Oh, and the two other things you might consider adding to you setup:

1. A barber's hone, which you can do for very little money. They're cheap and readily available on ebay or many an antique shop. You can use then for a quick touch-up when a pasted strop isn't quite enough, but the razor doesn't really need to be completely re-honed.

2. A DMT8C. Lapping with sandpaper on your counter-top sounds like a cheap and easy way to go. It's not. It's a gigantic PitA, and makes a huge mess. Plus, it's SLOOOOOOOOOOW. I've got a barber hone that was badly dished when I bought it, and I don't even want to think about how long it took with wet-dry sandpaper on my counter to flatten the thing. I gave up half way through and bought a DMT. It took about 5 minutes to finish on the DMT.