rebelLT

I am building a touring rig for my wife and am converting the bars to drops. The bike is an early 90’s Giant Boulder steel frame with standard shimano 3x7 setup. I don’t have ANY experience with road bike type stuff as my touring bike has trekking bars. I have the set up pretty well figured out with two exceptions, the width of the bars and the shifters.
My wife is about 5 foot 10 and is not what I would call petite. I would guess that a 40cm bar width would be about right? Anyone have any ideas or experiences with this?
I am trying to keep the cost of the project down a bit since I am going to have to buy racks, fenders, panniers, bags, tires etc etc.
I am thinking that I will go with friction shifters of some kind. I think I like the idea of bar ends, though I don’t really know having never had a pair on a bike. My second option is a stem shifter setup that seems to be pretty affordable, though I worry about my wife taking her hands of the bars to shift. A third option would be mounting a pod, thumb, trigger, or maybe even some twist shifters low on bar? I know the size of most road bars is different than most mountain bar so I would have to work around all of that. Anyone ideas?
I have a garage full of old chromoly mountain and hybrid bikes of various makes that I am constantly buying, selling, repairing, and generally wasting my time on. I can’t help it; I got a thing for old steel 21 speed mountain bikes. GT’s in particular. I am no bike mechanic though I can definitely handle this conversion.
Thanks for your help.