My best advice is to first start off thinking about what kind of car you want. do you want a show car, street beast, everyday driver, or what? that's where you need to start first. If it's a show car then the first thing i would say do is to clean up the body work. If it's going to be a race car then don't worry about the body and put a new engine in it. god knows that if you only paid 800 for it the engine couldn't be that great. if it's an everday driver i would say personally just fix the problems that are wrong with it and work with a car that has many opportunity's, like as much as i hate to say, a civic. They have lots of cheap parts and a shitload of people know how to help you fix things.
I have a protege5 and right now it's my daily driver. i'm trying to build it for show but i know that i'm not going to go all out right now and then have some idiot atlanta driver run into me. I'm looking for another car that i can drive everyday and not care what it looks like.
My first opinion whatever you do is wheels should be the first thing. Show cars should have big wheels and small tires, race cars should have small wheels but lots of tire, and daily driver is somewhere in between.

Here is the number one thing that you have to ask yourself before you do any of this: How much time, effort, and money are you willing to put into this. ask that question first.

if you need any help just let me know, i'm on the elite forum all the time. my pictures are on our site too. www.eliteofatlanta.com. click on in the making and click josh. that's me.