DIY Paint door panels

This only shows me painting my rear door panels on my sedan but this can easily apply to almost any interior pieces

Materials needed
Wax and grease cleaner
Vinyl prep (not needed but recommended)
Adhesion promoter (YOU NEED THIS)
Your choice paint. I used an interior paint but you can use, for example, krylon because of the adhesion promoter will allow it to stick to plastic



Time: really depends. Took me an hour or two for my two door panels

Difficulty: 3/10

Process

You'll need to start by having your material prepped. Painting is almost all in the prep so you will want to take your time here


I started with the wax and grease remover to get it all clean

If you have some pushed in areas on your door panel like so you can attempt to get them out by using a heat gun. Most of the time it will pop them out but sadly for it did not. Make sure to move the heat gun around when using it. If after what seems like a long time and the dent is still not out then chances are it won't come out and you will risk doing more damage to your door panel.


After that I removed this piece for the window. You can mask it off if you please but it's super easy to take off. There's some metal tabs and you just bend them flat. Remember to mark which one is which. I put a "D" on this one off Driver side



I then started to mask off the door panel. This will differ depending on what you're doing. Just be smart and think ahead. I'm redoing my inserts so I didn't really need to mask them off. I wasn't painting the lower section and I just slid some tape between that crack and then I used a putty knife to get the tape to stick inbetween good.




YOU DO NOT WANT TO SAND THIS. IF YOU SAND IT YOU WILL NOT GET AN OEM LOOK.

Next take the adhesion promoter and do a light dusting on what you're about to spray. Having good lighting will help you out to see if you missed any spots. sorry I wasn't able to get any pictures of this but it should be fairly straight forward

After waiting about 5-10 minutes I returned with my paint can shaken up really good and I started by painting underneath the door panel. Your tabs will keep it from touching anything and you don't want to try and do this after you have painted the main section because you will get drips and what not.

After painting the rear you can lay it down and start on the front. I sprayed a very light first and second coat. I waited about 10 minutes between coats. Make sure you're in a well ventilated area and the weather is good.

Take a good look at it after about three or four coats and see if it needs anything else. This stuff dries really quickly and didn't leave any finger prints when touching it. I used a semi gloss and didn't spray a clear coat because I didn't want a shine and it isn't necessary to protect it.

If everything checks out okay then unmask that bad boy and take pride in your work.

It looks better in person. Will look awesome once I get my black leather inserts



Here's what I did for the door handles. I'm not sure if the coupe handles are the same but here's what I did for the sedan. I wanted it to stay open because there was no way of taking it apart. I used a clamp to make it stay open and then masked of the chrome handle. I used a tape that wasn't super sticky incase it took off the chrome



Here's my end result. I'm very happy with it.

 

Nicely done, and good write-up!

Yes, indeed; Prep work is very crucial. I take extra x2 long time, too.

Can't wait to see the completion of your interior work!

 

Thank-you! I really wish the sedans came with black interior but it's kinda fun to do it myself. I'm still stuck on front seats. Can't find TL seats so maybe I'll just get some black leather seats from an audi, porsche, bmw, s2000, rsx, almost anything at this point lol.

 

Landau Black from SEM is what I Used for the interior plastics. I forgot which one I used for the leather seats,... but it was also from SEM.

 

I used the SEM black as well. I'm thinking I want to do them lower half now. I'm not totally sure yet

 

Did you by chance paint your door handles? If so do you have an pictures of them?

 

If your just thinking of changing the color of the seat to black you could look at going to an upholstery store in getting a quote of how much it would cost. It's gonna be cheaper if you take the seats out yourself. If you go that route then you can go black and gray or whatever.


iPhone using Tapatalk, sent from my.

 

I don't like design of the stock seats at all. My friend owns an upholestry shop but it would still cost a decent amount to get mine redone. If I can find some already black leather seats Id rather do that. I found some porsche black leather seats for $250 and I'm waiting for the guy to get back to me on that.

 

Looks great. I was halfway through this project on my sedan when it got totaled.

Avoid the S2K seats, by the way. They look...odd in anything other than their natural surroundings.

 

Turned out great bro. Wanna do mine?