Clear plastic sheeting is among the masking and covering supplies I bought for preparation work.
The featured Amazon option is TRM Weatherall Painter's Plastic.
Where it fits my build
I taped the boundaries and covered the areas that would not be painted with plastic sheeting. I then sanded the exposed areas with an orbital sander and 60-grit abrasive, blew away the dust with a compressor, and cleaned and degreased the surfaces.
I mixed clear bedliner with white tint and sprayed the van. After it dried, I removed the masking. The tape and sheeting stage alone took around eight hours, and the finished edges still needed some touch-up.
My van with masking around the exterior areas prepared for coating.The side of the van during the white-bedliner project.
My build notes
The most useful detail in my diary is the result, including the problems. Rust-Oleum pooled and dripped in places, and trying to repair one area with a paintbrush made it worse. I wrote that I would use a foam roller for touch-ups and preferred the more consistent finish I had obtained with RAPTOR.
Masking, preparation and application method each became a substantial part of the exterior-coating job.
Alternative products
Two alternatives to compare
TRM and HDX offer long rolls of painter's plastic. The Trimaco drop cloth is an individual nine-by-twelve-foot sheet.
HDX 12-Foot by 400-Foot Painter's Plastic
This roll supplies twelve-foot-wide painter's plastic in a four-hundred-foot length. The thin clear sheeting unfolds to cover broad areas during painting preparation.
This plastic drop cloth opens into a nine-foot by twelve-foot sheet. Its individual-sheet format provides a smaller covering area than a long roll of painter's plastic.
