I am painting the interior before permanently attaching the cabin top. I am using an Aerosport interior so I don’t have many surfaces that need paint. I am going with a dark interior on the lower portion of the cabin with light grey colors overhead.
I chose not to paint the dark grey Aerosport interior panels as this should give me more long-term durability and help reduce maintenance effort. The interior panel color is a very close match to SEM Color Coat Presidio (05163). I am using this color for a few additional areas of the interior (baggage door, rear seat backs, rear seat back brace). I am pairing this paint with SEM Color Coat Landau Black (05013) for the lower portions of the interior and for the aft of the baggage compartment. I experimented with a few different paint options and ultimately decided to go with SEM Color Coat as I really like the finish, it goes on really well, and is easy to touch up.
I used Sherwin Williams Jet Flex WR P09013 (Dark Grey) for the interior of the cabin top and the doors as SEM didn’t have a color that I wanted to use in this area. The “Dark Gray” name is misleading as it is a light grey.
The rear footwell carpet covers the sides of the footwell so I only needed to paint the forward portions that will be visible under the rear seats. I taped this area off and painted it with Rustoleum 2x Ultra Matte Black. I used this paint here as it is cheap and easy to obtain for future touch-up. Black also makes it easy to match across different paints.
I taped off and painted the seat belt attachment points in satin black for durability (also Rustoleum so that I can easily touch these up later if needed). These areas have cut-outs in the Aerosport carpet so I didn’t need to paint beyond this.
The rear seat carpet stops just ahead of the rear seat hinge and the baggage compartment carpet stops just aft of the hinge. I taped off this area and painted it with Rustoleum 2x Ultra Matte Black.
I painted the interior of the baggage door interior with SEM Color Coat Presidio. You can see how close the colors are below. I then attached the Aerosport baggage door panel and fitted the door strut. I wanted to get the bracket for the door strut fitted before painting the rear seat brace. The door strut bracket is match drilled to the rear seat brace.
I then primed and painted the door strut bracket and masked off the rear seat brace.
The rear seat brace and the closeout were painted with Presidio, then riveted. This allowed me to paint the inside of the brace (which is visible via the lightening holes in the closeout). I then painted the rivet lines, using some cardboard as a deflector to keep the overspray off of the seat brace.
I chose to rivet the door strut bracket to the brace instead of using the provided screws.
I then masked off the front seat forward bulkhead (the top part as this will be visible). I’ll probably add a removable kick plate with grip tape here later as a step for getting into the plane. I used Rustoleum 2x Ultra Matte Black to paint the bulkhead.
I also masked off and painted the door sills. I will be covering this area with Aerosport carbon fiber sill caps but there is a small area at both ends that will be visible. The side panel looks like it will get scraped easily when removed for condition inspections so I plan to make a thin carbon fiber cover to close out this area. This should also be tougher than paint and will hide the screws.
As is always the case with painting, the masking is the majority of the work…
I then masked off and painted the frame around the baggage door. This was painted with Presidio to match the door. I’ll paint the floor portion black as the carpet doesn’t cover this area.
I then masked off and painted the bulkhead at the rear of the baggage compartment. This was painted with SEM Color Coat Landau Black.
The panels forward and aft of the baggage door were also painted with Landau Black.
I’m finally ready to attach the cabin top.