Painting the Exterior of an RV
It’s all the prep work, but it’s so worth it. The hardest part about painting the exterior is removing the decals. But it CAN be done, regardless of the age. First, if your RV is metal, get the whizzy wheel, it attaches to your drill, and you can “erase” the decals right off with only a little elbow grease. Check out our amazon storefront for the wheel. For fiberglass RVs you want to use a heat gun on the siding, but the whizzy wheel on the frame of the slide’s outs. The key weather is to do this on a hot summer day, or the wind or cold weather will be working against your heat gun.
You want to scrap all the excess caulking around the windows and doors to clean up the look of your RV as well, this is also a great time to check for any rusted screws or loose siding. (a rusted screw is a leak inside)
Then you power wash the RV down to remove any of the debris.
Then you want to go back over all the edges of metal, window jams and apply new flex seal caulking, you can use a gloved hand to wipe the excess or tape in advance and that way when you remove the tape you have a perfect line.
Next, is the worst part, taping. You want to cover any of the lights and the windows. You can use a trash bag over the windows, but this is when you cover what you DO NOT want painted. Now as far as paint type it’s all personal preference.
We use automotive paint, it’s a bit more expensive but you know it has the lifetime in it. You can use exterior house paint as well and it’ll have a matte look but its far cheaper, so it’s less costly to have to do it a second time. Again, just a matter of preference. We use a spray gun, you can rent them at Home Depot as well if you do not want to buy it, and spray away. Our personal preference is a wireless handheld just for an ease to get around the RV.
You got this! Remove the tape once its dry and wow! You always have the option to do a gloss over it but that’s up to you. We use a bumper spray paint for the bumpers and stairs to give it a little upgrade as well.