Steve - It will take a LOT more then a condensed version to do this right. The new paints - they can get complicated. I would also like to steer you clear of HOK paints. This is not because they are bad, they aren't. It's because they are very expensive and usually not available at your local auto body supply. You would be better off with PPG, DuPont or R-M which you can buy locally. You also have another major problem - California!!!! They are starting to require water based paint with little or no VOC's and that's a bag of worms ,most of us elsewhere in the US don't have a clue about how to paint this stuff yet. And do you want to do a dark color as your first paint job?

Here's a great website for painting http://spi.forumup.org/index.php?mforum=spi and here's some more good info with lots of reading:http://www.crankshaftcoalition.com/w...y_and_exterior

(The exam will be tomorrow morning to see how much you learned)