The Upholstery Forum

Good afternoon.
I have been tasked with recovering 2 bucket seats and a rear seat for a 79 Trans Am. Customer will remove the seats. No foam repair, as we will go with purchased molded foam. Seats will be a mixture of cloth and vinyl in a pleated design as original. I have guesstimated 40 hours for the job Does that seem reasonable? Pictures are just for reference.
Thank you,
Jim

I'm somewhat new at this and I would estimate 40 hours to do it. I'm sure someone with more experience could possibly bang it out in 25-30 hours.

Thank you Sully. I am pretty new at this myself. I sent the people my quote. We’ll see what happens.
Have a great weekend.
Jim

@Jim it all depends on what you are building to determine how long. Be prepared to fight the rear covers on if they bought new foams. They are always like 6" thick but the boxing is like 3". Honestly these are my least favorite seats to make look original. (Thats just my experience so don't be discouraged because of that)

They are not bad to do custom, but the way they made those insert sections are challenging, at least to me they are. They are 1.5" thick in the raised areas and .5" thick in the stitched areas. Then they fold and stitch the corners which is kinda weird to me, almost like furniture i guess.Took me a long time to get that design down to where it looked original.

Other than that they aren't bad to do. I hope you can come up with a good plan on how to do those inserts, and maybe I'll learn something from you i haven't tried.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out!

Yeah the way those varying thickness inserts are will be a pain in the ass to replicate. Id say 25 - 30 hours at least. You going to spend a lot of time doing test panels to make sure it looks right. Be sure to order extra fabric.

@Matt Hamblin @John Thank you guys for the responses. All of the insight from your experiences was very informative. I did send the customer a quote a week ago. I have not heard back yet. I had been thinking I quoted kind of high. But after hearing from you guys. I don’t think I did. Thank you
Jim

Here is the original appearing one i did a while back. Next to the other seat before that one was done.

Sorry not sure why it flipped the photo

Yeah dont be offended if he doesn't call back or complains about the price. A lot of people just dont understand how much effort is involved and think a seat should take 2 hours.

@Matt Hamblin That seats looks great Matt.
@John I’m not too offended. It does make you second guess your quote. Especially when just starting out.
Jim

Almost makes me wonder if the original seat was a redo before judging by the darts.

I would put you closer to 55 hours.