Marine Upholstery idea’s even us girls can do it

Marine Upholstery idea’s even us girls can do it

If you are like us, we try and battle the suns rays on our boat at all times, there comes a time when you will just lose this battle. The sun and saltwater constantly beat and bake away your hard work. The colors fade and the seams tear and then comes the dreaded tears.

You are battling the black mold all the time and the only thing that gets black mold off that we found is soft scrub. The bad thing about soft scrub is that it takes the protective finish off the marine vinyl. Thus you break out the Armor all. Every week we went thru this process.

After 6 years of the boat being in a slip and covered most of the time the sun and salt has destroyed everything. You ask yourself , what do I do now? It is extremely expensive to have your seat covers reupholstered professionally. There is No way the average person has an extra two grand laying around for a boat that constantly needs money for something.

Simple solution: for Marine reupholster

• Go to your local thrift store and purchase a used sewing machine $25.00 max ”you are sure to destroy it any ways”
• Estimate the amount of marine vinyl you will need.
• Go to Joannes fabrics or a fabric store in your area and purchase your material (Varies in price) White is the rule of thumb do to fading of this material.
• Purchase a heavy duty staple gun
• Unbolt seats and bring home 2 or 3 at a time.
• Have plenty of beer this will take a while.
• You have a choice to either peel off the fabric on the seats or cover them over.
• Marine seat cushions are easy at least for us it was, Marine plywood base simply cut marine vinyl fabric with enough overlap and wrap entire seat and staple in to place.
• The actual seats are a totally different story, here you have to peal off the fabric and use as a template to create your new marine seat covering. If you have ever sewed before you do this inside out so the seams are flush on the outside.
• After 3 hrs of doing this just for one seat have another beer, This will take a long time for even a small boat so do a little at a time.
• You may have some great idea’s of patterns in your head, these will soon pass after you start this project. Plain white is just fine.
• We chose to scrape the entire front half of the boat seats off rather then recover them to give more fishing room to move around in. We only covered the back half. Leaving a 28 foot pontoon with a 14 by 8 foot fishing area for the front and nice lounging in the back for sun bathing.
• Now is the time for extra’s such as sewing in some pockets to store your lipstick or suntan lotion holder.
• After all of this sewing of marine grade upholstery with an old crappy sewing machine simply throw it out. You won’t need another for a good 5 years.