Door cards

Another job i decided to take on myself.

I've made door cards before and its not very hard but i had always just used some plain material and that was all. I wanted to do something nicer this time and actually put more effort into it. First i used some old door cards as templates and traced that onto some 3mm MDF. After cutting them out i mock fitted each one and trimmed them to suit.

I originally liked the look of the diamond quilted pattern and went searching for some pre-made stuff to use but found out it wasnt very easy to find and that most upholsterers made their own. After popping into Textile Traders i walked out with quite a bit of knowledge on how to sew vinyl. The vinyl i was going to use has a different texture than what ive seen and is fairly thick, this made it impossible to use for diamond quilting. I gave up. I went back to Textile Traders to talk to the lady who had been helping me out and she showed me a few tricks on the sewing machine. She gave me a few ideas and showed me how to top stitch like they do on leather/vinyl upholstery. After messing around on the sewing machine myself i started making these:

Close Up

The next job was gluing these on. I purchased some closed cell 3mm foam from Clark Rubber and glued that to the MDF and glued the vinyl on top, just for some padding. The vinyl was pulled around the back and staple gunned for good measure. 

Here is the end result

I mock fitted the door card to see how it looked with the door latch and window winder so i hadn't installed the Triumph arm rest / door pulls i found on eBay.

Finally here is the final installation.