport, you shouldn't opt to perform the paint job there. It does protect your work from rain, but not from dust blowing through the carport with the wind.
Protect your car
When you have a garage to work in, you should further protect your car when it has been parked. You can hang up drop cloths or tarps from the ceiling to further protect your car from dust and particles that can make the paint look dirty and bubbly. This also prevents you from getting paint on other things in the garage. This is extra important if you're not working in a garage of your own.
Clean the workspace and let it dry
You should clean the workspace thoroughly before painting. Mop the garage to bind dust particles that might blow up while painting, but make sure you let the place dry completely. It's important that the workspace is dry when you're working as you will be sandpapering the surface, because it will be sensitive to moisture that can get into the metal and cause it to rust. If moisture gets trapped between the metal and the paint, this could cause a rusting process that goes on long after you've finished the paint job.
Remember to ventilate the area
Besides using a respirator mask when painting to protect yourself from the harmful paint fumes, you should also make sure the workspace is well ventilated. If there's no air conditioning in the garage, you can create your own solution with a fan that blows the fumes away from you. If the garage has windows, you can leave one open while painting; just make sure the tarp is preventing any dirt from reaching your car.