What does it take to replace a headliner? Just $50 and some time.

As I slipped into my Cayman’s driver seat, the car cradled me in its interior. And why wouldn’t it? Over the past few years, I’d rescued it from a dealer’s service lot in a half-price deal that meant driving cross-country with a broken transmission. After a backyard gearbox rebuild and some fresh Öhlins coil-overs paired with Vorshlag camber plates, it was only natural for my Porsche to finally embrace me.

But ewww, did it really need to hug me with its headliner? After just a few afternoons parked outside in the Florida sun, my Cayman’s headliner fell down and turned every drive into an annoying, flapping, sweaty head hug. Not exactly the experience a modern Porsche is supposed to deliver, so it’s time to fix it.

My first stop, of course, was the Porsche forums. Just what exactly had I done wrong to wreck the headliner on a modern car? Florida heat is rough on interiors, but there’s still no way it should destroy one this quickly.

The forums were full of similar stories, and Porsche people seem to think it’s perfectly normal for a headliner to only last a decade. Like every other modern car, my 2014 Cayman’s headliner features a pressed fiberboard topped with foam-backed fabric. The two are glued together. Heat, wind and time coalesce to cause the foam–not the glue or the fabric–to degrade and fail.

And at about $600, brand-new headliners from the Porsche dealer aren’t even that overpriced. But I didn’t even ask about labor, because it’s a miserable job that Porsche says requires two people plus removing a rear quarter window. A miserable job that a local headliner shop wanted $800 to do. A miserable job that I could do myself for pennies on the dollar.

First, though, I needed some new fabric. Turns out I was in luck: The local automotive upholstery store had generic black headliner in stock at $15 a yard. Believe it or not, it wasn’t just a close match: It was an absolute, picture-perfect, couldn’t-possibly-get-better match. Pattern, color, weight, everything. Porsche purists: Save this article, because it’s the only way you’ll ever be able to tell my headliner isn’t German. I bought 2 yards for $30.

The rest of the supplies list is remarkably short: glue and a way to apply it. Contact cement in an aerosol can is a popular option, but I know from experience that it’s not as easy to use or as durable as the hard stuff.

The hard stuff, of course, is commercial headliner glue. I bought a half gallon from the same automotive upholstery place, helpfully dispensed into an old milk jug. You don’t need nearly this much if you’re only doing one car, and you can probably buy it online, too. It’s easiest to apply the glue with a spray gun, so I picked one up for $20 from Harbor Freight.

Shopping finished, the only step left was the hard part: actually doing the job. I’ll save you the blow-by-blow and instead direct you to our website for all the gory details. (Search for $50 headliner.)

Here are the high points, though. First, remove the sun visors and dome light, pop a few clips, then carefully wiggle the headliner loose. I didn’t need to remove any glass, but I did watch a few YouTube videos and took a few shots at spinning the headliner to thread it through the passenger footwell and out of the car.

Once the headliner was out, my dad and I scraped the old fabric and glue from the board. Then we sprayed on fresh glue and carefully laid down the new fabric.

After removing the headliner, we stripped off the old foam-backed fabric. Then we could glue on new material–just $30 from a local supplier.

Installation was the reverse of removal, and after an afternoon of swearing, I had a $50 headliner that looked just as good as the original. Good thing, too, because it’s time to get my hands greasy again and go back underneath the Porsche–I haven’t forgotten about my goal to make this a fun street car that’s equally at home on track.