GP Motor Trimming

Huge thanks to Splash Pool Care for the goodies — and for capturing Geoff in his natural habitat: awkwardly agreeing to photos 😂
We love supporting local and these guys really are experts in their field — highly recommend!

So great to see Mackay getting behind them. If there’s one thing Mack Town does well, it’s supporting our own 💙🌊

100th IN STORE CUSTOMER

This week we served our 100th new customer through the store since opening in October.

Thank you to the whole Northern Beaches community (and surrounds). The support for our local business has been overwhelming.

And a big thank you to Geoff from GP Motor Trimming for agreeing to the picture 😂

🌟 A lot of newcomers to our page might wonder how our name GP Motor Trimming connects to shade sails.

Geoff began his apprenticeship in motor trimming back in 2000, when the trade covered a wide variety of work — cars, boats, canvas, tarps, and of course, shade sails. Training regionally meant he learned it all.

It still amazes me today to watch Geoff take a roll of material and turn it into a canopy, boat cover, or shade sail — with no pattern and no two projects ever the same. Over the years he’s made everything from caravan annexes and boat canopies to gym pads, seats, outdoor blinds, machinery covers, and anything any one of our customers has been able to dream up — the kind of intricate, one-off work that shows just how versatile the trade once was. The old-school trimmers like Geoff really are the last of their kind.

While motor trimming apprenticeships still exist today, they’ve become much more specialised — usually focused on cars and marine upholstery. Shade sails and broader canvas work aren’t typically part of the training anymore, certainly not with the same variety Geoff had.

Geoff was honoured with two Apprentice of the Year awards during his training, and 25 years later, although his focus has shifted more to covers, canopies, marine work and shade sails, those old-school skills are still at the heart of everything he does.

So the name remains…… GP Motor Trimming!!! …..and we continue our mission to let people know — YES, we do shade sails too.

Days chatting about motor trimming leads to too many late nights & weekends in the workshop actually doing the motor trimming! 😴🤯

It’s for this reason we have made the decision to close the gate and reduce our opening hours to the public from today.

While we understand this may be inconvenient for some of our customers (we are truly sorry for that) but we feel it’s necessary in the interest of reducing our lead times and providing some uninterrupted time on the tools for Geoff to do what he does best and improve our turnaround times.

If you come by outside our new hours you will find this sign on the gate. While we will be sad you made the trip over when we are closed, there will be a QR code I will be working on in the coming weeks which will hopefully take care of a lot of the common enquiries we get.

Please remember to reach out in advance for appointments outside of these hours if absolutely necessary.

Thanks so much for your understanding & co-operation 🙏🏻

Here is a very small snippet of some of our lovingly made shade sails that we’ve installed in our beautiful region over the years.
For some extra study Geoff is currently doing to stay up to date in the tensile industry, I’ve been tasked with compiling an album to showcase some of our sail work. No easy task as we have done soooo many amazing shade sails over the years but I’ve started so for anyone who would like to see more of our shade making portfolio I hope to add to this post in the next couple of weeks as I go through & compile 😁 for now I hope this sneak peek will help to keep our very neglected page alive here a little longer.
Thank you to all our previous shade sail customers who literally are the ones that keep us going with word of mouth & tagging us in FB recommendations. We certainly aren’t winning any jobs with our own advertising that is for certain 😬🤣 We really do appreciate you so much 🙏🏻

We recently replaced one of the very first shade sails Geoff made back when he started his apprenticeship around 23 years ago. I thought that deserved a post!

As you can see, the original sail in the photos (maroon colour - using the same shade sail fabric we use today), did very well over the years. However after a pool yard refresh, the new Terracotta coloured sail looks amazing and finishes off the space beautifully.

Just goes to show the value of a well made sail using quality material. I wonder how many Bunnings sails they would have went through in 23 years 🤔