Damn that was a stupid thing to do

So I was backing my '69 Olds into the garage yesterday and forgot that there's a good 2 feet of overhang in front of the front wheels. I cut the wheel to get the back in lined up and smacked my rolling tool chest with the passenger fender well. The tool chest raked the paint off the wheel well lip in about an 8 inch arc, all the way down to the metal. It looked like little shiny red confetti on the floor. My own stupid fault, I should have backed the car in the same way I know works instead of trying to cut it close.

But anyway. This car has had 3 paint jobs. The paint is chipped pretty good in about a 1/4" wide path. I'm thinking I can sand the area down and blend the paint layers back in. Should I try to build the chipped area up with blocking primer, or should I just skin coat it with a little Bondo? The "correct" answer would be to just pull the fender and strip the paint and start over, but I'm not that obsessive about my car's paint.

Also, the paint color is just some GM red, but I don't know the color code. Can an auto paint shop match the color of a paint chip (I have a few laying around for some reason) just like they do at Home Depot? The area to paint isn't that large but I also don't have any sort of setup for doing paint.

Oh well, it will be a learning experience. I was proud of myself, I just parked the car in the garage and went on with the rest of my tasks for the day. In a different time, I would have overturned the toolbox, kicked the car, kicked the garage, kicked the cat, and then thrown my soda across the lawn, all while cussing a blue streak. I must be getting old.....

my maaco has a scanner.

If it makes you feel any better (probably won't) I nearly pulled the front bumper off my '82 Pontiac doing something similar to what you did.

I once back my wife's mazda in to my beetle.

I once crunched the nose of my RX7 into the center post in my garage. I had the wheel cut to the right to back out of the garage, hit the clutch because someone started talking to me out the door but that didn't stop the motion I had already started and WHUMP! Right into the post.

Both my wife and I have taken side mirrors off cars on the edge of the garage door opening, and her car had a nice white stripe on one side where she rubbed the edge also - thankfully the edge trim is that white PVC faux wood and it didn't dent the car and the white rubbed right off.

That's why I keep the cars that don't run inside the garage and the ones that do in the driveway.

A guy I know backed his Ferrari 308 into his '57 T-Bird. That was a bad day.