I'm in the beginning stages of a full In-Garage DIY body and Paint of my mk4. I've never sprayed a car before, but have done basic body work in the past. I'm just about done with the gaps and about to move onto Rage. I'm doing a 3 color job. BMW gray (472), Black Stripes and a bright silver pin-stripes.

In the mean time, I'm trying to plan out all the stages, especially Paint. After reading many a thread, I was of the opinion I wanted to shoot Sherwin Williams Dimensions. I'm looking for a decent reasonably low-cost paint that I can be happy with shooting in my garage, and that I won't cry over the money spent if I find I have to re-do it for some reason. I went to 2 local paint supply stores in town today (not a lot to chose from here). One that does PPG and the other does Sherwin Williams and Transtar.

The PPG guy was pretty great.. thought he pushed me hard towards the deltron line instead of the shop-line paint. He gave me a quote of about $1400 for everything I'd need for Base, Stripes and Clear. I should have asked him to quote me on the ShopLine brand too, cuz $1400 is a bit higher than I had planned.

The other shop was full of some pretty nice guys, more than willing to offer as much advice as I could absorb. They even had a local custom car guy in the office at the time that just kept offering up tid-bits. These guys sell Sherwin Williams (dimension and 7000) also has a mid-level line by Transtar. When I told him what I was doing, he said the Dimension line would be fine, but this Transtar mid-level stuff is their bread-and-butter to most of the shops they service in the area. He sure made it sound like it's way better than the Dimension paint, but below the high-end 7000-ultra. A nice happy medium for what I was doing.

The kicker was the price. $1000 for...
- gal of 2k primer (Euro Classic)
- 2k sealer,
- gal of base color (MB)
- quart of stripe color (MD)
- pint of pin-stripe color (MB)
- 2qts of clear (Euro Kwik)
and all the reducers and activators needed for it all.

Keep in mind.. My goals are pretty simple. DY Garage Paint Job. My car is a driver, not a show-princess. I even commute to work in it. I want it to look good, but I don't care if I never win a car-show contest. I've read STL-Scotts, Kleiners, sroninsonx and others thread dozzens of times, so I'm pretty confident I can pull it all off. What ever paint I go with, I just need it to be pretty forgiving for a Newb... and pretty forgiving on my bank-account.

Any thoughts on this Transtar stuff?