The Auto Body Blog

The Mixing Room

When we enter the mixing room of a collision repair facility we see a bench to mix paints and primers on, the mixing bank with an array of colors and usually gun cleaning equipment to clean our expensive application weapons. The mixing room is usually, or should be kept very clean to ensure there are no contaminants transferred into the paint booth and ultimately into a customers vehicle. I have been a part of several start-up shops in my twenty year journey in the collision repair business. The company builds a multi million dollar, state of the art collision repair shop and in six months, can look like it has been in business for six years! Often times, it is up to each and every individual to keep the place looking like new, but we all know that housekeeping can take a back seat to fixing cars.

Once I enter a shop I usually have to clean up the mixing room to my personal level of standards. Most often I see paint splattered all over the walls of the mixing room and dirt that has been there since the dawn of time. I spend at least two hours cleaning this mess up and usually have to take all the equipment out of the mixing room to do a proper job. Then out come the paint and the rollers to make the mixing room look like new again. But why do we need to do this?

In a new shop that is just being built, the shop is built and then the expensive equipment is added in. The booth and mixing room are installed and tested for proper functioning. My suggestion is simple, before your jobber arrives with the mixing bank and the benches; you need to booth coat the mixing room. Let’s face it; we have all had the odd accident from time to time. A toner drops out of your hand and explodes all over the mixing room wall. The paint splatters out of the mixing can while stirred on the bench covering the wall behind the bench. Or remember when we put cans of paint on shakers, turning away for only a moment to find the can has opened and made a real mess all over everything. This is where booth coating your mixing room comes in real handy. Clean up is a breeze when the walls are covers in booth coating. A co-worker helps you move out the bench and a few others pieces of equipment, you then hit the walls with a pressure washer and in one hour, the mixing room looks like new again. Then you reapply the booth coating again and your mixing room is just like the day you moved in, clean, bright and free of paint splatter.

Many shops take customers on tours and never dare to enter the mixing room. This is where the science of a collision repair facility lies, and most customers will want to know the how and why’s of their brand new shiny paint job. It can be a selling point of your business, but if it looks like a war zone in there, it can turn some customers off and make them think twice as to why their insurance company sent them there in the first place.

My suggestion to you and your business, take out the equipment and paint the walls bright white, apply a good thick amount of booth coating and let it dry over night. Move the bench and other equipment back into the room the next day. Now you have a brand new looking mixing room again. If you are building a new shop, before you bring equipment into your mixing room, cake the walls of the mixing room with booth coating and let it dry. Then notify your supplier and have them come in to set up the mixing bank and other essential equipment. This will save you hours of time down the road painting the walls of the mixing room and keep your mixing room looking like the day it was built.

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