The first couple of years I've owned the car I just drove it. Didn't really touch anything. Then I came across a e21 Recaro driver side seat on craigslist for $40. It was trashed but for $40! The guy I bought it from turned out to be a super nice dude who's become a friend. Watch out for Austens Superchaged M3 swapped e30.

I spent the next year lazily on the lookout for a passenger seat at a decent price and eventually one popped up on ebay. Price was reasonable so now I had the set. After being blown away by local reupholstery pricing I sent them out to Dave at Aardvarc. I knew wanted cloth/vinyl but it was hard to source fabric online. I wanted something salt and pepper looking, like TV static, and found what I thought a great match online. It ended up being a little less peppered than I wanted but overall was happy with the results. Here's pic of my son enjoying the comfort of freshly reupholstered Recaros.

I also had Dave make a matching rear cover that my Father in Law and I threw on.

My next little project was redoing the shot and smelly sunvisors. I used the original vinyl to trace out a pattern then I cut and sewed up new ones from the same fabric I used for the seat. I think if I was to do it again I would do the seat fabric on the backside only and some sort of off white vinyl on the side you see when they’re up so you only see the fabric when the shade it flipped down. I think my positioning of the clip must be off as well since part of the shade bumps the headliner when flipping it down.

My next bigger project was the center console. The vinyl/plastic material had tons of holes through the side from fixes throughout the years. It seems screws through the side was how it came from the factory. I was determined to hide all the fastener. My goal was a simple but tastefull console that had the modern convenience of a CarPlay touchscreen display. I had a bunch of Mahogany veneer left from a table refinishing so I wanted to use that also and stain it very dark/close to black while still letting some woodgrain show through.

Here's my original console.

I dissasembled it all. Wasn't hard since it was falling apart anyways and was left with the 2 particleboard side panels and the hardware that holds it together. I wrapped the panels in some thin foam, Super77'ed on that I had lying around. I bought some nice looking vinyl from the fabric store and wrapped them back up, stapling in areas I knew wouldn't be visible once it was all back together. It looks like I wasn't the best at documenting the entire process but here's the few pics I have.

Making the new face was the most difficult part. I did it twice because I wasn't happy with the first one. It basically involved carboard aided mockups to get the angles how I wanted them to fit the new Pioneer unit I had bought. I wanted it to all have a clean look so routered out some of the back of the stereo opening to allow it to sit flush (it's ugly but you don't see it)

I also wanted to add a couple of VDO gauges and move the harzard light to nice spot right in the middle. When I got the gauges I ordered I cut holes for them but wasn't happy with how they looked so I sent them back and bought the chrome ringed version. (Yes that's a turbo gauge. No I don't have a turbo... yet) The new gauges looked awesome but apparently were a hair smaller than the ones I had drilled holes for so there was a gap. Not wanting to redo the face panel I searched and searched and found that camera ring adapters would take up the space perfectly and not annoy me too badly. I also made the pocket a little more functional but adding an inset tray lined with the seat fabric and a phone holding slot. The wiring plug for the hazard light just barely reaches in this position. Here was the end result.

New carpet. The carpet in the car was smelly, dirty and old. Time to go. I ordered a new set from Esty and she even had a really great Salt and Pepper color. The install took me a few hours but it was really pretty easy and I'm happy with the result. If you're thinking about getting carpet from her, do it. Better shots of the console installed and the rear seat reupholstery here too.

Other things done so far are new speakers in the kick panels (there were already giant holes cut in there) and a new rear parcel shelf with inlayed hidden undermount speakers. Don't have a pic of that right now.