I have spent the last few days slashing my way up the overgrown learning curve only to be stopped at:

• making the file system writable
• using "ssh phablet@10.15.19.82" to ssh to the device
• using wifi-setup
• seeing any indication that a sim card is being recognized

I'm beginning to question the wisdom of purchasing a Nexus 5 refurb to see if plasma mobile was alive and well. It appears that this project is stalling.
does anyone have one that is working for calls? wifi? or anything cooler than it saying " Oh its Gorgeous" on boot?

throw me a rope, please...

Nobody? Should I take this to mean that Plasma Mobile is not a viable option at this time?

Keep in mind it's not a finished product.
On first boot, the on-screen keyboard may not come up. It may on a forced reboot. You need the keyboard for terminal and wifi password.
On first boot, it may be slow as it's doing things in the background and there are no activity lights to tell you so.
Firefox is on there, but it crashes on startup. So I could not connect to wifi with a login screen. Chromium is also there, but I can't remember what problem it gave me.
If you can get your wifi going, through trial and error for me, and get your terminal to show a keyboard, then sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade.
Eventually you might have something work better and the device becomes more responsive.
I did a sudo apt-get install gnome, after which I could bring up Libre Office.
Then I saw a nice Mint desktop in a photo of a phone at PostmarketOS.
I didn't quite know what I was doing, because after installing Mate and rebooting, it would not come up again.
So I reflashed.
Trying to roughly follow the above steps, I've forced reboot after update/upgrade, and now it's stuck at the Google logo on startup.
So will try again.