Painting dilemma (long). What would you do?
I can sympathize with the body man. A insurance job pays 10 hours and he can get it done in 8. He makes more money. Painting old cars is just time and materials. $3000 is 30 hours @ $100/hour. The better shops around my area are charging that much. It takes a lot longer than 30 hours to do a complete paint and even longer to replace panels, remove rust and take out dents. I don't know anyone that charges $50/hr but if they did that would be a week and a half to do the complete job. Most shops have a day or two of just block sanding.