It'll be interesting to see if any "green eyed monsters of envy" raise their heads and start criticizing you guys for what you've spent. Both lists are pretty realistic, and compliments to you Dave for including, for example, oft ignored cost items such as fasteners, along with a few others. For years I've run into folks who have a novice's distorted view of what it takes to build a car (happened more in the Cobra replica arena than rods however). The more "focused" of these folks most likely had a legal sized tablet where they listed their expected costs for the "major" items derived most likely from catalogs and websites (more recently). When you try to tell them that they've missed a lot of "little" items, and that their swag of "miscellaneous = $500" wasn't even close there was obvious expression of disbelief. Most often underestimated are paint (yeah, Dave's $2000 if you count every piece of sand paper, every drop of gun wash solvent and so on is very realistic), upholstery, and drive train components (even a fairly complete crate motor is going to easily take another $1000-2000 depending on what complete means). When you tell them to double the dollars and triple the time they've estimated they look at you like you're on a bad trip. On rare occasions a few have come back and with hat in hand say, "man, turns out you were right...............I just couldn't believe it."

Sure, projects like Don's $3k show a car can be done for less, with his considerable experience, skill, and willingness to "scrounge". The bottom measure is they're cars of different market segments, not measured in monetary terms alone, albeit they both fall within "hot rod".