Decided last Sunday to work on fixing the bottom of my driver side door of my Avalon. The car’s body overall is rusty (frame is solid) and the bottom couple inches of the door were starting to bubble and chip.

I started by taping off the area I wanted to work on and took 40 grit on a battery orbital sander around the whole area, which did not seem to do much. Went to a wire wheel on the super rusty spots, which began to create bigger holes (1st picture). I sprayed some rust dissolver on it and cleaned up what I could.

From there I went from looking to spray paint it and be done to filling holes that I was not qualified to do. None the less I continued to sand prior to using bondo, unfortunately I thought maybe an orbital pad on a grinder would help my situation but it made my Project much of a bigger deal as I now had to bondo not just a few holes but the entire area (2nd picture).

I used Short strand fiberglass bondo to fill rust holes and after the first couple layers it looked promising. I since switched regular bondo to try to smooth out the entire panel but am having difficulty making it smooth. This car has 360k miles with plenty of dings and dents to go around so I can’t hurt it, just trying to learn what I can.

I am 100% self taught with a little bit of AI, the last picture is of my current progress. I have switch to using a 2x4 with some 50 grit around it to help smooth, and did a dusting of black spray paint to find low spots.

Any thoughts/advice/critiques are more than welcome
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