I appreciate all of the advice and answers that have been given. As to the question of "when do we start?" I kind of already have...

Over the long holiday weekend I removed the Recaro seats, tore them completely down, steamed the compressed foam, hand washed the covers a bunch of times with oxi-clean (amazing stuff for removing dirt from upholstery), and fixed one of the crushed bolsters with additional foam. Two of the bolster covers are going to a vinyl repair place tomorrow for a quote to see about fixing the holes. (As an aside, I have disassembled an corrected a few sets of Recaro seats now, so this part of the interior project will be done in short order).

I am stopping by the fabric store tonight to get some spray glue. My idea is to break this down into easily digestible segments.

1. Complete seats, and set aside in the basement. (nearly done)
2. Clean the floors with soapy water, and maybe a little solvent remover. (before the weekend)
3. Replace entirely gone floor deadener material with some inexpensive butyl product. (weekend project)
4. Install carpet. Install seats. (next week after work)
5. Stand back and realize that it probably wasn't as much work as I have worked it up to be.

I am going to use this post as my accountability meter. Feel free to hold me to the fire with all of this. I will post pics of the seat progress tonight when I get home.

I wrote this recently, about a single repair, and not a project or restoration.
It was in reference to people who let project cars rot away.
There may be some relationship to the OCD analysis paralysis perfectionism denialism you describe:

I’m increasingly fascinated at the psychology resulting in one's car just rotting away in your garage or yard for years.
In fact, exposure to these actions on the forums (time and again) has made me more self-aware of this pull of human nature.
eg: A car has some $300 problem, gets parked by owner, "for now”, and proceeds to decay into oblivion over the next 10-20 years.

Here is my new personal flowchart for owning any car, once it’s got an issue, and you’ve parked it, until you “fix it”....

1) If you want to fix it yourself, kudos.

2) If you have not fixed it within 3 months, then you:
a) Are unqualified to fix it.
b) Too lazy to fix it.
c) Do not have time to fix it.
--> Take it to a pro.

If you can’t afford to take it to a pro, then you can not afford the car.
--> Sell the car.

Bottom line: If the car ain’t fixed in 3.5 months, sell the car.


This flowchart also enforces a cap on how many cars you can own.
The impulsive types love the thrill of the hunt, but then are unable to actually follow thru.
They keep piling up new projects while not getting any of the old ones finished.
This is how you end up with a Jalopnik featured auto graveyard when you die.

To that end, just this week, I made two appointments to service 2 of my cars, just to not be this guy.
Both cars, I failed to fix after two attempts/diagnosis. It felt good to obey my own system of rules above.
One, I happened to fix myself at the last minute, b/c I got lucky. The other, I gladly forked over $250 to get the job done.

Uncle Scott, you might find this reading worthwhile:

How You Make Decisions Says a Lot About How Happy You Are - WSJ

My week of satisficing: Can a maximizer every really change?

Key is not to rip into something if you don't have the stamina to finish in reasonable time. I have made this mistake before. But when I do, I don't sweat it. Cars can be sitting and as long as you have them in a garage, what's a few months? I want to enjoy my car hobby and if I don't have the time or the money, I'll do it later. I have family, train dogs, hunt - all these activities are time sensitive. The car hobby has an open schedule for me.

