This week the headers for the usb extensions arrived.  I went with common 2.54mm pitch double stack header pins.  I put 90 degree pins on the board and 2x 4 wire jumpers with 4 pin connectors carry the signal to the ports for the external USB.  I also sourced a flexible cable for the monitor.  This was a decent hurdle as the original cable was ffc which is flat, but doesn't work well for the laptop hinge.  After a few wrong orders, I found the cable that worked for this project came from an inspiron 7000 series.  It's an eDP 30 pin to ffc 30 pin 0.5mm pitch.  I have a hunch that I can get an older macbook polycarbonate keyboard/trackpad to work so I'm ordering that.  Another hackaday member, RRPrime has a good trackpad hack that might be usable for this project, and would be fun to keep as much original as possible.  I understood about half of what he wrote o.O