Professional vs Home job...

My 2001 XJ Sport is black, and the sun is doing quite a number on the clear coat. It has been cracking alllllll over the hood, and roof, and since it's my DD I want it to look cherry. I have decided that I will definitely be re-painting. However, I have not decided on a color, or whether or not I will be painting it myself, or bringing it to a shop (NOT MAACO).

I am not very confident in painting myself, because I have never done a job this size before, but I know it will save me a TON of money. I talked to a few friends who have all told me that I can also save money by doing all of the prep work myself, and just having it sprayed/clear coated in the shop. They said the majority of the hard work in a paint job is prep, and if you have it all done before you hand it over to the shop, that it will reduce the price of the job drastically.

Any opinions??

(Keep in mind, I drive this EVERYWHERE.)

Just my .02 I did a lot of research and a lot of practicing. I went out and bought all the guns and materials and have painted 3 cars. They all looked pretty good but not cherry by any means. Without a paintbooth and a lot of experience its really really hard to get it perfect. I think it is most definitely worth the money to prep it and have it professionally sprayed. You will be much happier and it willl save you days of hard work for a merely decent looking end product

I'll chime in here. When you said the majority of the hard work is prep, you're dead wrong...

ALL of the hard work is prep.

Sparying is about 5% of the entire job. You throw some paint in a gun, and within about 6 hours (including dry time) it's done. Compare that to the literally hundreds of hours (a custom job...) that you might spend on prep.

My suggestion would be to try and tackle most of it yourself. Read books, get on forums, talk to some local guys/shops. Absorb everything you can.

The primer stage is very forgiving. If you mess it up, you can sand it and re-shoot. Clear is basically the same, but it's a heck of a lot harder and more time consuming to sand. Shooting the basecoat is definitely the trickiest of the three.

I would say sand down your stock job, all the way to the basecoat. Seal everything, and use some high-build primer where you need to. Then attempt to shoot the base/clear or take it to someone who's agreed to paint over top of your work.

Make sure you have a clean, non-windy area to paint. We painted my Dad's CJ7 outdoors and the worst part was that we spent hours and hours preping for paint, only to have dust land on it while it was drying....talk about color sanding and repainting it a million times. If we were to do it all over again, it would have actully been cheaper and better to do the prep. and then take it to a shop for them to paint it in a booth.