painting a car?

[moominmolly]

Now that the snow has melted and the sun has re-emerged, it has become unavoidably clear that I have rust spots on my driver's side door. Now, I could just take it to a body shop and have them make it all disappear, but it is making me wonder -- could I paint my own car?

Now, I don't mean the kind of job where you get some paints from the store and paint crazy shit all over your car because it's 20 years old. I want the thousand smooth shiny glossy topcoats, I just want them on top of *interesting* paint. How difficult would this be? Is there a body shop who would prime my car, let me drive it away and paint on it for a week, and then take it back to put on all the shiny clearcoat, or something like that?

I'm just mulling this over, and I know it might make it tricky to re-sell the car when I'm done with it. But if it worked out, it would be SO. AWESOME.