Finishing my frame

So I'm finally getting back around to finishing my project that I've been riding around in bare steel for over a year now. My plan was always to strip the frame of all paint (half of it is fresh bare steel anyways) and have it nickel plated. Problem is that the plating will definitely show every little imperfection in the metal, and getting all the factory paint off will be a real bear unless I blast it, which will create a texture that will show in the plating. Basically if I'm gonna plate the frame, I'm in for a lot of work and may not get as pretty an end result as I'm dreaming of.

The other option is powder coat / Jet hot. I've seen a few of those coatings that resemble the look of plating, but without all the worry about blasting, and which will possibly hold up better over time. Question there is how bright and shiny can they actually do a powdercoat? I'm looking for a finish that is just slightly darker and less mirror like than chrome. Hence the plan to simply Nickel plate.

Any other ideas or suggestions? This is the bike in question:

JetHot would be the best option for what you want. No powder mimics chrome or polished metal. Do you plan on nickel plating it yourself and avoid the polishing steps that are required when plating anything. The plating shops do the polishing which is one of the contributing factors to plating being so high priced.

Plating is one job I'll be leaving to the pros. Not to mention I live in CA. I doubt they let anyone come anywhere near any of those chemicals here.

how much would getting a frame hot jet coated cost? I cant imagine it would be cheap