upper door panel repair, upholstery amateur style Options

[dangrouche]

the top of door panel on my driver side was beat up. the rest of the basketweave fabric was in excellent condition. I have the early style door panels which has metal tops. I picked up one-half yard of marine vinyl and foam headliner from JoAnn's sewing store using their promotional coupons whenever possible; the vinyl cost about $7.5 and the foam was actually about the same price, total fabric cost was about $16. The other materials used were contact cement and 1/4" staples. the machinery used was my wife's sewing machine, which I had to teach myself how to use in 40 minutes total of practice. you may also need 1/4" masonite, which fortunately I had laying around. you need this if the old material on the door is broken up into pieces. I messed up sewing a straight line and had to re-cut a new piece. I have enough to do three door tops with half a yard of 54" wide material. I think it worked out pretty good. I am not going to re-do the passenger side since the vinyl is presentable though it does not have the same dull glow of weathered vinyl. I used two layers of headliner material to replace the foam. I took lots of pictures of before and marked the old vinyl on the backside with permanent white marker before disassembly. this ensure I stretched it properly when re-installing it. I also used excess vinyl at each staple to ensure the staple does not come through to the surface side. Many have written upholstery articles, but this one I found to be very satisfying because it was simple and low cost aesthetic repair.

[bandjoey]

Congrats. Looks factory fresh!

[BuddyV]

Nice job!

I did a similar fix to my doors a couple of years ago...... I can remember how satisfying it was to finish. Much easier than I would have thought.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

[jacksun]

just wondering...

in furniture restoration we would always try to spray a sealer on the underside of

any piece that we were working on. in order to try to limit moisture from

penetrating from beneath.


would it not be a good idea to hand apply by brush/roller a sealer of some sorts

to the exposed "tag?" board that the vinyl is stapled?

I do not know if that material will fall apart with continued exposure to water.

you can see the water marks present.

just curious if it would be a good idea??

I can not imagine that I am doing anything unusual in my attempts to make

my 14 as water tight as possible... the goal is that it will float.

r

[dangrouche]

I am not an upholsterer, but you are definitely correct. the Wax paper was not replaced on the door board, the door frame did not have the requisite vinyl sheet attached. My justification is that that this is garaged, fair weather car. I don't drive it in the rain; I don't use a hose to wash it. The car is covered when in the garage. I use a damp microfiber to hand wipe down the car. now you have me thinking to source out those items for installation. thanks for the idea !!

[CptTripps]

I agree with your assessment that as "fair weather cars" we're a lot less prone to water issues than in the past-life of these cars where they were daily drivers for people.

Looks real nice man. Real nice.