New vinyl...

Upholstery in general is a fine art.  I have tried on a few occasions and failed.  I will be following this thread in hopes of learning the secret that escapes both of us!    

Well, I don't know if this will help you, but I do have a suggestion. Whether you are stapling to the front of the backing board or behind it, it is very difficult to stretch the vinyl into position around tight corners or round cut outs. Obviously you need enough material to properly grab onto and pull the vinyl into position. But the more material there is the more resistant to conforming it will be. So making relief cuts is the key (and doing the heat gun thing as you mentioned). The trick is determining how far you can make a relief cut without the cut showing. Also, relief cuts need to be clean. You don't want to have them tearing farther than your intentional cut. I am attaching a photo of my side combing panel with cut outs for speakers. There is a secondary plastic ring that goes into these openings before the speakers, so the vinyl is stapled down to the panel face. But the same sort of technique works for material that wraps the panel and staples onto the back. Do the skins you bought have any relief cuts? Can they be a little deeper without showing? This may not help you, you might already be doing this, but if not... well this is how my upholstery guy does it and I have used the same technique with skins that weren't installed by the maker. If there just isn't enough material to reach then the skin was cut too tight to the opening. My upholsterer always leaves a generous border that I trim after stapling.

KENO wrote: Are you stapling the inner stuff first, then heating and stretching the rest of the material out and around the outer edges? More material to hold on to when stretching that way and easier to stretch that way too