We painted the tub in several stages as our schedules allowed. We started with the underside in late June 2014. I had already used brushable seam sealer on every seam and a gang of helpers had come over and helped me invert the tub on the saw horses. Here is the tub just before we started the painting process.

The floors are blue because I had painted them before installing them. This was not going to be a frame up restoration remember. The red primer is rattle can primer and by now most of it was a couple of years old. We scuffed it up with some 300 grit sandpaper but if I were doing this again I would take all of that old primer off. When we got to the outer panels we did go back to bare metal before painting.

The underside got several coats of primer and then Gravitex, a stone chip that Stuart recommended and was available here in the US. Here is the Gravitex going on. The special gun just screws on to the Gravitex container and it leaves a nice textured finish.

After the Gravitex we shot several coats of Powder Blue and the underside was done. We did not put clear on the underside.

This was also a good time to shoot the inside of the spare tire cubby.

While the tub was upside down we also used the opportunity to paint under the scuttle.

We resumed painting the top side of the tub on July 5th, the day after a hurricane had passed through. We are around 50 miles inland so did not get the worst of the storm but there were still some lingering wind gusts.

One of those gusts got under the 20 foot canopy and it took off like a kite, It thankfully cleared the tub without hitting it but our work table with some recently mixed primer was knocked over spilling the primer on the tarp as well as the driveway.

That primer is still on the driveway today after two severe winters.

With the canopy back in place (now tied to the truck and the engine crane) we continued on to paint the top side of the tub. We are only painting the inner surfaces at this time. The pieces of the tub that will still be exposed after the car is assembled were left to another time.

I live on a main street with police cars often passing the end of the driveway. John and I spent several days in the driveway wearing bunny suits, latex gloves and respirators and mixing chemicals. We were sure someone would ask what we were doing as it looked for sure as if we were cooking crack cocaine like the guys in the HBO series. I had a couple of coffee mugs made up with this design.