A Big Day

1999-before moving the whole project from Atlanta to Florida

The top picture was taken in 1999. My oldest son, in the first picture, was 11 at the time and in middle school. He's now almost 29 and living a successful life in Austin. Bill Clinton was President, "911" only meant an emergency call, and the words "year 2000" still sounded weird and distant.
It's taken almost 18 years to get from that condition to now!
Last week, I finally decided "enough" and finished the last round of sanding and prep work prior to painting. I knew there would be imperfections, but I just decided that I could live with whatever they were. After all, I'm not building a trailer queen, but a car that I can drive and enjoy without worrying about a "perfect" paint job.
Today, I enlisted the help of my dad and my two brothers to lift the body off of the dolly and position it back onto the frame. I was a little worried about alignment, because back in 1998-99, when I welded the new floor pans in, I also had to replace a number of the floor braces, and I confess that I applied a less than scientific method in doing so. Basically, I eyeballed and welded them in to what looked like close enough.

2018-last day on the dolly for ever!

The whole process took about two and a half hours, and sure enough, there were three mounting points that were somewhat off. I decided to go ahead and set the car down and I'll most likely drill up through the floorboard and make new holes. Not the most elegant solution, but it will work and never be obvious from above or below.
Next step is to wet sand and buff out my paint job to take all of the orange peel out. I don't know what it takes, if it's even possible, to avoid the orange peel texture. Polishing at this stage will be much easier and thorough than if I tried to do it at the end with all of the trim installed.
I also would like to find something to wrap onto the body to protect the paint as I move around the car and work on it, as I'm sure I'll be bumping it or dropping stuff on it many times in the months to come.