Upholstry Referbish
 

I am getting closer to having the interior of the aircraft redone. Upholstery and interior panels (they are really brittle), carpet, and headliner. I was looking in my area for shops that are on airfields that perform this. These types tend to only work on airplanes. I also found some upholstery shops that do everything from cars, to boats, furniture, and airplanes. I wanted to ask the forum if anyone has had their aircraft done by one of this general refurbish shops. Is it best to go with airplane only or does it matter?

Thanks,

Karl

Karl, i did mine myself. Saved a boatload of money.
If youre up to it, buy a kit from these guys and have local upholstery shop install it.

https://www.airtexinteriors.com/

Heres full service option nearish you colorado
https://www.centennialaircraft.com/generalaviation

Airtex has the pattern for carpeat and headliner, so that's the easiest there.
You can just buy them and they will ship to you,

Everything else, go to a nearby high end auto interior shop.
There are usually really good ones most places, restoring cars.

Specify /supply the materials.
I think Douglas interior has everything, FAA approved (wont burn).
It will be fun for them, and they will do fine work.

This way, instead of the hassle flying somewhere,
or the hassle of shipping things somewhere,
you pop them out of your plane, into back of car/truck,
pop over to the shop and drop them off.
They should be able to do a fantastic job, quickly and reasonably.

Then you just pop the stuff back into the airplane.
So its convenient too.

Use abs plastic cement to reinforce the plastic trim or make trim areas that has gone missing. I use the aluminum furnace tape to back the area needing replaced. SEM plastic paint is great for color matching. Hope this helps, Joe

Thanks everyone for the input. I was thinking of customizing the interior, but nothing too crazy. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't like installing a new engine component with lots of paperwork along with it. I will also have to determine if any changes (like lights, air vents, and storage would affect they interior, I would have to take that into account. Not update after the install.

I was looking at Centennial Aircraft Interior in Denver also. That was one of my first choices.

Thanks,

Karl

Interior plastic bits
 

My interior was done by the crew who do Air Force One, next door, at Andrews AFB.

First I bought new plastic bits, which are thicker than the original.
They mostly fit, but a heat gun got them spot on.

https://vantageassoc.com/airplane/cessnatwin/337.html

Then the AF-1 crew overlaid plastic with synthetic leather from douglas aircraft interior,

https://douglassinteriorproducts.com...gory/aviation/

I used douglas again to supply local auto interior shop with materials.

Just got my aircraft back from a set of upgrades and now its time to start considering upholstery. I'm going to call around this week. I've been thinking about any work that might precede the interior and i am concentrating on two issues. The location of the light and vents. I have 6 vents that are located on the outer edge of the cabin, but I have cabin lights for everyone controlled by a single switch (also controls my outside light). I've noticed some people when they showed pictures of their upholstery have a spin that goes down the middle containing all their vents and single lights for each station. I don't know if that was the way their aircraft was setup, or did they move surrounding lights and vents to a central location.

If someone did move those around, was that something you prepared ahead of time or was it all done during upholstery.

Karl