Green with Envy

The time since the last entry has been full of sanding.  The weather has been wet and very, very cold.  We have also had more than one night full of damaging winds and tornadoes.  Once again it has been so cold that I have had to keep my hands warm and begin sanding immediately upon getting to the barn or my fingers would get numb and I couldn't control what I was doing.  Also, a couple of nights, because of the storms, water ran into the barn.  It didn't cover the entire floor, but about 10 feet of the concrete next to the door was covered.  Also, we had one day that the temperature spiked to 70 degrees and then dropped to 30 that night.  This caused condensation of the concrete which caused everything metal from hip level down to be completely covered in water and it was so cold it was very difficult to dry any of it off so that it didn't cause my sandpaper to clog.  Also, this caused some flash rusting which had to be dealt with as well.  Something else fun that happened was that at night I started to notice red marks on my fingers and hands that would burn in the shower.  I couldn't figure out where they were coming from until I noticed one day that I was bleeding.  It turned out the sandpaper was rubbing through my skin, causing the bleeding, and because I was pressing on them, I couldn't get them to stop while I was sanding, so I had to wait for them to heal.  All that aside, after finishing the body panels I was able to finish the body of the car in one week.

After buying all the paint supplies, which amounted to just a little under what I paid for the whole car, the guys at the parts house are much more accommodating now, so that is a nice result.  It turned out that the color April, and I as well, really liked was a 1973 GM color.  Oldsmobile called it Emerald Green, Pontiac called it Verdant Green and Chevrolet simply called it Dark Green.  The cost of the paint supplies were stroke-inducing:  Two gallons of base coat, reducer for that, a gallon of sealer, two gallons of clear coat, a hardener and a sealer for that.  No wonder the parts house guys were so happy.

Yesterday I took the car and all of its parts, in two separate loads, down to the paint shop.  Fortunately, the shop is only about 3 miles from our house.  It is in the back of a used car dealership that was, up until recently, a GM dealership that the government in their infinite stupidity decided to close down when they took over GM a few years ago.

The painter called today and said he was already done with it and asked if I could come pick it up so it would be out of the way.  This was much sooner than I had anticipated and the problem I had was that when I hauled the doors home I didn't have anyone to help me unload them into my garage.  I searched everywhere and finally I called dad to see if he knew anyone.  He called a friend who came over and helped me unload them.  After unloading the doors and fenders and various parts I came back and picked up the car.  I called April, because it happened to be right as she was getting off work, and she met me there to get a first look at the color.  We both thought the color turned out really well and it really complimented the color of the interior.  It was difficult searching for the right shade of green but April said that this was exactly the color she had pictured so I suppose that's what matters.  The pictures don't really do the paint justice compared to what it looked like under the florescent lights.

And, upon April's request, an obligatory shot of me in front of the car.

Here are a few of the pieces

It's not a show car, but it wasn't intended to be.  In my opinion, it turned out to be a really great, perhaps above average, driver quality car.  Next stop is the upholstery shop to have a headliner put in.  Then I'll have the windows reinstalled, which can be done at my house since the window guy is mobile, and then I'll drop the engine in so the ball joints can be replaced before I reinstall any of the front end.  It was recommended that I wait at least a month before installing any woodgrain.