Our prep was, all the glass out, actually easy in a Polo of this age, we pushed all ours out from the inside, life the seal in the middle at the bottom to the seam and work your way around tucking it over the seam ASAP, the door windows we wound down. We removed all of the lights/wipers, the badges, the grill, plastics, the inner arch plastics, inc the bumpers and all of the interior trim. Took an evening and half a morning. Our metal work and paint work was pretty good so less prep than most would need. It still took Chris easily a couple of half days and the two of us similar, under his guidance sanding, filling (and couple of minor dents with skim filler and a couple of pin hole rust areas with a sort of lead solder mix), priming and masking, we put it in the booth, took off the wheels, it went on axle stands with the hubs and struts all covered up. He then spent two long half days spraying it in a booth, it was left to bake in the booth for an afternoon+overnight+morning, we then re under sealed the arches and key underneath metal work and sprayed everything without new paint with wax oil. Then a half day of the three of us putting the glass back in and polishing it. Low loader (£10 to the local garage) back to our workshop/garage to have every thing put back in/on.
All went well, the new tank was a hassle until we put it up on a post lift, a two man push it around the corner 200m to the local garage, a few beers owed. Also the heater blower and rear wiper unwilling to come back to life, both are on fuse 14 so assume they are conected - so far have spent as long on them as most of the other stuff! And no success yet : (
So we did do (and are still doing) a fair bit of work on it and we undoubtably had a good deal on the respray work. Chris has been doing bodywork for 30 plus years, so very good, very efficient and works like a Trojan - that all contributed. Its been ok for us almost fun and pretty satisfiying - looking good now. Can easily see a good re-spray of a G being around 1k plus and that's excluding metal work where needed.
Just looking at Dubstars, ours was is a piece do p...! Now his is a proper job!