Finally some progress to report

Hello! Yes, I'm still alive. The long-awaited day has finally arrived. I just dropped the Miata off at my local Maaco paint shop for a full repaint. I'm changing the color to Dodge's Destroyer Grey. I had wanted to paint it an old Porsche color - Slate Grey, but it turns out that color is hard to come by in modern paints. The shop tried very hard to cross reference the old Porsche paint code to something they could mix up, but to no avail. I'm sure a real Porsche restoration shop can do it, but Maaco can't. So this Destroyer Grey seems to be pretty close, if perhaps a bit darker, which is fine with me. I really just wanted it grey, and I wanted the car to not look terrible anymore. I did a ton of prep work myself, which may or may not pay dividends. It's not paint-ready, so the shop is still going to do some sanding and prep on it, but I got all the old dead clear coat off and most of the color coat. I also removed as much of the trim as I could - all the window moldings, beltline molding, side marker lights, and most of the interior. I'll post an update when the car comes home. I'll have a good bit of reassembly to do, but that's easy stuff. Then it needs new tires and probably a suspension refresh.