Thursday, May 12, 2016

I've been thinkin'...

Tim always cringes when I say that because he knows it's usually followed by a major modification / upgrade / maintenance idea for Kintala, but I think this time he was pretty happy I said it because the workload was going to be mine, not his.

When we bought the boat, there was one headliner panel that had a water damaged corner in it. The leak had been fixed, or at least the gremlins had moved to another spot, because it was no longer wet, just damaged. Kintala has the hard type of headliner - vinyl coated panels of masonite in 2 foot wide sections that go crosswise to the boat with teak trim strips between them. Somebody fixed the leak, but for whatever reason never chose to replace the panel. It has bugged me for the last 5 years.

Since I had all the trim down to take out the ports to rebed them (the biggest part of the job), it seemed like a good time to replace the panel. I did some research to see what Lowe's and Home Depot had in stock in Bradenton, the closest place I could get to in a borrowed vehicle. I had recently seen photos of another boat online that had been refit, and the owner had installed the scored paneling typically used as wainscoting. It was impressive to say the least. While perusing Lowe's inventory online, I saw the paneling and mentioned to Tim that it might be worth the time to change it all out rather than have a new panel, clean and white, make the rest look old and yellowing, which they were. We agreed I should take a look.

The company pickup was available, the price was right, and two days later we have a brand new headliner that, if I might say so, makes the boat look like new. Here are some progress picks, but I say progress because even though the headliner is complete, the ports are still out and that project is going to take a couple more weeks. But you know, I've been thinkin'...



7 comments:

Tricia said...

Looks awesome

Scott said...

Love the new look!

Phil Gee said...

Superb!

S/V Via Bella said...

Wow! Beautiful! You did a great job, Deb. --Nancy

Phil Gee said...

I think the Bumfuzzles used the same thing for the headliner on their camper!

hypathia hunter said...

Looks great. We did the same thing on the sides in our V-Berth. Question... How did you adhere the panels to the ceiling and did you any coating/painting of the panels to retard mold growth?

Deb said...

Thanks all for your kind comments. @hypathia hunter - the panels screw into furring strips that are screwed into the fiberglass. I didn't paint them, although I suspect we will eventually need to. These panels are coated with a vinyl paint of some sort and they're 3/16 hardboard. The panels that came out were just regular masonite and it rotted away into wet sawdust. The new panels are some sort of Eucalyptus blend that's supposed to handle moisture better.