Very good question. This was a question that I asked seriously asked of several sources. In short there is a big difference, and not just in price either.
First thing I did was narrow down what brand I was going to use, while I did ask about other brands it seemed like Interlux was the most common name recommended so I honed in on thier stuff. I also had a fairly lenghty conversation with a guy who had just done a restoration on a similar boat who used the Interlux product line.
Interlux offers several paints that all seem geared to specific areas of your boat. What I did find interesting is that NONE of thier paints were recommended for below the waterline reason being is they are not designed to be immersed in water for extended periods of time. This is why I opted for bottom paint on my project. For the hull above the waterline they had two choices, one was a two part epoxy paint mix with teflon the other was a one part paint, with teflon. The price gap between the two was about 20 bucks per quart. They claim that the finish of the two part will come out better than the one part, but in looking at the over all ratings of both paints they seemed to be identical, other than the fact the two part was more of a pain to deal with. Personally I did not want to deal with making sure the paint was mixed properly so I went with the one part paint. I had enough things to worry about, the paint mixture was the last thing I wanted to question.
Now that being said the guy I talked to who had already done his boat used the two part and painted below the waterline. He claims that it's not given him any problem and his boat spends the season in the water. I cannot say either way if that was the right thing to do as I stuck to the directions.
Since yours sits out of the water I would think that painting the entire hull is a non issue.
There is a noticable visable difference between rustoleum and the Interlux paint. Both are oil based, but the Interlux has teflon in it. It also applies differently, flows differently and quite frankly the finish you get with the Interlux is amazing. Clearly Interlux is a marine grade paint, rustoleum is, well just paint. Just seeing the two products side by side you can tell the makeup of the paint is totally different. The finish is also different as the Interlux feels much more durable once dried and cured (like a factory paint job on a car) I did look at a powerboat that had been painted 5 years prior with Interlux and it looked like new, which is a testament to it's longevity.
The Interlux can be applied with either a good quality brush or closed cell roller. I suggest using the roller as the results are far better and more uniform, but you'll still need a brush to do the hard to get areas. It's applied in multiple VERY thin coats as it runs very easily if you go to heavy but is also a reason why you get such a high quality shine and finish. It took 3 coats to do mine and I was not really changing the color to much. You'll notice that I changed the red waterline to white, that took 4 coats.
I think what it really comes down to is how fussy you are about the way the boat is going to look and the durability of the paint in general. I wanted my boat to look good when it was done and now that some pix in my gallery are available, I'll let you be the judge. Now the interior I used rustoleum but it was applied to a fresh coat of fiberglass resin then after the paint dried another coating of resin was used to "lock in" the color as I was afraid that if the paint was left exposed to water or just being knocked around it would not last long at all being subject to peeling and chipping.
Far as price goes, yep good ole rusty is $8.00, Interlux is considerably more and I used what they recommended for primer and prep solvent. The one part top side paint ran $50.00 per quart, two part about $80.00, primer about the same $50.00, solvent was about $30.00 for a quart (which was way more than I needed). Bottom paint runs about $30.00 as well per quart.
If you do opt to use something like Interlux or any other marine paint make sure you read up on painting aluminum as the process is slightly different. I cannot stess enough also that surface prep makes or breaks the paint job. This stuff will show any and all imperfections so if you have any deep scratches that don't sand out they will show through. Since you've previously painted the hull if you don't remove all the old paint that is not only going to show through, but may effect the durability of the new paint.
The cool thing, at least for me, was seeing the final product. That made it all worth while and cosidering the cost I thought that the return was well worth it... unless you overprice your own labor rates!
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