How it all begins

So, there is this almost 32 year-old guy. Just a guy, who works hard, loves his family, has a load of responsibilities and always manages to find for himself more unneeded work, worries and drama. He enjoys all the finer things in life those, which he can and can’t afford. Life cannot be perfect, especially for him. He likes spending time with his wife, his friends and riding his motorcycle. An idea came to this man, to build his own motorcycle in his garage. To do the work on the weekends and for a few hours after work during the week, that is instead of sitting on a couch watching television. The problem with this idea is that he had never in his life held a proper mechanic’s tool, never changed an oil filter and does not really know how an engine works. This creates a challenge.
Well being that I am that guy and the abundance of information on line about the subject of motorcycle repair and restoration is vast; I am taking on this challenge. My birthday is coming up soon, so after telling my lovely wife my plan and getting a surprising word of approval from her (not that I need one, but we are a unit and should discuss these type of things), I went on line and found a taken apart 1978 Kawasaki KZ200 that I picked up last night for a whopping $25. The plan is to rebuild this motorcycle in no more than a year’s time.
All of my family and friends have been notified that if they are getting anything for me for my birthday this year it should be some sort of a tool. I have already purchased some metric tools in the past and plan to get many more.
From some of the research that I have conducted so far this is the mode of operation for this project:

Install the wheels
Suspension
Handle bars to get it up & rolling
Install the motor
Final drive
Start on the electrics
Move onto peripherals & sheet metal; fenders, tank, cables, controls, linkages etc...
Fluids, check spark & compression, set the points, introduce fuel & fire it off

But first I need to clean this baby part by part (it’s been sitting in someone’s garage for three years in parts and everything has an inch or two layer of dirt on it). Then I need to catalogue everything and figure out what is there, what needs fixing and what needs replacement. Only after that I will start the steps described above.

I am not planning to work on this every day, so I will not post on this blog every day, but I will try to go on after every session and talk about the things that I’ve done, my success, my errors and all that I learn in the process.

Below are some pictures of what I am starting with. The bike and I are both the same age, but I'd like to think that I am in abit of a better condition.