Painting the car – THE PLAN!

As for my planned sequence of priming, blocking, and painting parts such as the doors, hood, fenders, etc… I’ve decided that I’m going to focus on the body of the car so that I can have it in finished paint first, THEN work on the doors, hood, etc. That way, when they are finally painted, they can be installed on the car. This will eliminate any un-necessary handling and storage of painted parts, which would be an invitation for disaster… chips, scratches, etc. I have to give my dad credit for this idea. I mentioned to him my dilemma of where to store the painted parts… he said “paint the body first, so you can just install them as they are done”. I thought to myself, DUH! A fathers wisdom!  Also, It’s July and the weather is great… I don’t have a full size paint-booth so I’ll be doing something “make-shift” to paint the body. (possibly even painting it outside! Egads!) I can do the smaller parts in my booth anytime, even in the dead of winter. So by focusing on the body now, I’ll get it done while the weather is nice. Sound good? I thought so.  SO, this means, I’m going to get this body painted SOON! Reality is, its already pretty close. All the filler work is done for sure. It needs more high build, blocking, etc., which will consume quite a few hours… but, I’m getting there, slowly but surely! Sometime in the upcoming week, I’ll do a thorough cleaning of the car, blow all the dust out, etc. First thing… prep the roof and paint it! Why? because its a nice flat, horizontal surface and will be easiest for me to paint in one session, rather than trying to tackle the whole body at once. Up to this point, I’ve painted lots of smaller objects… classic bicycles mainly, but my experience shooting color on LARGE things like a car? Honestly, never done it! Another reason is that the roof skin will be very easy to mask off while I work on the rest of the body and paint it. I think I’ll follow that with doing the inside of the trunk, followed by the firewall/jambs/rockers/quarters. I am not going to paint the dash yet, because I haven’t decided for sure what color the interior will be. It’s going to be either black (like was when new), or red. If I go with red, I need to find a match for the correct shade. Was it Roman red like the exterior color? I would assume so, but???