Carpentry continues

Carpentry continues... recent projects checked off the list include: Building more galley storage, installing the aft cabin head door, installing finish panels for the house battery box, finishing the dinette trim, building and installing face frames in the guest cabin and head, and finding a few more inches in the overhead at the stairwell from the wheelhouse to the lower deck. Most of these were pretty straightforward. I had originally just squared the vertical t&g coming down from the wheelhouse to the overhead bead board down below. This was just a few inches shy of comfortable clearance for getting down the stairs without needing to duck a bit. the clearance was complicated by some steel framing and wood nailers in the overhead- things are pretty tight at this transition point. As in some other parts of the boat, I found myself doing a lot of extra work to gain those last couple of inches of space, but the results were worth it. Just need to add a couple of pieces of trim and we can call it good. A little unexpected hitch came up when installing the lower face frame for the dinette... Probably about a year ago, I was looking for a spot to stash some cans of two part epoxy adhesive that I had used to install some sound deadening material in the swim step. I found that the one gallon cans fit perfectly under the dinette, and this is where they stayed through all the flooring and other interior work we have been doing. When I went to clean out under the dinette, I found them nicely trapped by the extra 5/8" that our finish floor added to the subfloor. There was only one solution so out came the sawzall and off came the top two inches of each can. Fortunately the cans weren't full and I was able to transfer the epoxy into some new cans without too much mess. We were originally going to try to install both masts this year, but the interior finish work has kind of taken over. I am however starting to put some serious thought into building the aft mast portion of our rig. In addition to a marconi type aft sail (to balance what will likely be junk or gaff rig on the forward mast) the aft mast will also serve as a lifting rig to the aft deck, support for radar/gps/vhf antennas/etc, as well as the supports for a future paravane rig. I have also been toying with the idea of adding a crows nest. Our boat is pretty low overall with no flybridge and it is handy to get a better view from up high sometimes. I also need to run the exhaust pipe up the mast to clear the sail, which will require some heat shielding I think for safety when climbing the mast. I've seen this on the old Nordhaven 46 rigs. Lots to consider. I'll post some drawings soon.

More Trim and Paint

Been kind of lazy about posting lately... Lots to catch up on:

We painted the galley and forward cabins with the same color as the aft stateroom from the wainscoting up. Looks nice with the wood trim we've been slowly adding. I don't have any shots of the work in progress, but you can see the finish in some of these pics. Did a lot of work in the bow including painting and finishing the built in shelving in the forepeak and just behind the watertight door. I lined these shelves with some leftover carpet from the aft cabin, which should help keep things from banging around when we're underway. Also framed out the doorways for the forward cabin and the forward head. I'm currently working on the last batch of face frames. The frames for the dinette drawers are now done, so that leaves just a few more to do. Then I will have one more batch of drawers/door fronts to put together and install to wrap up all of the interior cabinets/storage. Our neighbor Anton built us a very nice door for the aft cabin head. It's a match for the two doors we already had on hand from our old boat, which are both going forward- one for the guest cabin, one for the guest head. In the aft cabin, we covered the last remaining plywood (on the tops to the nightstands and cabinets) with a grey laminate. This cabin is looking about 90% finished now. Here's a bunch of pictures:

   

 

  

aft cabin finish work

Some more work in the aft cabin... With the carpet tiles arrived and ready for install, we decided to do the necessary veneer work and painting while the floor was still unfinished and much more forgiving of paint and varnish drips.Many of the bulkheads in the aft cabin were still bare plywood in need of finish.  After a lot of consideration, we decided to finish the lower half of the bulkhead with the last scraps of Lyptus wood veneer, and paint the top half with a nice complimentary color. This is a standard finish in old classic yacht interiors and we wanted to echo that in our boat. This is also in line with my original concept of having a rugged steel workboat exterior with a warm comfortable old wooden boat interior.

The veneer went pretty smoothly, though matching grain and color using the big pile of leftover scraps took some time. After a couple of good coats of varnish, the new veneer blends nicely with the rest of the cabin. Here's Sue to explain the slightly more complicated experience with the paint:

We divided up the task - I painted the passageway, Pete painted the bedroom. After a few moments he called me in for an opinion - he had painted a little corner - it looked great. I kept on with the passageway which was looking ok, but not great. A little while later Pete called me back for a second opinion. He had done a whole wall & it looked pretty terrible. We both looked at each other & just shook our heads.  The resulting color could best be described as a cross between a rusty piece of steel, and cardboard box. I immediately thought all was lost but Pete kept his cool and started to mix the passageway color w/the bedroom color. He tried a few mixes on the wall & when we got to one that we both agreed was better than the original, he mixed up a large batch & painted the whole bedroom. In the end, the hallway ended up really nice & the bedroom color has been growing on us steadily. Not sure what to call it or how we will ever duplicate it but for now it works. Whew! -SP

With the bulkheads done, I decided to spend Monday messing around with the carpet tiles (a commercial product made by Tandus). We used their 24x24"squares which have a very stout thin rubber backing that is completely waterproof. The tile version of this carpet was necessary because of the many cutouts to fit around hatches and built in furniture in the space. Doing this with roll carpet would have been next to impossible. After cutting and fitting a couple of the easier tiles, I kind of got on a roll and ended up knocking out the whole cabin in about 5 hours. I found this stuff really forgiving and easy to work with. All the seams match nicely and the finished product looks like one big piece of carpet. It lays down well on its own, but I will be pulling it back up in sections to glue it down with a special adhesive that will allow individual tiles to be replaced in the future if they get damaged.

Next up will be painting bulkheads in the forward part of the boat, while we still have all the paint supplies handy.