Well, the tower has been fully assembled, painted, and is getting ready to accept the antennae…
The cover photo shows the newly-assembled tower sitting on my roof, just so I could see how it would look. It’s not attached or working yet, and yes, I need to clean my roof and gutters…
Of the many things I learned in this process, is that no matter how precise I try to be, there is still more ‘margin of error’ than I would like. Tip for others who wish to build this tower: I would angle cut the cross braces. When I tried to assemble my tower, the corners collided and bound up the assembly. I ended up disassembling the braces I had previously assembled and relieving all the corners on the workbench. 
Once I had done that, it went together quite smoothly. I took a scrap of aluminum angle that was left over and fabricated a grounding bracket to which I attached a could coax grounds. There is a great deal of controversy and differing opinion on the internet about best ways to ground towers and antennae, and even whether or not to ground at all, but I opted to go this route. Time will tell if it was wise or not.
The next step was to paint the whole mess. I am building a hex beam to go on top this tower, and I have been slowly acquiring parts and pieces as I can afford them, so I opted to paint all the fiberglass arms and the tower at the same time. One problem I had was schedule. I am building this in the winter weather, so it’s in the garage. Now, you are supposed to paint in fairly warm conditions, but also with adequate ventilation. That’s hard to get both conditions at this time of year, so I opted to wear a ventilator and paint in an enclosed garage. The fumes were pretty strong, but I vacated the room quickly and I don’t think I did any permanent damage. Still, I wish I had built this in July when I could have painted it in outdoors in the warmth.
Now, when painting anything, one big decision is, of course, color. Reading blogs and forums will make your head spin on this topic. A friend swears by flat black. Some say battleship gray is the best. Others have been happy with “Air Superiority Blue“. 
I don’t think this antenna and tower is going to be invisible regardless of how it’s painted, so my paint goals were fairly simple: protection from UV damage on the fiberglass, and reducing the “shiny” factor of the bare aluminum. Home Depot carried a Rust-Oleum paint that was for “roof accessories” and so I opted for that thinking that the UV rating would be good, and the finish was at least flat and darker than bare aluminum. I chose “weathered wood” color and a good primer and went home. Another tip for you from my experience: Buy a lot of paint. Perhaps it’s because I’m not a great painter, and perhaps because there is a lot of wasted overspray when painting round rods, etc. but I went through two cans of primer and four cans of finish color and there are still thin spots and paint shadows. Oh well. Once it’s 30+ feet in the air, I hope you won’t be able to tell how bad my paint job is.
OK, so now I have a bunch of parts painted and strewn about my garage. Tune in next time when I should have things a lot closer to functional…