G

This tread reminds of an editorial I wrote a while back


People tell me about their half-finished projects and how frustrated they are about not completing them. I envy these people. I consider myself lucky if I get a project all the way to the halfway point before I get distracted. Most of my projects get just past the stage where I buy all the tools and materials I need before something else catches my eye. I have two garages and a basement full of paint, construction material, car parts, truck parts—you name it. I painted one of my cars in 1980, and I still haven’t reinstalled the windshield wipers.
Vintage Truck readers come up to me at shows and ask if my Dodge WD-15 is finished. They are always smiling when they ask this—like they know the answer and just want to hear me say it. My best answer, of course, is to hedge around the question and mention that it’s drivable. What I don’t say is that, as with all of my projects, it is not now, nor will it ever, be finished.
A few years ago, the younger staff here told me—much to my annoyance—that you cannot exist in the modern world without a Facebook page, and if I didn’t want to get left in the dust of history, I had better set one up. It’s supposed to be easy to set up the account, and I suppose it is for people who really want to do it. I did manage to get a Facebook page up and working, but, as usual, I lost interest. It languished until I turned it over to my managing editor to maintain. She actually understands how social media works. Because she keeps it up to date, thousands of people have looked at our page and “Liked” it, shared it, and whatnot. I don’t really care if they "like" it. If there was a “buy him a drink” option I might be more enthusiastic about this.
But now they tell me you cannot exist in the modern world without an Instagram account, too. This time I chose not to gum up the works with my personal involvement and turned it directly over to my more knowledgeable staff. I should have known better.
Instagram uses hashtags (#) to connect you to pictures of similar subjects. By using these hashtags, you can waste hours hopping from one picture to another and find images people have posted that are related to your particular interest. Hashtags are meant to be meaningful and significant; for instance, an appropriate tag for my truck would be #beautifultruck or #magnificent. My staff, however, has a more jaded view of my work and chose to tag my truck with #unfinished, #stillinpieces, and #garagequeen. This just proves that, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, even if you don’t know what you’re doing—or never finish it.

If, in the pursuit of perfect, everything else is lost, then what good is it?

I came up with that one day when my assembly guy was dragging his feet being very, very slow. He's so meticulously perfect that he can only get a few of our items done in a day, while a competitors person can do 60... or more...

Great responses in this thread. The title really grabbed my attention as I've suffered from the same issues myself in a myriad of ways.

One thing i'll offer which may not have been mentioned is that you don't truly learn until you 'complete' a project and look back. once it's complete you are faced with the reality of your work and can no longer mentally dodge the imperfections by telling yourself you'll come back to it and tweak it just so.

BTDT ....down to bare metal, using electric & air powered hand tool sand a large selection of removal bits. I did an area at a time then shot it with self etching primer...sure, it took a while but was a much larger area than you're dealing with....a winter project. Weld up any thru holes .A final 2 coats with single stage Urethane. Standing around with your thumb up your ass will not get it done.
I've got a butt load of pics, but won't waste them on a time waster. Work gets it done.....

I got the seats torn down, cleaned, and put back together. They are nowhere near perfect, but they are done and that is enough for now. There are a couple of places in SLC that I want to get quotes to fix the vinyl jacket covers on the upper bolster of the driver's side. Until then I am happy to have the foam fixed up a bit, and the covers much cleaner than normal. Here are a few pictures of the process.

Covers removed, hand washed and drying
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1449209950.jpg

Foams were a bit flat, so I steamed them
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1449210066.jpg

Put a towel on the foam or you will ruin the pad and iron immediately. Steam brings back a little life to the flattened foams
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1449210128.jpg

A combination of craft foam, batting, and spray glue props up the bolster foams to fill the lower bolster jackets out.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1449210243.jpg

Jacket covers back on, ready for the seat bottoms
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1449210364.jpg

Completed seat bottom
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1449210434.jpg

Seats are back together. Unfortunately I didn't take any before pictures, but the grey covers are so much cleaner.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1449210478.jpg

Over the weekend I am going to get that carpet install going...expect more to come.

I would like to contribute as I have completed a lot of major restorations in my lifetime, including a 1967 Owens sport-fishing boat (wooden) as well as not finishing a few. I quantify work / tasks like this: The attention to detail, materials and resources should align with what you're working on. Much like writing / forming a business plan, then executing on an appropriate scale.

Example: I would not spend days researching, composing a business plan, wooing potential investors for a lemonade stand start-up at the end of my driveway. Since all here share a commonality of 'gear head-ness' in vehicle terms, our passion (emotion) clouds our judgement. IE: The slippery slope.

A large part of my persona is anal retentive, especially with anything mechanical. I would absolutely do a vintage Porsche with a commitment like that. You are preserving automotive history. A 1980's Chevy Cavalier.......................no. Any type of restoration regardless of scale and complexity is just plain hard, difficult and fiddly work. Most people wildly misjudge the effort, time and money that is required for even the smallest project to be done as nice as it once was when new.

In today's world where everything seems to be resolved in 22 minutes or less on TV - we have less patience than ever before. It is very easy to become discouraged, disinterested.