My apologies. I have you confused with Porsche Chick who was a member several yrs ago. She had a red 986, then moved up to a red 987.2 and I think on to a 911 from there and stopped participating on this forum. It just made sense to me when you mentioned you found your original 986 that you were Porsche Chick.
So an exterior repaint will not cost you as much as a color change since you won't have to remove a bunch of panels and do a bunch of extra sanding / painting.
My first car was a 70 Mach 1 that was originally an olive green color (similar to Porsche's Peridot). I hated it and wanted to change the color. Dad was fine with that as long as I did all the extra sanding. Was a crap-load of addl work but was glad I did it. That was also the last color change I ever did (that was in 1976).
Before:
We replaced the trunk lid, tail light, qtr corner piece and the bumper. Repaired everything else, including the qtr panel. This pic is when we got it done hrs before my JR prom. We didn't have time to put the Mach 1 decal on the back but it eventually got put on.
