I need to paint the bonnet and the boot, they are badly chipped. Halfords paint, when they eventually got the colour right, was the wrong texture and hugely noticeable. Don’t fancy spending another £25 for 300ml.

I was thinking of removing the bonnet/boot and doing it in the garage. I’ve done a fair bit of home type spraying outside before, with mixed results, so I know what can go wrong. Question is, can I get any kind of decent result with a spray can or do I need kit? If the former, where to buy? If the latter, what kit?

Or, will a body shop do it for cheap if I just hand them a bonnet prepped?

Try he dealers for paint, I found them cheaper than Halfords. Other than giving the can a good shake, stand them in a bowl of hot water which creates a finer spray and go for lots of fine coats to build the colour up.
I’m assuming you already know prep is king when spraying anything.

Yep. I messed up at first cos the paintwork was too hot (it was outside) and the paint dried too fast so it didn’t coalesce very well. However despite this the texture’s definitely wrong – the pearlescence is not right.. too finely grained.

Spraying in sunshine is always difficult. I’d remove the bonnet and suspend from the garage ceiling so it’s verticle rather than stretching across it. The texture is probably due to spraying too thick. First coat should barely cover anything, allow to dry then another fine coat. Sounds tedious but the finer coats dry quicker so the whole job ends being quicker.

I’ve sprayed bumpers and wing mirrors with a can before with them removed and in the garage. Had pretty good results – though definitely noticeable difference in finish quality if you looked hard and I could never get it to shine as well as the body paint no matter how much I T-cutted or polished. It was acceptable for the old bangers I was driving at that time, but these day’s i’d just cough up the cash and get a Pro to do it. It’s not that expensive for a pro to spray entire body panels that are not rusty as there is very little prep work to do, which is what really costs. On a previous car I got a body shop to respray the sills on both sides and re-attach some plastic trim that was coming off for about £400 and that included some blending in to the rest of the car.