Body work and paint
I personally do paint and body work. I took metallurgy classes when I was younger because I thought I wanted to be a welder. Things changed and I have been doing paint and body for a solid 25 years. Both metal work and prep work take time. I’ve done everything from a quickie paint and body to show winning cars. No paint and body job from start to finish should take that long if that’s the only car being worked on. However, The reason for the 8 month estimate (mentioned before) is multiple jobs at once. Time for shrinkage, out gassing and curing are things of the past. Modern good quality fillers, paints and urethane high solids primers are good to go in a day or so. My personal car, a 1971 Demon, I painted 20 years ago and it still looks good. No shrinkage and no tell tail signs of “old body work”. The clear is showing it’s age but hell, I live in Phoenix and the car hasn’t been in a garage for the past 17 years! So 8 months might be an accurate time frame for a busy shop.