new interior...how difficult a DIY project?

High quality skins can be purchased from Christine's marine... I did my observer seat (bottom) myself, not bad took maybe 1.5 hours and looks factory. That being said, it looks to be one of the easier seats to recover and my foam was still good. maybe now that I developed a method I could do the other pieces a bit quicker but I would estimate it would take about 12-15 hours to do the entire boat. start to finish (on a 99 closed bow sn)... the drivers seat looks like it could be a bit tricky.

If you were talking about buying rolls of vinyl and making yourself... I can't help you there...

Don't know how I missed that Chris. Great job!

My front seats are in good condition, I am going to order the skins for the rear bench seat in my 93 nautique from Christines, the turns/angles look gentle, so that seat should be pretty straight forward. I may do the side padded walls to, as they look pretty easy as well.

Dan

My wife and I have done a fair share of sewing (I make a lot of cornhole bags, she makes a lot of baby clothes). I can, without doubt, say that a home sewing machine will not perform well, especially the new plastic ones. The mechanisms are not going to be strong enough to get through all the vinyl. When we had our skins done by a shop, the vinyl materials for the entire boat came in around $700 (foam was still decent) and the labor was about $1500. But he did EVERYTHING. I didn't price Christine's so I don't know what it would have cost that route.

Hi For those that want to try to sew their own skins and need a sewing machine. Go and find a 1950's vintage Singer Sewing machine. You can pick them up for around 50=75 dollars. These old machines will actually sew up to one inch of leather stacked up. They will not be as fast as a commercial machine but nearly as tuff. Do not waste your time on a 1970's or newer machine too much plastic and belts will not take the stress. Hope this helps someone looking to sew a set of skins.

Frank