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Unfortunately space is the limiting factor, my living room already looks like a shop and my flatmates have a breaking point... Definitely something to consider for the future though. It's mainly due to having some frames with really ugly, bad condition paint, any finish would be better!
Maybe I should save up and get my favourite frame done by a pro - I do enjoy the learning process and creative aspect though, bodged as it is
yokes-
You should book yourself on one of our 'Introduction to Paint' courses.
You'll walk away with a high-end finish on a bike; you'll have hands-on experience with professional equipment and products, and you'll have repeatable skills and techniques you can implement on future finishes.
FWIW, our portfolio and Instagram don't show even half of the work we undertake... there are 'simple' or straightforward finishes we can apply with a relatively short turnaround and not an excessive budget. Drop me an email via the site if you want to get something looking clean and back on the road.
general_greyharbour
Sounds good.
If its not already obvious, you can't use the paint stripper on your carbon parts... it's fine on some brands and will destroy the resins on others... you can't find out until it's too late so just use 240grit.
I refinish for a living so I tend to turn my nose up at rattle cans in general.
A rattle can is either "on" or "off" whilst a professional HVLP setup has many variables that can be tweaked in order to get perfect product application throughout and be further tinkered with for different products.
For about £200 at Screwfix, you could get yourself a DIY compressor and a couple of guns and be using 'proper' products after a few hours tinkering.
The real tricky stages are the prep and the clear... basecoat can be manipulated, retouched, mended... even really complex designs are just about working out the order of operations. If the priming and prep is poor, you might as well have not bothered 'cause your paint will fall off and if the clear is poor quality or not applied well, your paint will fall off in a stiff breeze.
You can only get better with practice.