Prime Time!

The time has come. After days and weeks of laboring over this bed, it's clean, stripped and ready for primer! woo hoo. I'm so proud of us for finishing the scraping and sanding. I learned so much from this experience, we'll be so ready to do the rest of the car next summer.
But before then, we have to get this bed primed, so we set up our own make-shift paint booth in the driveway! I used Rustoleum Red Oxide Primer and did 2 coats (3 in some places).
I'm a pro at this now...

Setting up the "paint booth" we used drop clothes and painting tape. Ghetto, cheap, easy to setup and it worked great!! We had to use towels to keep the drop clothes down cause it was so windy this day... and corbin stood guard. 

All ready to go. Man, it looks great!

I'm so happy that we did it. Excited to get this baby primed and in the garage. Our first body big body work project. We do have some more work to do before it's good though - replacing the access panel behind the back window and fixing up the dented wheel wells. 

And... Here we go!

Full of paint and ready for a shower! Now to put Ellie to sleep for the winter :)

What a learning experience this has been...

Geez. Who would've known the can of worms I opened that day earlier this summer when I took an angry scrapper to the bed and started ripping up that annoying, ugly, chipping plastic bed liner... oh boy. This process took us about 6 weeks (!!) and lots of learning along the way... here we go...

Lots of Strip Fast and sandpaper later...

All suited up and ready to go. Safety first ;)

John is grinding off the gold braze that is holding down the bed's access panel. I've been dying to see what's under here. I hope it looks pretty good so we can make a secret compartment!

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Oh Ellie, reveal your mysteries to me...

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Ta-Da.... looks pretty good. Just really really dirty! And I mean REALLY dirty. sick. barf. gag.

We've done a lot but have lots more to go. I'm getting pretty good with this sander :)

Another day, another night in the garage.

Wheel wells done! I'm exhausted! Thank god. These were a ^$%#*&

Now, it's crunch time. let's get this done before winter! 

Another Saturday with Ellie, John baby and sidekick Corbin.

Yes! Looking good. We're pretty much there. Tons of StripFast and elbow grease. We feel great that we've accomplished all this! Now we need to do a little more scrapping, giver her a bath and then prime 'er up! Go us!