I have been painting cars for years. I pretty much stopped doing any paint work for other people because they wanted a $5,000 paint job for $500 (or less). No concept of the amount of time and materials just getting a car ready to spray. I do a few things here and there, but we agree on a fair price up front. I always REALLY undercut body shop prices, but I'm not going to wind up making $5 per hour either. The main exception is that I have done painting for my friend Mark who is into Mustangs, and he has a REAL paint booth in his 100 x 30 Morton building. He lets me use the paint booth for free any time I want (that's my Mopar hat on the dash). I have been powder coating for several years now. If I want to earn some extra cash, I go to a cruise night or a car show with a few samples of my work on a card table. I usually get a few jobs from that, and I have a lot of repeat and word of mouth customers.
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That's a beautiful job on that car.
I have my own prep/assembly booth, a paint booth (pressurized) with Fresh Air Supplied Respirators. The Paint booth has 8 drops on air lines (all 4 corners, plus 2 on the sides and 2 at the front/rear, with soft cloth lines), an Air Drier, Water Separators, Oil Separators, Filters, and each gun also has a regulator and filter. It also has the capability to bake a paint job.
Edit :
You make a great point on people wanting a high dollar "frame off" for $500 though. I've heard people complain because I was "Too high priced" (like an F150 Flareside that needed major fiberglass repair on the fiberglass bedside before I would even spray it)
I think everyone that complains should have to pick up a paint gun and swing that monster for hours (A paint gun doesn't weigh alot, but when you're doing base coat in Two Tone and Clear Coat, that gun gets mighty heavy toward the end, especially a vintage Sharpe which is 100% Aluminum, weighs about 7 pounds empty and holds half a gallon in the can), after learning the ins and outs of body work. They all think "Oh, you can paint it in an hour, you're rich because of it."
I wish it took an hour to get one in and out the door. Not to forget, the rebuild kits for my Sharpe guns are getting harder to find and cost about $40-50 a piece, it takes supplies to mask off a vehicle (triple that when you're doing 2 tone and painting a top as well), clean the guns, replacement filters, etc and that's just if the person covers the paint and such.
I took my buddy into the paint booth, and pointed out some of the features (the fresh air respirators, filters, pressurized system, etc) and then I pointed to the shelf that holds all of my Sharpe, Devilbiss, Sata, Marki 1, etc guns and airbrushes. "Right there, is $10,000 worth of paint guns and airbrushes." His response was "I guess that's why paint jobs aren't usually cheap."
10k may sound like a lot, but you have to figure, even today (you can still buy Sharpe guns like I prefer to use) a Sharpe 775 is about $300-400 by itself, you can't get the 71's and 75's anymore (though they share a lot of parts, so it makes it nice when it comes time to fix one). The Sata's are higher than that, even though I don't use them often.
I also painted my vintage Yamaha. I combined a bunch of leftover Reds that were sitting on the shelf from various jobs, to get enough to spray the bike, and I ended up with a paint that would color-shift depending on temperature and light. (That's going to be a nightmare to replicate if I have to repair a dent or scratch) I sprayed the Yamaha parts on a day off (after spending a week prepping the bike and popping dents), and it was in nice condition.
