# Build Your Own Room For Clearcoating Items!

**Source:** Cary Hardy  
**Type:** video  
**Published:** 2017-09-09  
**Duration:** 13m 58s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPg9pBLL-VA

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## Analysis

Cary Hardy demonstrates how to build a DIY spray room (kill room) for clearcoating pinball playfields in a garage setting. The video covers setup of a 10x25 foot canopy, plastic sheeting enclosure, intake/exhaust airflow systems, and cost breakdown (~$150-200 total). Hardy emphasizes dust control, negative pressure management, and safety precautions for home clearcoating projects.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Cary Hardy is currently working on a machine called 'The Getaway' — _Direct statement: 'currently working on the getaway still got some things I got to do'_
- [HIGH] A functional spray room can be built for approximately $150-200 using retail hardware — _Detailed cost breakdown: canopy $60, fans $35, clamps ~$12-15, plastic sheeting $24, tarp additional cost_
- [HIGH] Negative pressure in the spray room should pull the plastic walls inward (concave) — _Direct statement: 'You know you've got some negative pressure if your wall is starting to go concave, get sucked in'_
- [HIGH] Hardy has previously clearcoated playfields outside but switched to indoor spray room due to weather concerns — _Direct statement: 'I've usually done it outside but I'm gonna do it on the inside now because I don't trust the weather'_
- [HIGH] Using low-CFM box fans is suboptimal for intake airflow in a spray room — _Direct statement: 'I almost recommend you definitely getting a stronger CFM for your intake because this is giving me air but I would kind of like a little bit more to be coming through'_

### Notable Quotes

> "dust is the enemy the cleaner the better"
> — **Cary Hardy**, ~12:30
> _Core principle for spray room design and clearcoating quality_

> "Clean air in, toxic air out. Along with wearing a respirator of course."
> — **Cary Hardy**, ~16:45
> _Safety and airflow design philosophy_

> "this isn't the best, but it's all about uh function not form"
> — **Cary Hardy**, ~22:50
> _Design philosophy prioritizing practical effectiveness over aesthetics_

> "You know you've got some negative pressure if your wall is starting to go concave, get sucked in."
> — **Cary Hardy**, ~15:20
> _Practical indicator for verifying adequate exhaust airflow_

> "if you have the ability is to lock let me hold it down there we go is to lock your garage and evidently that shit don't fucking work"
> — **Cary Hardy**, ~13:40
> _Practical issue encountered: remote garage door lock ineffective with spray room setup_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Cary Hardy | person | Pinball enthusiast and content creator; demonstrates DIY clearcoating room construction; currently working on restoration/modification project called 'The Getaway' |
| The Getaway | game | Pinball machine project Cary Hardy is currently working on; not yet complete |
| Walmart | company | Retail source for canopy ($60) and box fans ($17 each) |
| Harbor Freight | company | Retail source for spring clamps (~$1 each) and plastic sheeting ($12 per 25x10 sheet) |

### Topics

- **Primary:** DIY clearcoating room construction, Playfield restoration and finishing, Dust control and contamination prevention, HVAC and airflow management for spray rooms
- **Secondary:** Safety precautions for clearcoat application, Budget-conscious workshop setup

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.78) — Hardy is enthusiastic and encouraging about the DIY approach while maintaining practical realism about limitations. He provides helpful guidance with honest caveats about what could be improved. Frustration briefly expressed regarding garage door locking mechanism, but overall tone is solution-focused and educational.

