Process for moving to Families?

So I'm at a point where I've built a prototype with a player sprite getting things feeling pretty good. I've realized now after the fact that I should have done the player as a family (I'm going to try having different player characters with slightly different rules to them, but that share a lot of stuff).

I'd like to create a Family with all the instance variables and behaviors from my one sprite and then change my events to reference the family instead of the individual sprite.

However, I can't just make duplicate instance variables in the family (families can't have instance variables named the same as a member's instance variables). I can't delete the member's variables first because that will mess up my events.

Are there any best practices for this sort of situation? Should I just set up an "empty" family with the instance variables and duplicate all my events with the new references?

Just going to jump in here and say that I too am all ears if anyone has any suggestions.

This issue has been one of the most frustrating parts of C2 that I've encountered. I now design with families in mind from the beginning, so it doesn't really affect me too much, but for newcomers and those moving from the free to personal editions, it's a real killer.

How to "upgrade" an object to a family

Ashley wrote a tutorial on this

Perfect! I was thinking I'd have to do something along these lines but did not know about the Replace Object thing.

Thanks.