Author Archives: Melissa

Fun With Finishes: Shabby to Chic

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Remember two years ago when I posted the first Fun with Finishes blog post? I was able to turn a fairly disgusting aft bathroom into a warm and inviting space by using the cheap trick of interior latex paint. That finish has remained perfect for over 2 years now. It has worn well, has been easy to clean, and has withstood a constant leak from the mizzen mast area above it for this entire winter. Really. There is nothing like an almost constant trickle of water sliding down the wall to a) call attention to the fact it’s time to get serious about fixing that leak and b) put your wall finish to the test. I’m pretty impressed.

This finish, still perfect after over 2 years.

So when we decided to redo our galley, that was a good time to take the 1974 fiberglass  interior under my wing and give it a facelift. Our interior fiberglass is what I like to call ‘almond ugly’. It’s like a color that isn’t sure what it wants to be. It makes no statement of its identity whatsoever.  It’s not really almond in color, but it’s not really cream either, or white, or even yellow. I don’t think they make this color in 2017. Whatever it is, it’s sad and tired and I am having none of it anymore. Turns out, it’s really easy to change!

If you have a boat that needs an interior facelift, let me save you a lot of time and money. Painting fiberglass is not nearly the difficult thing it sounds like. I started my education for his project in the Sherwin Williams store where I bought a ‘special’ kind of Extreme Bonding Primer that allows you to paint over slick surfaces, like glass even, without sanding ‘most clean surfaces’.

Now, let me go on record as saying that I never believe that kind of bull doggy. There is never a time that I would consider painting a slick surface without sanding. But I was sold on the primer for some reason. Twenty dollars later, I had a quart of stuff I didn’t need. But whatever. I just saved you from a special trip to the Sherwin Williams store.

Sanded and taped and ready to paint.

I started out using the bonding primer but I was actually kind of unimpressed and didn’t see the point. It was thin, and I couldn’t tell whether it was actually helping the paint adhere better than just painting with no primer. So I moved to using some Zinsser primer for all surfaces. Why? Because we already had it and I’ve used it before with good results. I liked the feel of it going on the fiberglass better. No real hard data there, just that it was more satisfying to brush on, had more body to it somehow. It gave better coverage. So I went with that.

As in all painting projects, preparation is the key and I did not skimp on the sanding part of the prep. I started with a fairly coarse grit and the electric sander, attached to our shopvac. I ended with wet sanding using a finer grit. I used 220 because it’s what I had. Works great. I recommend the wet sanding when you are working inside a boat. It keeps the dust down. After sanding, give everything a bit of a wipe down with acetone.

In addition to the sanding, our fiberglass had a number of small holes from screws from previous owners over the years. I filled those holes with epoxy putty; the kind that is like clay that you work with your fingers until it’s mixed. That works great for filling holes as long as you use a product that says you can sand it smooth. The key, I found, is to over fill the hole a bit, then when it is partially set, carefully use a razor blade flat against the fiberglass to cut the excess off the top. You won’t have much sanding to do after that.

Taping off is critical and I used the blue painter’s tape that allegedly gives you a good clean line. It actually did what it said it would. I got nice clean lines where I taped against unpainted fiberglass areas.  I taped off everything because I didn’t want to have to remove all the trim. Most of it is screwed and glued and is a pain to take off. The tape was sufficient.

After sanding, taping, and priming, I was ready for the fun part.

Salon in ‘Rice Paddy’ green.

The green against the grey.

For color, I wanted bright and cheerful without being overbearing. Taking note of colors in our salon and on our new formica, I chose a cool, pale “Nantucket Grey” (by Dutch Boy) for the galley and navigation area. For the salon, I chose “Rice Paddy” (Sherwin Williams) a springy green color. In the sleeping cabins I went for soothing “Watery” (Sherwin Williams), a gentle cool blue. Aside: How can I get a job naming paint colors?

