Painting Over Gelcoat

With a bit of work and a fair amount of care you can achieve your goal.

Painting over gelcoat. As for the core i m not sure what you mean. Before you can spray paint any type of fiberglass surface you will need to employ specific preparation techniques to condition the fiberglass to accept paint or the finish will peel soon after application. Unlike wood fiberglass surfaces are nonporous making them unsuitable for spray paint adhesion. Not only do you want the paint job to look good you want to preserve that shiny gelcoat like surface.

Like any painting project preparation is the key and in this case you will be painting over the slick shiny surface of gelcoat. I am painting over an old 10 years awlgrip paint job. What it has are five ribs about 3 wide. You ve cleaned compounded and waxed and it looks good for a while but the chalkiness returns maybe the red accent stripe that used to look so good looks pink or the dark blue bootstripe is now baby blue.

If so then it s time to think about refinishing the gelcoat. The color is also the same. Sounds like what i m looking for. If it s a large surface such as a boat or a bathtub use a gelcoat spray gun to apply a coat over the existing coat.

I had thoughts of just sanding with 330 to rough it up and the put on 2 3 coats of awlgrip. So the gelcoat on your boat is looking chalky and faded. Thanks for the reply. And gelcoat over large areas is a ton of sanding not fun.

Yes you can apply gelcoat over a surface that s already covered with gelcoat. For smaller surface areas like a chair apply the gelcoat using a paintbrush using short vertical strokes.