VW Autosleeper Trident

Just wondered if anyone else had had problems with the vinyl peeling off cupboard doors? If so, how was it remedied? We’ve tried various car trimmers but no one seems to know what to do with it. So little spare material around the door sides makes it hard to stick it back down effectively. However, I think we may have to stick with the original material or there will be a mismatch with the frame in which the cupboards sit...any thoughts on solutions would be very welcome!

Our Trooper has the same problem, and we can't decide what to do either!

We are torn between redoing with vinyl wrap, or removing the existing vinyl and spraying them - or possibly even remaking the doors in real wood.

We don't reckon the first option will last, for the same reason that the original didn't - the inside gets very hot and the underlying MDF is just not a good substrate to stick to.

The last option would probably look good (my preference at the moment would be in furniture-grade ply, showing the stripey effect at the edges), but it would be very costly and/or time consuming to do.

Which leaves the option of spraying. I reckon it could look quite good in a contrasting colour, sprayed with a semi-matt emulsion, but it's one of those things where you won't know for sure whether the colour combo works until it's done!

I would be interested to hear what you decide to do, and even more interested to see photos when it's finished...

Thanks for your reply. We’ve been considering all the same options you mentioned! One other possible solution came to mind today, which I’ve just started to investigate. We’ve used the ‘Colour Wizard’ company in the past to sort out minor bumps and scrapes on our cars. Whilst searching for trim repairers, I noticed they offer this too, so I’ve emailed them and sent some pics of our cupboards. If they can do a good repair, that would solve the problem. The trouble is, we don’t really like the colour of the cupboards, so we’d still be stuck with it! I’ll let you know how we get on with it all.

CRB wrote:The trouble is, we don’t really like the colour of the cupboards, so we’d still be stuck with it!

Same here - ours are a rather horrid tan/brown, and so is the frame behind the doors. It's a fairly nasty colour, but changing the finish of both the doors and the frame would be a very big job.

Hence the idea of perhaps mint green, or possibly limed green, so that we could leave the frame as it is with the doors as a contrast. A difficult one to solve...

Roopert- a quick update on our Trident’s cupboards. After endless fruitless phone calls, my husband decided to search on YouTube for some ‘how to’ fixes. To retain and repair the original vinyl, which we're going to do for the moment, you need a hair dryer, glue and heavy duty sticky tape. After heating the vinyl with a hairdryer to make it softer and more pliable, stick it down (we used UHU) as firmly you can, then apply tape over the glued-down repair. Leave overnight and then carefully peel off the tape. It seems to have worked, for now at least, while we continue to explore other options. Hope this of some help, I took some photos but can’t see how to attach them...I’ll keep trying.

Thanks - that sounds like it stands a chance of working. Unfortunately we've lost a few slivers of vinyl here and there, so it would definitely only be a temporary solution for us.

The other thing that worries me about that method - which only applies if you want to keep open the option of painting in the future - is that it may be very difficult to get a glue like Uhu cleanly off the MDF if you decide to strip the vinyl after all. So there are options, but they all seem to have their complications...

It looks much better for sure, but it won’t last forever. We are going to ask a good joiner/cabinet maker who lives near us if he can make replacement doors. The old ones can be taken off an used as a template and then we can spray or use sticky vinyl as we found some v similar materials to what’s already on there, online, in nicer colours. Feelings a bit braver about this after the DIY repairs! We’ll just keep the old doors somewhere safe in case we ever decide to sell it and a buyer wants the originals.