Thanks for the comments, Accumulator. For me, this was a lesson in realizing my paint care limits
, or at least confirming what I thought were my limits.
Reason I wet sanded for so long was because the sandpaper seemed to have no cut at all. The touch-up blobs were leveling maddeningly slowly
, and I simply spent the 12 constant minutes of swiping to finally get the blobs level (but we also see the side effects I experienced, ha).
I did become very suspicious about 10 minutes in, when the clearcoat started losing its color (in the shape of 2 lungs in my picture), but I continued sanding w/ the 3000 because 1)Blobs still weren't level and 2)I figured "hey, the "color change/loss" I'm experiencing now is only 1/20th the size of the carnage that's depicted here, so I must be OK!:
But apparently (and understandably) the paint didn't really look that bad in person, and the lighting exaggerated the effects of wetsanding (prior to polishing w/ the DA).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Anyway, I do plan to spend the money to have the whole door repainted, which itself is still a risk because (being a car-detail-minded person), repaints on other cars are pretty darn obvious to me because their panels are 2 different shades of the same color, and that would be an even worse situation than the one right now...(to have an entire door that doesn't match, instead of just 1 quarter-sized area of paint that is screwed up). Know what I mean?
Thanks again for the info!