Our decision to paint the car took a very long time. Originally, we bought Orange GRP and intended to wrap everything else orange to match.

As time marched on, we decided we would wrap the main side panels in carbon fibre effect wrap to give some contrast to the orange GRP. At this stage the intention was still to wrap the other body panels in orange.

Looking into wrap, it started to become apparent that finding an orange wrap to match the GRP wasn't going to be possible!

So the decision was made to paint the remaining panels, but again, because we like to over-complicate things, we sort of decided we would paint it ourselves... It's a kit car right, we should try and do as much of it as we can!

We ended up buying all the paint and thinners and everything from a cracking little auto paint shop in Stoke. This box of paint then sat in our kitchen for about 12 months!

We went for a flat RAL 2004 (this is the closest we could get to 'bright orange') and non metallic as we didn't fancy trying to do metallic paint for our first stab at painting a car!

After lots and lots more deliberation, we decided we probably didn't want to paint the car ourselves. After all, a lot of blood, sweat and tears have gone in to it. Might be a bit disappointing if we did a shoddy job of painting it. It is also now winter so far too cold anyway and we didn't want to wait for the warmer weather either.

So we started getting quotes to spray the panels and we immediately horrified at the cost of the quotes!

Eventually, we settled on a local guy that specialises in restoring Morgans - nice and easy to get the panels to him and whilst still quite expensive, was clear in managing our expectations. We saved some money by not getting a final flat and polish - figured we could probably manage that bit!

It took about 6 weeks for the panels to be painted, but it was worth the wait. Paint really is the finishing touch to a project!

We know lots of people do it, but getting the car painted at the beginning of the build just seems so risky! The number of scratches we would have put in it and having those side panels on from day 1 would have been a nightmare!! Our advice would be to wrap the side panels (so you can replace the wrap when it inevitably gets stone chipped) - then you can stick those on relatively early in the build when you've done as much as you can in the engine bay so you can then fit the front corners etc. You can then get the rest of the panels painted towards the end once you're less likely to drop a spanner on them!

We gave the thing a good polish using a combination of a big orbital polisher and a little dual action sander. There's still a bit of orange peel here and there, but it's good enough for us and you have to look really close to see it anyway!

It should be noted too that Kathryn did an excellent job of blending the bonnet scoop into the bonnet. GBS now also offer the scoop solution from the factory but you still have to fit it yourself. Maybe they liked ours so much, they thought it would be a good idea to start selling them! It certainly looks better than the VVT bulge they were offering before!