A Fun Car Project

I often find myself getting bored of my car if it's kept looking exactly the same for too long. I don't know why, but I just always have to mess with it. My most recent example of this took place not too long ago. In my car, the interior trim pieces that surround the climate controls and shifter are normally a flat black color. Since the majority of the car's interior is black, I decided I wanted to break that up a bit, so I bought some vinyl to wrap those trim pieces and give that area some contrast.

For those of you that don't know, vinyl wrap is essentially a sticker. If you heat it up enough, you can shape it to almost any surface you can think of. Vinyl wrapping the exterior of cars has actually become a pretty popular trend over the last few years, mostly because it is completely reversible if you don't like the result, but it also can be significantly cheaper than a quality paint job and still look just as good. Since I had never done anything like it before, I wanted to start small, so the interior trim pieces were a good place to experiment with.

The project took a lot more time than I had first predicted. To take the pieces off of the center console, I had to take the radio and the climate control module out, leaving a gaping hole in my car's dashboard. But after roughly 5 hours of patience, I had successfully wrapped both of the pieces and I was pretty happy with the result. After doing this project, my main takeaways are to be patient, and if the vinyl isn't contouring to the shape of whatever object you are trying to wrap, just heat it up with a heat gun (or even a hair dryer) and it will become pliable enough to work with. I included a picture of the finished result below.