I took the hardest 'paint yourself' way but in different steps due to construction process, money available, temperature. So that's what I did :
- painted light grey the fuse belly after putting the gear on, fuselage inverted - my shop (summer)
- painted the back side of fuselage (AFT rear seat) with blue - my shop (summer)
Early morning, no wind, water on the floor for the dust, I covered everything in the shop.
It's very hard to mantain the dust away from your fresh job, the uncontrolled curing temperature don't help a nice work ..... it's acceptable.
Second step.....
I knew a guy that owns a professional car paint shop, just 2 miles from building site. So for the rest of the project I rented his oven and did the job myself, I'm happy in general for the result, it's my perfect idea between homebuilding, cheap and quality.
I spent about 800 usd for consumable and oven rent (it was winter) in 10 days working.
After 10 hours of flying I wanted to paint the cowling but my grey color was too old (dried); a colour shop had prepared for me another mix but ... not matched with the original (you can see it into the VAF calendar) was not funny but another lesson was learned
Now all colours in my 8 are the same