Customs Building a custom dashboard 53 GMC!!!

I bought a 53 GMC kustom. The dashboard was modified by the previous owner(s) and wasn't to my liking, so I'm trying my hand at customizing it.

I had a complete '52 Buick dash laying around so I figured I could use pieces from that.

Here are the before pics of the truck and dashboard. I just bought it a couple weeks ago.

 

I started by taking all the switches, knobs, and gauges out. I went ahead and cut the Buick dash in half, but wish I would've got a picture of it before that.



Next a lot of cutting happened until the Buick dash started to fit.

 

I should've just used the whole Buick dash instead of grafting the two dashboards together, would've been easier.



This was about two Saturdays of cutting and fitting to get to this point. That's what it looks like now. Just tacked in place.

 

Really need to figure out what to put in the center of the dash. Any ideas would be helpful?

I'm thinking maybe a speaker grille?

 

Big improvement over the forest of toggle switches.