The laundry list for prepping the HB for painting might include:
<ul>[*]Sheet or cover the wings from the main spar to the training edge and the tips. You could shape your own sold wing tips to eliminate sheeting / covering them. Might be a simple process to just butt joint sheeting from the main spar back to the TE and eliminate the TE sheeting bit and the cap strips. And consolidate the center wing sheeting with the new added rear sheeting. A 4" wide sheet of 1/16" sheeting is plenty to fill the gap between the LE sheeting and the TE sheeting (3" wide sheeting is too narrow). [*]Sheet or cover the sides and bottom of the fuse as they have plenty of laser cut holes. If you sheet the sides then you'll have to transition the new sheeting with the original plan sheeting of the fuse top (turtle deck & fore deck). To avoid covering you might consider using the "push out" pieces of the fuse sides and bottom as templates to fab 1/16" balsa inserts or just reinsert those pieces.[/list]There are some good threads on glassing the wood sheeting with 1/2 oz. material then using Deft & talc to fill the weave. Will result in a very nice finish.
Any way you choose to do this, future repair may be made more difficult - don't know for sure 'cause I've never done this type of covering myself. I recently cartwheeled my Hog Bipe (landing faux pas). It was pretty simple to cut the Ultracote, repair the balsa bits, recover. Not sure what the work effort will look like with a fully sheeted / glassed / painted plane.
Any way you cut it, it looks like you will have still have some covering to do. Not a film like Monokote or Ultracote, but a material like Coverite or light fiberglass.
Good luck and take some pictures and share your project.