Leather Door Armrests - small writeup

I was disappointed with the quality of the mk6 door cards, while they look nice and are sturdy they don't match the quality of the rest of the interior. The cloth armrests keep water stains when it drips from the windows and is drab imo. So i decided to coats them both in leather.

First up, i did not document taking off the door but once you know how to do it it takes like 5 minutes. I linked a write up below:

http://www.golfmk6.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5095

next, I got a piece of black leather for about 10$ and cut it into the shape of the armrest. I draped it over the armrest and gradually trimmed it down to scale, but this is the general shape of my final driver's side piece.

I sprayed the armrest with elmers fabric glue and stretched and laid it out. I used a flathead screwdriver to push the edges of the leather into the cracks and clean it up. If it looks like the leather won't cover the bottom part of the armrest, don't worry because the L shaped plastic piece will cover some of it.

I'm new so im not really sure how to link individual pics, but here's an imgur album with each finished door and the finished drivers leather piece:

http://imgur.com/a/p6biQ

Above are the final results for both doors. great 10$ mod. Hope y'all enjoy!

Not too shabby for 10$. I sent off some material of mine to get diamond stitch and then plan on doing this. I currently have them all apart though. Ill post some pics through tapatalk to give anyone an idea of what they are getting into if they remove the inserts.

Arm rest on left is with factory foam intact and right side is when I removed the foam to prep for new material.



Freshly taken apart.



With the factory cloth removed from upper inserts.





Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

mikeleemk6 said:

Arm rest on left is with factory foam intact and right side is when I removed the foam to prep for new material.

Freshly taken apart.

With the factory cloth removed from upper inserts.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Click to expand...

^^^this guy went all out. I wasn't sure if i wanted to do the top part so i left it cloth. Are they easy if you remove them from the door card? they seem pretty firmly attached to it.

Pain in the ass to remove lol. There is like 2 screws and the rest is plastic rivets. you have to basically drill them out. The cloth on these are absolute shit and the armrest hurts lol. Feels like sandpaper, same with center console imo.

mikeleemk6 said:

Pain in the ass to remove lol. There is like 2 screws and the rest is plastic rivets. you have to basically drill them out. The cloth on these are absolute shit and the armrest hurts lol. Feels like sandpaper, same with center console imo.

Click to expand...

I agree. I used plain leather so I kept the padding for underneath, just re-covered it i guess would be the actual name.