The Evolution of Midlife's Trunk

Midlife's trunk originally looked not too bad...it was covered with the trunk mat, of course, which hid a whole passel of sins.  This is the best pic I find of the trunk, just after the body was painted:

You can barely see that the interior was painted black to match the trap door.  When I tore the car down to inspect for rust damage, I found a number of aluminum patch panels on the two trunk drop-off floors, the rear trunk support and wheel wells.  Here's what the floors looked like after I removed undercoating (!) showing the patch panels:

I ripped out the trunk floors and welded them back in, as well as the rear trunk support.  Here's an early picture after that was completed:

The welding marks are clearly visible.  To clean those up, I carefully sanded them down, used a product called ICING to fill in the imperfections, and sanded them smooth.  Also notice in both pictures that the quarter panels have been previously patched.  I really didn't do much to repair them.  My work on Midlife was intended not to touch the exterior paint if I could help it, saving me a lot of money (well, I can dream, can't I?).

Here are the pictures of the floors prepped and ready for painting:

I started painting by applying a light coat of DP74LF red oxide primer, followed by two moderate coats.  I had to wait 2 hours for the primer to dry enough for working in the trunk to apply seam sealer and sound deadener.  I had to wait a further hour after sound deadener to allow that to dry.  Painting the trunk is hard, as the paint gun is hard to work into the quarter areas, and up above the rear trunk floor.  I used my lift in several positions to allow a variety of positions to paint.  Final paint consisted of a light coat of single stage acrylic enamel Candy Apple Red (matches the exterior car color), followed by two moderate coats.  Wanna see some pics?

Believe it or not, there's a thick layer of undercoating/sound deadener on each quarter panel.  I suspect the camera just didn't pick it up well.  Anyway, the trunk is now painted correctly, and looks much better than it started out as.  This was my first solo attempt at painting, and I think I did a reasonably fair job.  Woohoo!