More Interior Thoughts

Today I'm leaning towards getting new carpet for the interior. I've been studying the stuff that I pulled out and it is really really gross. I've done a bit of spot cleaning on it and so far I'm not impressed. Maybe 24 years is enough service for one set of carpet. The bad part about new carpet is that I have to decide what color to get. Deciding colors where there honestly aren't all that many great choices to choose from is hard. I suppose I could just go to a carpet store and find something that I actually like and then use my existing carpets to use as a guide for cutting the new stuff. Wow, that is actually not that bad of an idea. I bet I would save a ton too. There really isn't anything special about that carpet. Maybe I could find some super durable automotive type carpet as well. I think I'm going to have to look into that further.

In other news, I'm thinking it might be a bad idea to use vinyl on the rear bench seat and engine cushion. Since that is a bed and since my dog often sleeps there it seems really likely that he'll eventually puncture that vinyl and that will make me sad. So when I do get it recovered I'm going to go with a nylon tweed. It seems about as durable/puncture proof as possible and isn't quite as bad with hair as something like velour. It would have looked REALLY slick to use that off-white and brown vinyl on the bed but it just doesn't seem practical. My plan is to go with a vivid blue kind of a color. I think it will look nice enough against the brown, black, and cream all over the rest of the van and I'll finally get some color. To tie things in a bit more I'll get the armrest covered in the brown vinyl. After that I'm thinking I'll buy some of that same tweed fabric from the Sew Fine guys and make a new set of curtains. Thanks to the Vanagon for All Seasons site, I'm also going to put some insulation material on the back side of the curtains to help regulate cabin temps.

Other than that I have just been thinking of what to do with the panels. My ideal would be to have them all done in the off-white and brown vinyl that I'm getting the front seats done in. Its a bit pricey to have Sew Fine do that for me so I'm going to give it a try myself. I'd like to get a padded look so my plan is to use the old panels as patterns to cut new ones out of masonite or whatever is thin and moisture resistant. Then I'll jigsaw out the pattern and use the tricks I learn from looking at the driver and passenger door panels to cut vinyl to fit my new panels. I may also try adding a bit of foam to the panel surface to give it a padded look and then spray mount it all together with the mounting snaps already inside of the panel. If it looks awesome then I'll do the rest of the panels in the van. I may also try to do a simple stripe in the panel so I can carry that off-white stripe from the front bucket seats all the way around the van. Hopefully it will look slick.