Over the last week I finished painting the passenger-side doors. It went more quickly and easily than the first two.
Now I need to have a look at the rest of the body and figure out what to do next. It got its first coat of primer-surfacer last September, and I did a little bit of sanding last fall. It will need a lot more sanding, and probably some more primer in some places. Hopefully I can finish all of that by the end of June.
During the last week or two, I started working on the two passenger-side doors. There were a couple of low spots on them, a bit too low to be taken care of by the primer-surfacer, so I put a thin layer of feather-fill on those areas. Then I applied a thick coat of primer-surfacer, and started block-sanding the main flat areas of the doors. I cut all the way through the primer-surfacer in a few places, so I put one one more coat. After that, I was able to finish the block-sanding. I still need to wet-sand all the moldings and reveals on the upper portion of the doors. After that, I need to do the same exact things I did to the first two doors: spray a sealer coat of epoxy primer, paint the edges with semi-gloss maroon, paint the outer surfaces with maroon, apply a bunch of masking tape, and paint the trim areas with black.
I sprayed on the black trim coat, which took more paint than I expected. It was chilly, so I left the doors in the sun for a day to dry well. Then I mounted them back on the car, and removed the other set to start working on them.
The two doors I am working on needed one final coat of primer-surfacer. Once I took care of that, I was able to wet-sand them. That took a while, because of all the moldings, nooks and crannies, etc. Now that the doors were ready to paint, I did some improvements to the plastic painting tent in my garage. I added a back wall and a ventilation fan with a filter. Then a couple of days ago I sprayed the doors with a coat of epoxy primer to serve as a sealer. The following day I painted the edges with a maroon semi-gloss paint mix. Today, after the edges had dried, I masked them off and sprayed the outer surfaces with gloss maroon paint. Tomorrow, when that is dry, I will do more masking and spray the moldings and window frame with gloss black paint.
Once these doors are done, I will repeat the exact same process with the two passenger-side doors.