At the beginning when we received these electric guitar kits, we looked at them and the first thing we thought was, these need some sanding. So that is exactly what we did. We sanded the crap out of these guitars. Then the next step for the body was to paint it. I decided to paint mine white because i thought that would look pretty cool. So we sprayed the guitar, and then rubbed it out with a scotch brite pad. Then we prayed it again and rubbed it out again. About 3 times and then we started with a clear coat to put on top of the white and we did that MANY times. After that all we had to do was solder a couple wires and then assemble and tune it!