After priming, the painting is a no-brainer. I used at least three coats everywhere. After the paint had dried for several days, I put on the final finishing coat. This is what I believe helps this finish stand up over time. I know that without this last step, my bathroom wall would never had stood up to the continual drip drip rivulet of water from the leak under our mast. (Getting repaired at haulout in June.)

At this point, you’ll be chomping at the bit to pull the tape off your project. But beware, my padawan!! Beware! Don’t just go ripping off the tape. Your paint has now dried over the edges in some places. If you do not want to risk messing up the paint job, you’ll use a razor blade to cut through the layers of paint along the edge of that tape.

Aft cabin in ‘Watery’ blue.

Now here’s a kick in the pants for you: you can save even more money and time by skipping the primer altogether if you do a good sanding job. How do I know this? Because I accidentally skipped it in the salon in one area. The paint was going on smoothly and grabbing the fiberglass just fine. I didn’t realize I had forgotten the primer until I had finished two coats. At that point, I wasn’t going to sand that paint off. So I left it. A couple of weeks later, can’t tell the difference. Unless it suddenly starts peeling off great swathes of paint, I’m going to say you can skip the primer if you are thorough in sanding.

The final finish is a coat or two of Minwax Spar Urethane Indoor/Outdoor Clear Gloss Varnish. It needs to be the kind the dries clear, not amber, unless the amber works for you. I needed it to be clear, so I had the paint department at the local hardware store open the container so I could check. And, of course, I chose gloss but you could go with satin. The point is that this puts a hard protective coating over your paint. It’s another layer of protection in a tough environment.

Galley in ‘Nantucket Grey’. You can see the ‘almond ugly’ in Mike’s shop. I haven’t decided if I will do his shop, but i probably will extend the grey into that area.

Because the spaces are so small, this project turned out to be much easier and less time consuming than I feared. Cheap, easy, and pleasing to the eye. This project is a definite win.

 

Beat the Clock

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Remember that game show? This is the one where there was a large clock ticking away while game show participants tried to complete weird tasks within a certain time frame. If they ‘beat the clock’ they won. If not…BUZZZZZZZ. This is a great game for helping Attention Deficit Disordered people focus and get stuff done. Apparently it’s also something that lights a fire under the butts of middle aged sailors who leave the dock in 2.5 months and counting. Even as I type this on a Sunday evening, Mike is up at the storage unit working on something or other…probably solar panels he just got, but possibly the forward head. The big clock. It’s ticking loudly.

The list of projects Mike is working on is taking on a life of its own. It’s growing faster than a compressed sponge dinosaur in a hot tub. He’s run new water lines, put hot water in the forward head. He’s installed the new water heater. He’s working on rebuilding the second ‘head’, a Skipper II by Crittendon Marine, the kind you can flush a raincoat down. I thought I would give a hand with that, but then I took a brief glance at the parts schematic involved and quickly decided that my ‘help’ would be more trouble than it’s worth. The list of things I cannot really help him with much on this boat grows alarmingly long. But hey, I have nice  hair and its usually clean. I try to smell decent, too. Plus I can sing, paint rocks, and make beautiful mermaid dolls.  We all have our jobs.

Most of the time, this level of boat yoga is Mike’s job. Most of the time.

We are brainstorming things like the layout for our jack lines and where we will put attachment points in the cockpit. (That’s for clipping ourselves onto the boat so it’s impossible to fall off.) How we’ll store Penguin the Pudgy on the foredeck. How we need to organize the lazarette and what the odds are that we can create some kind of additional on-deck storage for all the bits and bobs that need a home. We ordered and registered our EPIRB (the emergency beacon we never want to use). Our list is long. We are learning to pare it down to the bare necessities rather than all the things we’d like to have. The list of items we won’t be buying is also long. Listen to me while I heave a big sigh. SIGH.

I hear clunking on the deck. I pop my head up the hatch. It’s Mike with the solar panels. He’s like a kid at Christmas with his new toy.  Wait till you see how he’s mounting them on the aft rail.  I’ll give you a hint: Tate and Dani of Sundowner Sails Again gave him the idea. It worked great for them, even though the naysayers insisted it wouldn’t.

