Painting My Lisa Frank Bicycle

When I decided to repaint my bike, the original intention was not to make it look like a Lisa Frank trapper-keeper. That was just a pleasant side effect. After just a couple coats of paint, I am now the proud rider of a day-glo orange bike with pink tiger stripes. Not only is it exactly what I wanted, it's also safer because it's so bright! And if I ever ride through a rave, the spray paint can assured me that my bike will glow under blacklight. But I'm not writing this post just to brag about my haute new ride. I'm here to tell you that painting your bike is fun and easy! Bike nerds are constantly making things harder than they need to be. They say, You gotta powder coat that shit! But no, no you don't. Painting your bike yourself won't look professional, and it might even be kind of sloppy (like mine). But it will be all yours, and cheap to boot. Plus it might look less attractive to bike thieves. Here are some pictures of my process. I didn't take "before" pictures, but it was a burnt reddish color.

As you can see above, I put on a pink base coat. I sanded the bike lightly beforehand so the paint would have more surfaces to stick to. After putting on the base coat, I used painter's tape to create stripes. This way, the stripes will be pink and the rest of the bike orange. You can also see that I covered all of the silver pieces with newspaper. Handlebars, gears, chain, pedals, and brakes all got covered so they wouldn't get painted.

Outside ready to get painted.

Above: my orange bike with the blue tape still on it. I don't have pictures of this, but after I took the tape off I put on a clear topcoat, mostly because the pink I used turned out to be "marking paint" made for concrete, so it was rubbing off on everything. Terrible! The clear topcoat took care of the problem, but it's a good reminder that painting your own bike can have its problems, especially if you're like me and don't know anything about spray paint. Just go for it!

The pink turned out to be much more subtle than I originally thought, especially considering how bright it was originally! The stripes didn't show up to much in the picture, but in the sun the pink is pretty glorious. I also replaced my riser bars with cruiser/mustache bars that a friend of mine gave to me.