Very good write up!
I had exactly same problem (spilled soft drink) and now it's like new. Well.. almost, cause my "rubber bezel" has some marks on it now (not easy to spot though).
Actually I had trouble with this part: "Using a Micro flathead screwdriver gently pry around the top seam between the black rubber bezel and silver touch sensor pad. The touch sensor pad pops off."
To be specific - for anyone else use in the future - you need to push the 8 black latches in between silver 'ears' of the sensor pad trying to pull it up in the same time.
At first, I tried to lever these 'ears' instead of pushing the black latches - that was my mistake
Anyway, thank you very much. This post helped a lot