How hard is it to do your own body work? (doesn't have to be pretty)

[Pandamonium]

Sorry for such a long post. I don't know how to be more concise.
Car: 2002 Toyota

Long story short: I clipped my passenger side rear door and car. The term quarter panel keeps coming up, but it's not really a quarter panel (see view 4). Anyway, this car was repaired before in that area, and a lot of what is flaking off is filler+paint. If you open the door, the chipping is also inside. In the few miles I've driven, enough filler fell off so that I am pretty sure I can touch bare metal with my finger. To be fair, I picked a couple of the chips off- but they came off very easily. I'm in New Orleans, so between the daily summer showers and the humidity, I'm a bit worried about rust.

Here are some pictures that I took yesterday, within 10 minutes of the damage:

The "quarter panel" is like a big C shape that runs under and over both side doors.

I've gone to two shops so far, one with a $700 quote and the other with a $1300-1400 quote. Of these quotes, maybe $30 is going towards materials; the rest is labor. Both said that it must cost that much to "do it right." The higher quote is from a shop that is AAA affiliated. The lower quote is from a shop that has one review (glowing, but it's only one) on Google. The $700 shop is also run by a small family that seems like they are good people. I basically talked to the owner for 20 mins about non-auto related stuff. He seemed like the type of guy that my father would be friends with.

As much as I'd like the car to look normal again, I have these concerns:
1) It's an 8 year old car with a KBB of ~$6k
2) I don't have the greatest sense of "if it's more than x% the value of the car, don't bother", but my gut tells me that 10% is a reasonable cutoff for something that doesn't directly affect safety or driveability
3) Anything more than $100-$200 is kind of pricey. I'm 100% living off loans, so what costs $600 today means I'll be paying back $1200ish when I start working
4) I'd like to squeeze 7 more years (Another 50k miles or so) out of this car, and I think the engine/transmission/etc should handle it without much of a problem.
5) For as well maintained as this car is, it's not without problems. For one, there was some damage in the same area in the past. Besides that, the two most glaring things that I notice while driving is a little rattle in my air vents and an intermittent periodic "clanking". Mechanics have looked into the clanking, but it wasn't on anything mission critical so we stopped caring. My sister thinks the rattling noise is caused by something she dropped into the vents years ago by accident.

So my questions:
If my only concern is protection against rust, could I just take auto paint and paint over the chipping filler and bare metal? Or would that all chip off later anyway?
If my concern is protection against rust but I know I'd be peeved about all the scratches, could I realistically do it myself and save the money? I don't own any power tools.
If DIY is possible, is it really difficult? If you've ever done it on your own, would you do it again?

 

[thedarkwolf]

Sure its possible if you don't care what it looks like. Knock off the loose stuff, sand it a bit, prime it, and spay paint it a close enough color. I'd just pay the $700 though. Car is worth too much to half ass it. I did some real half assed rust repair on my caravan beater just to get it to pass inspection but its only worth $500.

 

[zoiks]

Where do you live? You might want to check your craigslist services section for scratch repair. I had a nasty scratch on my previous G35 and the guy came down to my house and primed/sanded and painted the door right in my garage. It turned out awesome and you couldn't tell the difference in the color or shade. Cost me $250.

 

[jtvang125]

If you have no tools and no experience I'd say leave it to a shop. With that much damage a DIY job will look like crap.

 

[Bignate603]

$700 isn't too terrible. If you want, go back to that shop and ask to see some of their work. If the results look good I'd go with them.

 

[CurseTheSky]

Take it to a shop. You're looking at sanding it down to bear metal (including the surrounding area), body filler (possibly), primer, paint, and clear coat to get it looking similar to the rest of the car. You could certainly half-ass it with a quick sand job and some rattle can primer and paint, but it won't look good once you get within ~15 feet of the car.

 

[Pandamonium]

Damn. It's just frustrating to blow $700 all because I was an impatient dumbass and couldn't wait 2 seconds. I mean, I'm the kind of person who will spend some 12+ hrs reading about products so that I can save a few hundred here and there. But this, this was 100% my fault and caused in a matter of 2 seconds. I was literally stopped waiting for this guy in an SUV to turn around the corner. The dude looked like he couldn't make his turn so I edged out to make space for him. In so doing, wham, $700. 2 seconds.

Edit:
I should add:
I should have just sat there and let the guy figure it out. The ramps in this garage are for two lanes of traffic and I was well within my lane. The other guy (like most people who live here) drove down the middle. I figured the dude would take a while to adjust and make the wide left turn he needed to make (and should have planned to make) and I didn't want to wait there. I just wanted to get home and go to bed after my goddamn exam. I might have been more patient had I not just pulled an all-nighter. Procrastination, lack of sleep, and bad judgment will cost me a small fortune.

 

[CurseTheSky]

Well, let's put it this way, do you ever plan on reselling the car or are you going to keep it to the end of its life?

If you're going to keep it, it might be worth a shot doing it yourself. Look up guides for painting and general body work - nothing fancy, but some DYI information. It can be a long and tedious process and you can walk away either extremely disappointed or extremely impressed.

 

[exdeath]

Edges like that are more difficult. Body work isn't something you can learn from a book, it takes years of practice and a special artistic touch.

 

[mztykal]

I could fix that in a day and would charge around 4-600 for it.

I just got done with a RSX front end and blend, plus a body kit for it and I only charged him 600, though it's a friends good friend...

 

[aleckz]

I would have it done professionally, at least on the rear quarter. If you wanted to do the work on the door it would be ok, but remember you have to get down to bare metal, fill it, prime it, then seal it, paint it, and clear it. To do the last three steps with out it looking like garbage you have to blend into the paint along the door which takes more effort and time with knowledge of blending paint. And if you're going to paint it some off color it's going to look ridiculous.

 

[IcePickFreak]

The dogleg is what's driving the cost up for repair the most, and the edge of the door isn't the best place either. You could do it yourself, but if you don't have the tools or experience it's not going to be pretty and honestly probably not done right to prevent it from rusting in the future. That's a bad fix to try your hand on autobody for the first time.

 

[alkemyst]

I'd sand it down and prime it then just take it to a Maaco if you want low cost. They should be able to do a good enough job on that.

Thing with paint is all it takes is one monkey with an airgun to overspray the whole car and INTERIOR and ENGINE COMPARTMENT.