My airplane was painted in my - attached to home - hangar. Reading some of today's posts gives me pause as to how i vented it. Anyway, the structure was made of 1" PVC pipe large enough to accommodate the wings and fuselage. For ventilation air in, I used four furnace filters taped to the forward side walls and a large circular fan that blew over spray and fumes out through a fan sized tube made of the same 6 mil plastic that covered the four walls, ceiling and floor - didn't want yellow all over my hangar floor. The exhaust tube went to a hole in a panel I made that fit the back window to exit to the outside. For lighting I bought several - eight, I think - inexpensive two tube fluorescent fixtures. Four were on the outside top and two each were on the outside sides. I may have survived the explosion by putting a box with the switches for all the electrical on the outside and lighting and fan were controlled by the external switches. Rightfully or wrongfully, I figured that because the fan motor was brushless, there would be no sparks in the vent flow - reason for the outside power switches. The power was turned on before painting started and turned off about a half hour after painting stopped.

I believe air temps are critical for a nice finish. I think if you looked at my airplane, you could tell which sections were painted the earliest in the morning and those that were done when the temps start warming up. When it warms up a bit, the orange peel effect begins.

This thread is really timely for me as I just finished painting the elevator project for my friend. Everything went flawlessly until the finish coat on the top of the elevator - yes the top. I was painting outside very early in the morning before the bugs wake up, but on the top, it was a week or two after the other coats and bottom finish coats and the time was perfect for the neighbor's Birch tree to begin shedding those irritating little seeds with the round wings.

What saved me was the inexpensive garden Gazebo I had put up this spring. I hadn't finished the project as the weather was too warm to work on it, but with the mosquito netting it came with, it provided a very nice outside paint booth naturally ventilated and the lighting was superb. Not quite big enough for a wing or fuselage, but it might work if the exposed part of the wing or fuselage was down wind - at least for the wind borne Birch spawn.