Well, this one really kicked my butt tonight. I thought I would pick a pair of big, easy ones, but this one was quite complicated.
First things first, to maximize your carpeting, you definitely want to lay out all of your pieces before you start cutting. You also want to use as many common edges as you can.
I decided on this one, which is the drivers side floor mat, to extract the piece of reinforced vinyl that wraps around the Accelerator pedal.
It was a fairly tedious process, but I finally removed it, scrubbed it with some hot water and soap in the sink, then pressed it flat with an iron and a paper towel between.
This piece was pretty beat up, and the default installation is glued and then sewn.
On my original Matt, the edges were raw. I wanted to have a finished edge, so I thought I would fold over the parts that were exposed.
Once I cleaned it and scrubbed it and ironed it, it looked pretty decent on the mat.
I then went around the perimeter of the vinyl with a stitch.
I thought I was home free, but boy was I wrong. The area that wraps around the accelerator pedal was my most challenging binding to date. This particular mat took me over three hours to finish. It was a real bear.
One of the main issues is, I'm struggling with how thin my binding is. I bought the 1 inch finding from global upholstery. I think it would be a much easier project with 2 inch binding, but that was not available. It means that, on the underside of the mat, I don't have a lot to work with. I Think once I finish the passenger side, I'm either going to make my own binding out of black vinyl, or find some 2 inch binding to purchase.
Either way, it came out really great, and I am one more step in the right direction.
My goal is to have the entire carpet kit finished this weekend, so it's ready to be installed next week when my car comes back!