### Signals

- **[community_signal]** Cary Hardy producing educational content on playfield restoration techniques for home hobbyists (confidence: high) — Detailed video tutorial on spray room construction with cost breakdown and practical guidance; mentions future video on clearcoating process
- **[technology_signal]** Hardy transitioning from outdoor clearcoating to controlled indoor spray room environment to improve quality and consistency (confidence: high) — Direct statement: 'I've usually done it outside but I'm gonna do it on the inside now because I don't trust the weather'

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## Transcript

 What's up everyone? I'm gonna do a video here. Not sure how long it's gonna take for me to do it. I'm just gonna wing it and see what happens. Basically I want to show you how to build a kill room also known as a spray room or a shoot room for clear coating your pinball playfield at home. People out there may send it off to get done professionally because they don't feel comfortable doing it in their own environment or they don't trust their own skills and that's perfectly valid I'm not going to tell you that you should be doing what I'm going to be doing I'm just giving those that are willing to do that a some knowledge on basically on how to do it on a decent budget there may be cheaper slash even better ways to go about doing this but at least if anything you might be able to learn from either one my mistakes or two the way I'm doing it could be the way that you'd rather do it all right all right so currently working on the getaway still got some things I got to do but I'm gonna go ahead and start doing this video that way you can see exactly what is gonna need to be done I should wanna this is the first time I'm gonna be filming or doing a kill room inside my garage I've usually done it outside but I'm gonna do it on the inside now because I don't trust the Carl Weathers. So I'm thinking I should be able to fit it in this quadrant of my garage. I just got to basically get all this other stuff out of the way. Luckily, pretty much everything's on wheels, so I should just be able to roll to the other side and set it up in this vicinity. I mean, I could be completely wrong. I ain't going to fit, but just eyeballing it, I think it's going to work. So that's the next thing to do is just to make room for it. Okay, got the area all cleaned out or moved away. Now that I've got my quadrant here, let's see if everything fits. We'll start with of course the main thing to get, the canopy. Alright, this gives you an idea of how much room the canopy is going to take up. This is basically as wide, as much surface area that the whole area is going to take up. to move it around and I can adjust the height of these to go higher but I have yet to see if it's going to be able to max out am I going to be hitting the ceiling or not and it fits with a good amount of space above I could actually with this particular canopy I can actually go up like an extra six inches or so but I don't need to I've got room to go even further over here I mean of course everyone's garages will vary but this is I think a technical 400 square foot two-car garage the benefit of being able to do it my garage as well is that I can get this all the way here close to the wall and then once I set up my exhaust I can open up my garage door like a foot or two and had the exhaust just blow directly outside and of course because that's where I wanted to go is not around me all right so now that I've got this all set up this is my base everything to protect anything from falling inside it Now I need to bust out good old plastic sheeting and then wrap it all the way around There we go Alright I got the first half set up so essentially just so you know with this size of canopy this is a 10 foot by 25 foot 3 mil thickness what I've done is I've used these clamps right here and you can get I mean I've got a bunch of these I got these at Harbor Freight I want to say they're like maybe a buck maybe or so a piece they're pretty cheap but that's what not on spring clamp they had good strong grip that I use basically get it in position clamped up all up underneath around here I got them up around the corners over here clamped up everything's on the other side of the blue canopy all the way around. So that's the first half. Now once I get finished doing the rest of the wall all the way over here I'm definitely going to have an overlap which I'll show you later on to where air just can't easily blow in. I don't want to just be able to walk into this room with ease because everything else can just come in here with ease if that's how it's gonna be yep and then once I'm in here and I've got everything off and I'm gonna get some you can use just regular painters tape so then as easily peel on peel off and I'll tape I'm probably gonna to do it this way around either way but I need this fixed I can't just have air easily accessibly go up underneath there and once it goes up it can come down right on top of the playfield dust is the enemy the cleaner the better so once I get all the my wrapping in order in place then I'm gonna tape off all my gaps that way the only air that is getting in here at least 90 plus percent of it is going to be through an intake alright so now we have the area completely surrounded I'm going to go inside I have an overlap of course it's always helpful to have one more person with you so that way they can come in behind you and walk this up but as you can see in the inside I basically got all these just kind of clamped up with those