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.