XJS Door Card modernisation
 

I dyed my carpets in my XJS black and obviously didnt want the lower door card to stay as it was - grey carpet. I didnt fancy dying that either. So I decided to customise my door card as detailed below:
Last nights job was to tackle the door cards. I wanted the lower quarter corner, which in my case was grey carpet, to look less "cheap". Plus my new carpets are now black, but I didnt fancy just dying those carpet bits black ...
So I went to my nearest haberdashery and chose some leather look PVC in black to take its place. I was careful to pick something that was definately and obviously a different grain as there is nothing worse than when people try to make two separate pieces look the same when they arent and that looks tacky. I also went and bought some felt to pad out the PVC so it felt like the rest of the door card.
The first job was to remove the carpet. This was held in place by a LOT of glue and some nasty rusty staples.
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The chrome bar also had to come out, and this was held in place by some clips on the back of it that were very easy to undo.
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Once the carpet had been removed I could measure up for the felt backing and PVC topper and made a little template to ensure it all fitted together.
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The felt I cut right to size so it fitted edge to edge to ensure the padding was even all over, and stuck this down with some industrial spray glue.
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I tucked the top of my PVC cut out (which had been cut oversized on the overlapping edges) under the felt to ensure that there was a nice finish, and before sticking the rest of the PVC down I put the chrome bar back in place to ensure it held the edge down so that I could pull the rest of the PVC over the felt backing. Once down on the front I turned the door card over and spray glued the over lapping edges, then stretched them right over back of the door card to ensure it had a nice finish at the edges and was stuck down well at the back. I didnt use staples in case they came through the wooden card.
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Tonight I will be cutting out the speaker holes to fit my new 5 1/4 inch Vibes and also working out where best to put their tweeter counterparts because I dont want to have to cut out the inner door skin to make way for them...
New Vs the Old
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The New Look
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