Figured I'd start a build thread for my GMC since it's quite a bit more involved than I was hoping for when I bought it.
To recap, from my previous post: "I'm heading down a road I was hoping to avoid.
Like a scab, I couldn't help picking at the nasty interior on my GMC, and just like that the walls are off and in the dumpster, the seats are at the upholsterer and we're picking out fabric, flooring, headliner etc. The whole shebang. I should have listened to that little voice in my head screaming 'It's a TRAP!' I didn't though. Oh well.
If I were smart, I'd cut bait and sell it to find one that is fairly original and ready to use, that's what I was hoping for anyway.
Isn't this how this things usually go anyway? 'I'll just fix this one thing, ... oh wait, while I'm here let me fix this other thing....' and before you know it it's down to the studs/ribs.
30k or bust, here we come! $hit. "
More to follow. Hopefully some pictures if I can figure out how to do it.
Here's what we've done, and are planning to do.
I've removed the carpet, upper cabinets, front davo, dinette, and rear side face dinette. Removed the raised floor under the rear dinette (found some rot). Removed the headliner and wall liners. Plan is to reupholster the front furniture and ditch the rear dinette for a mattress platform with storage underneath where the rear side-face dinette footwell area used to be.
Thinking about colors and planning ahead, we've got it narrowed down to a couple options for linoleum for galley/door/davo front area. Linoleum is 12' wide, which will cover from the front steps to near the bathroom door. Will probably have to add a layer of luan to get a good surface for the linoleum. I think we're going with a light sandstone / beige random stone pattern. Old floor was dark, harvest gold, so floor will be getting lighter in color vs original, and we're staying in the family of brown colors.
We picked out fabric and put down 1/3 on reupholstering the davo and dinette. There's about a 2 month queue, so waiting to hear from them to drop off the furniture. Original was light tan wide corduroy. We are going with a brown, extremely stainproof fabric. Seats will be getting darker vs the original, similar to the dark walnut cabinets.
We got samples and picked out and ordered headliner for the ceiling and upper parts of the wall, and hull liner for the lower parts of the wall, from SailRite. The headliner is about 1/4" thick foam backed, I'm hoping/planning to glue this to panels of 'plastic cardboard' which is available at lowes/homedepot. It's about 3/16" thick, lightweight, waterproof.
I'm insulating the ceiling and walls with the mylar bubble wrap insulation stuff, taped to the ribs with aluminum tape.
Started at the rear, I've dropped the plastic headliner, washed it and painted it white with Fusion paint. Under the stickers was something close to the original color, it didn't use to be ivory colored, it was bright white at one time. It took like 6 coats to get a decent finish using rattle cans, which I hate. Took 4 cans and my finger darn near fell off from pressing the nozzle. I'm hoping to get that reinstalled tonight or soon thereafter and then work forward with the insulation and headliner.
Some time ago I bought a new drivers seat without first looking at real samples in hand, in natural light, next to the cabinets and dashboard which we be pretty much all that remains of the original interior surfaces. Based on the samples on the website, we choose Mocha. Well, it arrived and it's not really a good match to the image on their website. Damned if it doesn't have a purple hue to it, to me anyway. It's sort of a light brown, but to me all I see is that purple but I have been accused of being color blind, there's a brown chair in our house that I think looks a little bit like really dark green. Anyway, I digress. Instead of doubling down on another seat for the passenger in a color we're not super happy with, we're planning to order 2 seats this time, one for the driver and one for the passenger, after carefully looking at actual samples of the real material. Unfortunately, the samples are tiny, and dammit if Mocha doesn't look pretty good on the sample board! D'oh! I think we're going to forge ahead anyway and try a darker, brown color called Decaf. So if anyone out there is looking for a brand-new drivers seat in Mocha, which may or may not appear to be slightly purple hued, let me know, I've got a deal for you!
We picked out a brown indoor/outdoor carpet, lowes and HD both have it, for the steps and drivers front area. We'll use this also in the rear where the linoleum doesn't reach. I also bought sound deadening material for the front/steps area.
I'll probably put the old upper cabinets back in for camping this summer, but there is some water damage to most of them. I'll probably make new ones someday to get the particle board out of there.
So that's pretty much the overall plan, not really a total gut job, just replacing the old surfaces with new ones. Trying to stay in the same brown color family, some things are getting lighter while other things are getting lighter to hopefully offset. There's a reason that GMC went to Better Housekeeping (?) for picking out the colors, I think this will be easy to mess up, hoping to avoid that.
Will try to get some pictures up!
