[stevesrt8]

A good painter in my area makes about 40-50K if he works for someone, of course a little more if he has his own shop.

My son is married to the daughter of the nicest little family owned Paint and Body shop I've ever dealt with and they feed a big family quite well. My boy went to a local Vocational Tech school and took a course in Auto refinishing which was a lot of fun. Basically did his own car for nearly free while learning.

One of the coolest things I've seen is the "buy two wrecks and make one good car" trick. When done professionally this yields an extremely nice car at an unbelievable price. They also do a lot of Hi Po Clones. They had a recent Cutlass conversion that became a beautiful 442 clone when completed.