Time used to go so slowly. Now it’s speeding toward our June departure. Monday is our 35th wedding anniversary. We can’t believe that, actually. It’s a bit surreal. We were just babies when we tied the knot. We know that we are the lucky ones: the ones whose love has grown rather than dwindled over many decades. We drew the 10 of Cups card when we found each other all those years ago, bright eyed and ready to take the world on together. And why not? Everything in life is more fun when it’s shared with the one you love.

That time we drove from Wyoming to Texas in a Ford Fairlane with no heat. Fun times, fun times.

When we had our 25th anniversary, that seemed like a big deal. We took the family to Hawaii. For our 30th, we went to La Paz, Mexico together and had a hilarious time; dreaming about going there on our own boat. You might want to read about that trip. Mike wrote some ripping funny posts about it. They still make me laugh out loud.

We like to travel on our anniversary every 5 years. Those years feel like real milestones. This year, for our 35th, we’re in the final phase of preparing for our trip of a lifetime. Who knows where we will end up for our 40th?

Tick. Tock.

By the way, if you are reading this on a tablet or on your phone, you may not see the sidebar on the left where you can subscribe to our blog via email and where you can search through old posts by month of publication. You’ll find those at the bottom of the page. WAY down there. Turning your screen to the landscape mode will help. We’ll be making some changes that we hope will fix that. 

A Finished Galley, By Golly!

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There is light at the end of our Galley/Navigation Station remodel tunnel. We’d say we are nearing the end of this refit, but really, does anyone ever finish a refit? There is always something left to do.

The original look. That fiberglass is almond.

It’s taken about 3 weeks longer than we thought and cost about double what we hoped. Fortunately this is not our first rodeo, as they say, when it comes to remodeling houses or boats. We know that fast, inexpensive remodels, especially when you involve outside labor, are the things of dreams. So we aren’t surprised. We take these things in stride (after I freak out a little bit). And in the end, it’s all worth the time, effort, and money. We are as finished as we need to be for this post to go out.

Here’s a list of what we accomplished:

  1. The navigation desk, while an awesome flat space upon which to work, had storage that was accessible only through lifting the desktop. This was a major annoyance, just like that old workshop top used to be. We wanted to have a drawer created so we could access storage without disturbing everything on top of the desk. We wanted to keep the ability to lift the top as well.

    We retained the ability to lift the lid as there is extra storage under there we didn’t want to waste. We added an inexpensive LED light from Costco to the lid to help light the space. Notice the barrel lock on the end of the lid. That keeps the lid from bouncing up and down while underway. The drawer remains firmly tucked behind the sea rail trim.

    The most expensive drawer ever. But worth it.

  2. In the galley, we were unhappy with how our fridge/freezer combination was performing. Both of us got frustrated trying to get things from the refrigerator and keeping things like produce from freezing. On paper, our system should have worked. But translated into the physical world, it didn’t. We added a small Engel freezer and remodeled a cabinet to the left of the navigation desk to hold it.

    This freezer is excellent. Only wish it were larger. It is secured against movement underway and we plan to put fan in the cabinet for more air circulation in hot climates. We will also wedge foam insulation on each side, just because.

  3. Our double sink was from 1974, when the boat was built. We both kind of hated it. The sinks were shallow, and one side was always used for the dishrack. We wanted an extra deep, larger sink. In addition to being a ‘want’, changing the sink was a ‘need’ because the drains were just about ready to give. Indeed, when Mike removed the sink, the drains broke off in his hand. We knew that was coming. The sheer magnitude of the amount of silicone that had been used to extend the life of that sink was astounding.After recovering from our shock over the bid we got to have a sink made for the space (just say NO to $2500 sinks) I found this excellent sink on Amazon for less than 100$. It’s a beauty and I’m very happy with it. This also gave us a little more countertop space to the right, so that’s a win. This sink is technically an under mount sink, but we have trouble following rules. At 21″ x 15.75″ x 9″ it’s also larger than it looks in the photo.