clamps all the way around up underneath one of the don'ts is do not open your garage door because then you'll do all this so I've got to go in now and patch all this stuff up with some uh some painter tape that ought to stick and work just fine trust me right after i did it i was like oh no why did i do that so uh in light of that note something you might want to do if you have the ability is to lock let me hold it down there we go is to lock your garage and evidently that shit don't fucking work so yeah i gotta open it a little bit so I can get the exhaust fan on there but uh yeah I'm thinking that the lock makes it to where it cannot be opened remotely so I think it's how it works yeah I think that prohibits remotely being able to open the door I'll have to verify that by trying to use my garage door opener so that way someone doesn't accidentally hit the button and cause that door to come up and just scrape the top of your kill room right here which is exactly what it did all right all right so i've gone around and secured the perimeter on the legs with more clamps this is how i'm going to get in here it's through this flap right here now i've already taped the intake and the exhaust i've actually got the exhaust going right now just to make sure I've got enough negative pressure in the room. I've got a fan going right here through an air filter so that way I'm not just you know letting anything in and everything that's coming out is going to be somewhat filtered. I've got it plugged in right here running through an extension cable. Back up here. It's kind of tight. I haven't cut the intake yet because I want to make sure I've got enough negative pressure. You know you've got some negative pressure if your wall is starting to go concave, get sucked in. And if I open up this flap, it wants to get sucked right back in. So that's letting me know that all the air that's in this room is getting sucked through this. So I've got a 20 by 20 by 1 taped all around, and that's going out that way. My intake is going to be over here. So I'm going to have airflow coming in right here. I'm going to be clearing right here and my exhaust is going out right there. Clean air in, toxic air out. Along with wearing a respirator of course. So let me get the intake installed. Alright, I've got intake and I've got exhaust. So I would come in here I've got clean air coming through here filtered and all my bad air is coming out here filtered again so I'm not you know letting all the clear coat that will be coming out of here that all the vapors get stuck to everything else out there or try to weaken the blow on the environment stuff is some nasty stuff so as you can see I got all the wrapping pulled up underneath the leg except for my opening right here Something else if you want it even to be better when it comes to cleaning is that you can even spray kind of dampen down the floor so that way you're not going to accidentally kick up any dust. Something I didn't do and I decided not to worry about it as much because I'm not outside but outside I would definitely do it because there's wind but since I don't have to worry about wind in here I did not tape all the way around the perimeter but I did make sure I tape up the holes that were done by the garage door so that way no dust can fall from the ceiling and come through here and land on my pretty playfield. So, I want to say the kill room is now set up and ready for me to get my playfield all prepped up and start getting my things ready to clear coat. So, this is the kill room, ladies and gentlemen. to give you an idea of how much it cost. I got the canopy at Walmart. I want to say it was like $60. You could probably find one cheaper somewhere online, whether it be Amazon or whatever. I don't think I got any of my stuff online. Mine was all from local retail, so this will be marked up accordingly. Two of these little box fans. I almost recommend you definitely getting a stronger CFM for your intake because this is giving me air but I would kind of like a little bit more to be coming through but these are about 17 bucks at Walmart so you're looking at $34 $35 with tax and all that kind of stuff for just the intake and exhaust these are about a dollar each I've got I don't know two four six eight maybe 15 12 something like that of those you might be able to find longer sheets in this but I've got a 25 by 10 foot two of them and those were 12 bucks a pop at Harbor Freight so you're looking at 24 there and a tarp you don't have to have a tarp but that's just one less thing you have to worry about kicking up dust and everything you can get a bigger one if you want to like I said this is just an example and you can adjust accordingly to what you feel needs to be done or doesn't need to be done. I've done this before, just on the side of the garage, so I'm thinking it's going to turn out even better due to the fact that I don't have to worry about adverse Carl Weathers conditions outside with possible rain, which there's no chance of that today or tomorrow. So, I don't think there's anything else that needs to be said, at least off the top of my head I can't think of anything. Like I said, this isn't the best, but it's all about uh function not form so i don't think i'm gonna have any kind of issues with dust or anything like that uh we'll be wearing a respirator i will be making a video on the clear cutting process this may or may not be up at the same time but uh all right we'll see how it goes

_(Acquisition: youtube_groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: b43d20fe-ea38-4648-8a28-18b13074b6a2*