OP, great post and very helpful, I'm not sure I would have tackled this if you hadn't put this together. As a point of reference I replaced the thermostat and water pump with the help of my 14 year old daughter in 4 hours.

Removing the fan made it much easier and was worth the effort. Also, I removed the final plastic air duct that enters the first turbo, that made removing and replacing the EGR bolts much easier, just make sure you jam a rag in the intake to prevent something falling into the compressor turbine.

I didn't see it mentioned, but you also need a gallon of distilled water to mix with the new coolant. I ended up using 1.5 gallons of 50/50 coolant mix to replace what came out. To make burping the system easier I refilled the upper radiator hose before I reattached it to the radiator and that seemed to reduce some of the problems some people had with trapped air.

Had I known how easy it would have been to replace the A/C and serpentine belt I would have replaced them as well.