---

If you have auto body skills, you can easily learn to do gelcoat. Get the supplies from US Composites or a local marine supply store (white waxed tinted to whatever color you want.) You can sand the area down with your DA and 60 grit and spray over 120 grit, hopefully your DA has a vacuum attachment because the dust is a PITA. Wear breathing protection and a tyvek suit. You can also finish the gelcoat for the most part with your DA but it is still at least four times as much work as paint per square foot. If you need to, you can use polyester glazing putty to fix deep scratches etc- such as Evercoat. Gelcoat will not hide imperfections like auto primer will. It does not flow at all.

Spray it with a $15 HF purple gun, three coats. Run some acetone through the gun before ten minutes or it will kick in the gun. Set the pressure at max for the gun, heck I run it at 90 psi which is over the max. Throw it away after the day's use. Catalyze the gelcoat based on surface temperature between 1 and 2%. 1.25% almost always works fine. You can thin the gelcoat up to 15% using 50/50 MEK and styrene to help it spray.

For lots of great DIY videos on doing gelcoat, check out Andy at Boatworks Today.

People recently told me (and most of what I read on forums was discouraging like the above posters) that it was ridiculously hard to learn how to paint cars with base coat/clear coat. I watched a few videos and painted my Miata hardtop which was all ragged out and it came out nearly perfect.

Personally, I hate upholstered headliners. They stain easily and most of the time look cheap.