Looks like DIY ceramic coatings would be pretty impossible...

Anyone who still runs painted headers is a flake! Factory-applied header paints have about a five-minute post-installation life span. From a longevity standpoint, paint just can’t stack up against high-tech ceramic coatings. But ceramics don’t come cheap, selling for up to twice the price of a set of painted headers. For some, the added surcharge might be hard to justify if it was just a question of looks alone.

http://www.carcraft.com/techarticles/high_tech_ceramic_coatings/index.html

Jet-Hot points out that realizing the full anti-corrosion benefits of header coatings requires coating the headers on their inside as well as outside surfaces. Not all competitors coat the inside surfaces, which isn’t good because exhaust gases themselves contain corrosive compounds. If the inside isn’t coated, the header eventually rusts through from the inside out. Coating only the outside can also cause another problem: Mild steel tubing fatigues when it gets too hot. An outer-only thermal barrier blocks the heat from radiating through the exterior metal surface, while the lack of an inner barrier exposes the metal to added “trapped” heat. In a scenario reminiscent of that caused by the dreaded “curse of the mummified headers” (outer cloth wraps used by some racers), the result can be literal disintegration of the mild-steel tubing.

The aluminum portion of Jet-Hot Sterling’s compound starts to melt at temperatures over 1,300 degrees F, but that’s OK for 90 percent of the applications out there. Cars running heavy loads of nitrous, a supercharger, or a turbo may need to move up to Jet-Hot 2000, which protects metals up to their melting point or 2,400 degrees F (whichever occurs first). The drawback is that Jet-Hot 2000 only comes in dark colors so it’s not as pretty. But the good news is that Jet-Hot 2000 usually eliminates the need for pricey (and hard to weld and fabricate) stainless steel tubing often specified in high-zoot nitrous or turbo applications.
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