    Don’t tell anyone but this is actually a laundry sink. That’s where you’ll find the deeper sinks. In the laundry section.

  4. The drawer unit to the right of the sink gave me fits. Sure, drawers are very secure underway and blah, blah, blah. These long, skinny drawers were also a pain in the #ss when it came to finding what I wanted. I avoided opening them. In that area they were also a huge waste of space. I wanted to remove the door unit and put in deep shelves. We now have room for the crockpot (yes, it’s going with us) and the saucepans as well as all the utensils and kitchen gadgets.

    I still have trim work to do on this cabinet, obviously. And a cabinet door to have made. You can see the lovely new grey color of the fiberglass in this photo.

  5. The formica was delaminating in many areas of the galley. It was also just plain old ugly. I can live with ugly for the most part, if it’s neutral, but it doesn’t make me very happy, and the whole counter had to be replaced in order to put in a new sink. So, new formica. (Ok, no, I don’t do well with living with ‘ugly’. That was a bold faced lie. But I try not to be a princess about it. Yeah, that’s a lie, too.) After bringing home literally hundreds of samples, we decided on a Greek Key pattern in pale grey and creamy white. Galapagos was pleased since she is built in Greece. This was ‘special’, more expensive Formica, but the word ‘expensive’ used here means still less than 200$ for the entire job with enough extra material that we can use it a number of other places. And it’s so much heavier than the cheap stuff I got for the bulkheads at Home Depot for about 45$ for a 4×8 sheet. That stuff is flimsy and would never last on a counter top. This stuff will still be going when we are dead.

    Close up of new Formica.

  6. The deep cabinet to the left of the sink opened in such a way that it took up almost all of the bulkhead space, which otherwise could be used for storage. I wanted to create a different kind of opening that would maximize the amount of bulkhead available and increase our options for storing dishes.

    Not sure yet how we will use the extra space. We’d like to be able to store dishes and flatware that we use all the time.

  7. We had three faucets in the galley, all of them unsightly and close to end of life. We had the regular faucet, a drinking water faucet that was hooked up to an ancient water filtration system, and the salt water faucet which did not work. We wanted an updated faucet for general work and a salt water faucet with a hand pump. I wanted the ability to rinse out the sink and fill pots and kettles with water easily. We chose this faucet from Delta because it fit the space, had the features we wanted, and a finish that wouldn’t show fingerprints. We love being able to rinse the sink out easily. 
  8. All the water lines in the boat looked original from 1974. You see where I’m going with that. Once you’re into the replacing of things like faucets, you don’t want to be hooking them up to old, tired waterlines. Mike used Pex fittings to replace all the waterlines and I’ll let him tell you all about that in another post.
  9. Kind of related to all this was Mike’s desire to get the old  hot water heater out of his engine room and have a unit that could use the engine to heat water. That way we can have hot water at anchor. We bought a new Isotemp Spa 15 unit from Sure Marine at the boat show. Mike will talk that water heater up in his post.
  10. Galapagos was built at a time when that almond colored fiberglass was all the rage. Now it’s all the tired and homely. Plus, over the years it’s been scuffed, people have put various holes in it, and in general, well, if a boat is going to have new countertops, new sink and faucets, a new freezer, and even a new knife rack, then she deserves a new coat of paint as well. I’ll do a post about how to accomplish this fine thing of painting fiberglass later. But it’s part of the overall picture. Galapagos now sports new pale grey fiberglass that matches the grey Greek Keys in her fine new countertops. She’s pretty spiffy looking, all dressed up and ready to go.

So what’s left to do? That cabinet door, for one thing. And we still need to get the sea water pump. Mike thinks he has located a small, inconspicuous unit. But there is also some finish carpentry left.  I’m not happy with the sea rails on the nav station. Since we changed the size of the cabinet door where the freezer is stored the original trim didn’t fit. We’ll be on the lookout for a better piece we can use, and a rounded corner. Meanwhile, I have a little sanding and touching up to do to what’s there. But, I mean, what else am I going to do with my time?