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Steve - KDMW wrote:
Does anyone know of a good paint shop in the Mid Atlantic area? ...
How much should I expect to pay for a paint job on an airplane like mine

Steve,

We flew our Cessna Cardinal C177B from NY to Mena Arkansas to have
it painted by AOG Paint Services last October for $6K. Even with the
cost of transportation, lodging etc., it still cost significantly less
than the quotes given to us by several paint shops in the NorthEast.
The job was done within a month as promised. We were happy to see the
paint scheme came out exactly like our 'photoshopped' picture. You
can see our plane at their picture gallery 1, pic0140-pic0141 and the
next one.

http://www.aogpaint.com/Gallery/gallery.html

Here are some of the 'before' and 'after' pics of our plane

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=...&x=0&y=-oqbro3

Overall, they did a very good job for the price. We could not find
any defects such as small blisters rough spots etc. However, if we
could have done it over, we would negotiage to pay a bit more for
details such as having the door jam painted, all inspection plates
removed and painted separately etc.. We just had an annual done on the
plane and found a bit of paint remover residues at the edges of the
wing inspection plates. We plan to write to Dennis and tell him to
give his customers those options.

Here are the quotes which we got from other shops at the end of 2004
(the prices may have gone up a bit since then)

1.Lancaster Aero Refinish {Central PA} (717) 394-5805: $9K base price
quote
2. Prestige Aviation, VT802-868-3443 : $8.5K base price quote
3.Keyson Aircraft Refinishers - Nashua NH800-247-0102: $9K + $2K for
repairs (We flew our plane in for an actual quote). Note: a friend of
us had his Skyhawk painted last October. He was pretty happy with the
results but was not too happy about the turn-around-time. It took 2
months to get his plane back.
4. Ed's Aircraft Refinishing, Brookaven: $10.5K + $2.5K repairs (actual
quote after inspecting our plane).
5.Reese Aircraft at Stewart airport, NY - KD Aviation.com Ken Reese
- 609-928-9283: estimated $11K. We flew our plane in for inspection
and was told that we would need to have the edge of the aileron
reskinned (a small dent which other shops said that they could
'straightened out'). We never received the actual quote after several
emails and phone inquiries. They claimed that it was sent. Not sure
what happened to their email systems. They seemed to be very busy with
business aircraft paintings and probably did not want to spend extra
time such as mailing the quote to little plane owners!

The above shops were the ones which I combed the web for good
recommendations. There was one more shop on our list: Oxford aviation
in Maine, 207-539-4779 . They sent us a very nice brochure. I don't
have a record of their base line quote but recall that it was something
like $12K. They have very good reputation but also known to be on the
expensive side.

Scheme designer's website have a very nice paint shop referral list
page

http://www.schemedesigners.com/PaintShops.htm

BTW, if we plan to get your plane painted in Mena, AR and think of
getting the interior done, I highly recommended Rose Aircraft Interiors
service, 479-394-2551. We paid $1800 for leather seats including
replacing the hard plastic back of the front seats with leather with
large pockets and upholstering all the headrests. We are very pleased
with results. Their price is about half of quotes from other shops and
just a bit more than Airtex do-it-yourself cloth version.

Hai Longworth