You’re standing in the automotive paint aisle at Canadian Tire clutching the front fork of a 1964 CCM Ladies one-speed. The fork tube retains a priceless piece of the bike’s DNA — the only intact strip of true blue original paint.

Your mission is to find a close match to bring the bike back to its original dark blue tone. The store shelves present a wall of perhaps 100 colours in no particular order, including about a dozen scattered blue options. You scan the lids of the spray cans and pinpoint a Dark Blue Metallic. There are two cans of the stuff, but you want to be sure of the paint match. There’s a Royal Blue that’s good, but not metallic. An Indigo Blue is bold, but too bright.

Meanwhile, a father and son combination have joined you in the automotive paint aisle. Like you, they are scanning the paint colours, and starting to finger some of the… yes… blue paint bombs. Feigning nonchalance, but with your heart rate accelerating, you return to stand in front of the last two remaining cans of Dark Metallic Blue. You hover for a moment, then pounce to grab both cans. You glance sideways and catch a fleeting glimpse of the son, who just might be giving you the evil eye. But you have your blue paint and you are sticking to it.

For the bike’s white fenders, you select Candy White, which seems to be of little interest to your father/son competitors. Grabbing a can of primer and clear coat as well, you head for the cash. You initiate small talk with the Canadian Tire cashier, asking how she’s doing. “Super tired,” she replies. “I was up late watching a Disney show with my brother.” You tell her you were up not so late watching Downton Abbey with your wife. “My mom is obsessed with that show,” the cashier replies, and suddenly you feel your age.

Back in the kinrosscordless workshop, it’s a bit stuffy for spray-painting inside, and you don’t want your better half inhaling fumes through the forced air system. It’s been a crappy winter but the weather is brightening, so you set up your paint shop in the backyard. A piece of 1×6 from your neighbor’s old fence serves as a good painting stand for the frame, which can be balanced in three different positions for maximum paint coverage. Your Dogwood tree has yet to bud, and a crook in one of the branches is a great place to hang the bike fork.

You catch some luck on the weather as the temperature hits 15C — okay for painting. Duct tape comes in handy to tape off the parts that don’t want paint — such as the original CCM headset badge, and the housing for the pedal bearings. Finally, you patent a cost-efficient method for painting the bike fenders and chain guard — tomato cages. The cages are stuck firmly in the ground and let you balance and flip around the fenders as required for painting.

The frame and forks have been stripped then sanded with 400 and 800-grit. You apply a coat of primer to get started and to smooth out some of the bike’s war wounds that remained after sanding. The spray bombs are a bit finicky but you start to lay on a series of light coats to build the base.

The fenders took more than elbow grease to get to the painting stage — you had some professional help from a young guy at Mayfair Plating on Carlaw. For the price of a few Starbucks lattes, he sandblasted away several caked-on coats of paint and accumulated rust.

The Dark Blue Metallic and Candy White go on in multiple coats, with a minimum of 10 minutes to dry before recoating.

Painting a bike is a mix of ballet and hot yoga, at a much better price. You’re getting close to the final step — applying a protective clear coat. But first, you’ll need to read instructions from a gent in Truro, Nova Scotia. He has sent a couple of period CCM decals in the mail. You will need to absorb the steps to apply the “water-slide” decals before the clear coat goes on.

Meanwhile, the 1964 Vintage CCM has returned to its original true blue.