I went back and forth on polishing or painting the bike. Either refinishing would be done by me as painting in particular is expensive and I had barely any saddle time with this bike, having bought it at the start of winter. Work, the cold, early and pervasive darkness of winter, and rain kept me from pretty much any bike activity, which I did not like--a far cry from what I had been able to do in the past. Having hand wet-sanded and polished a number of bicycle components recently with good success, I thought this frame could be a good and inexpensive candidate for such an effort. Alas, it was not having it, and I knew better than to throw good time after bad, so I shelved the idea, waiting for better weather and temperature to entertain the idea of painting and literally anything else...
Can you tell where I tried to wet sand and polish it?
I bought some iridescent gloss paint from a new brand called Color Shot (available at Michael's and Walmart). Fun color names--mine was called Pixie Dust--and I went with the sparkly stuff because I just wanted a fun, whimsical finish with which to contrast with my planned Serious McRacer Face road groupset. The original goal was like a pearl or metallic fuchsia, but barring that, sparkles. I mistakenly thought it would be an iridescent white gloss coat, but reading and seeing things can be difficult, and it turns out it was just a clear coat.
Not wanting to waste some rare, warm Oregon early spring days (no rain, what???), I grabbed some matte black hi-temp engine enamel paint for a base coat, and then put down the Pixie Dust afterwards. It turned the black paint green....
Not to be deterred, I thought, surely the 1K clear coat will help things. It kinda did! Mostly it just helped protect things and bump up depth on the metallic/pearly sparkly green paint. I didn't mind one bit!
You can kind of see the black base coat mellowing the green a bit. This is most evident in afternoon sunlight, where the black is more visible, with the metallic green showing more on the edges of the tube.
Once the paint and clear coat were dry, I started assembling the following day. I ended up painting the fork and a Bontrager XXX carbon stem from an '08-era Trek Madone to play the fancy modern matchy-matchy custom frame build game. I was pumped to get this thing built up!!
