Another 5 Hour Day (Day 18)

Mike was sweet enough to work on my car again today. We are still in the process of stripping off the paint. He managed to get a fair amount done today.

Notice his face mask? We bought a better mask for him. He was just using a cheap little mask but it wasn't keeping out the paint particles as well as we may have liked. So we upgraded. Now he is thinking he needs to get an upgrade on the safety goggles also. I figure its a small price to pay to keep him out in the garage working on my car. We also wouldn't want an eye injury down the road.

He was in the garage for about 5 hours today while I was inside working on other things. I don't have the patience for paint stripping. So I have been letting him do it. Besides... he does a much better job than I ever could.

He got inside the Trunk Jamb area, half the roof, the Filler Panel behind the rear window, and part of the Passenger side Door Jamb. There are a few minor places left on the passenger side of the car he has yet to strip. Then he will start on the driver side of the car. It amazes me how fast he is at stripping the paint. It seems the small portion I did took forever!

The game plan is to strip as much paint as we can with the wire wheels. We are then going to tackle all the nooks and crannies with a Media Blaster. We have decided that we will use walnut shells in the blaster instead of sand. The pace car was blasted with Walnut Shells. Whats good enough for the Pace Car, is good enough for my car! We are also trying to get to the point of Media Blasting before it starts to get cold. Hopefully the nice weather will hold out for a little while longer.

Meanwhile... the blog restoration book is coming along great! I am very pleased with how it looks thus far and cannot wait to get it printed. Sadly.... I wont be able to print it until the car is done...which is not going to be any time soon. Oh, and just a little side note... My sister came over yesterday and looked at the car in the garage. Her reaction was what you would expect from someone who hasn't seen a mustang restoration. She took one look at it, turned to me and gave me a sympathetic look and told me it looks horrible! I am glad that I am at a point where I can find humor in that. I do realize it looks horrible right now, but I also know the potential it has and can picture what it will someday become.

Back out to the Garage (Day 17)

It has been awhile since we have worked on the car. Mike wanted to get the shelves done... and then life got a little crazy. Mike was out there most of the day today stripping paint. I was out there for about a half hour stripping as well.... but It is a hard job and takes muscles I do not have. So I don't last very long out there when stripping paint... but oh well. At least I helped.

This is a before picture... meaning this was how we left the car last time. I had previously gotten a fair amount of paint off the front fender and had just started on the door.

This is an after picture. Well it was after I was done for the day. I know there isn't a huge difference... but at least there is some noticeable progress.

This is what Mike got done. Notice the whole side of the car is pretty well done. He is Amazing! I was so excited to go out and see that much progress had been made on the car. It is nice to see things getting done again. I can't thank Mike enough for all his hard work. I believe this was about 5 hrs in the garage for him today.

Anyways... Mike did find a couple of holes in the back fender where it had rusted thru. They aren't too big so it shouldn't be a big deal to fix. There were some other places he was pleasantly surprised to see that they didn't have any rust... like he expected. Lets just hope the other side is in good shape also.

Shelves..Woohoo!

We finally have more storage space in the garage. Mike refused to work on the Mustang until we got things organized. We had mustang parts everywhere! It was getting too hard trying to work on the Mustang with the parts laying around. As you will recall, the last post was about the plans for some shelves. I am happy to say they are finished!!

We headed off to home depot and bought some wood. Mike spent the day in the garage building the shelves (while I spent the day making and canning Salsa). This is while he was still building them.

This is after with a bunch of parts on them.

The garage looks much better with things more organized. The inside of the Mustang is no longer housing a bunch of parts... and nothing is sitting on the ground under the car anymore. I am glad to have at least this problem solved. Now we can get back to working on the Mustang.

It has been awhile...

It is crazy how life can sneak up on you and before you know it it has been a full month since last working on the car. I guess it was a busy month. We had a vacation in the middle of the month and some other things going on. I am hoping we can get back out there soon. The only problem is how hot it is outside. We bought a box fan but I don't know how much help it is going to be in the garage with keeping us cool.


Before we get back to tearing into the car... we need to do a little clean-up. We have car parts coming out of our ears and nowhere to put them. Mike decided he is going to build some shelves on the other side of the garage door at the front of the garage. He drew himself a nice little diagram which I of course had to take a picture of.

That, my friends, is my brilliant husbands mind at work. If it doesn't make sense to you, don't worry, it doesn't make sense to me either.... but it looks good. I trust that Mikal can turn this lovely picture into some real nice selves thereby saving us from being taken over by car parts.

Anyways... that is the most I can say we are doing towards the restoration. Hopefully we can get our storage problem solved soon so we can get back to tearing the car apart.