Author Archives: Melissa

More Adventures in Interior Refitting: Aft Cabin Redo

Posted on by

It’s time to address that aft cabin aboard Galapagos. We don’t have a date for moving aboard yet, but I am loathe to wait until the last minute to do any kind of remodeling of the interior. Now’s the time. The goal: create a sleeping area that is appropriate for a couple, without giving up too much in terms of standing and walking room, and without breaking the bank. Here’s our current setup.

The current situation.

When we bought Galapagos, it was with the realization that high on our list of comforts we wanted was a big berth in the aft cabin. We had been spoiled by some of the boats we’d looked at. Many of them had a queen sized bed in the master cabin, some even bigger. After our time on Moonrise, our Cal34, we knew we wanted three things: to be able to get out of bed without climbing over each other, a way to sleep comfortably together at anchor, and a comfortable mattress that was as good as the one we sleep on at home, not necessarily in that order.

Thus, I was pretty disappointed in the aft cabin in our boat. It wasn’t enough to turn me off to the boat, but I knew we’d have to do something about that cabin sooner, rather than later.  The disappointing thing is that the aft cabin, while very roomy by boat standards, has a split berth. Originally the boat had two single berths, one on each side. I guess this 1975 boat must have been designed before the days of cruising couples who actually wanted to sleep together.

Looking closely, you can see where this side was extended. The cabinetry was done to match.

Previous owners had extended one side into the boat definition of a double bed to try to solve that problem, but, well, no thanks.  Really that’s not enough room for either of us to be comfortable. We each need our space for actual sleeping.  And there is that whole thing about all the trips to the head we both make. They only seem to get more numerous as we get older. We both need our sleep. So we have ended up sleeping apart. We can handle that in the short term, but we would at least like to have an option that isn’t the v-berth. Ok, I’m a spoiled brat and am tired of having to crawl out of a berth in the night several times without kicking Mike in the head, or any more tender place. I’ll own that.

 

See this photo from the Hylas Yacht’s site? I want this. Ha hahaha! My wallet says no.

This week Mike removed the mattresses and we went down today armed with cardboard, tape, and tape measures, to create a new space. Here is a list of our goals for this space:

1. Be able to sleep side by side when we want to.
2. Maintain our current layout enough that we can continue to sleep apart when we’re just dog tired. That’s actually a bonus.
3. Be able to access the steering mechanism in the middle compartment, and also the stowage compartments on the starboard side by creating a mechanism to tilt the mattress pieces up individually. This requires that they be on a stiff underlayment made of plywood or some other, hopefully lighter weight yet sturdy, material. If that material were to allow air flow, that would be ideal.  Our measurements and trial runs have confirmed that we can use a mattress up to 8″ high and still have plenty of access room when it’s tilted up.
4. Do as little cabinetry work as possible because…lack of skills to make it look good.
5. Leave enough room for the head door, and to easily walk through from one side of the cabin to the other. We’d like to be able to stand and get dressed in there.
6. Continue to be able to access the drawers on each side.

I started by making a template of the existing layout, then began adding to that, keeping in mind that the finished product measurements will be larger where the mattress butts against the hull due to the curvature of that surface. This gives us a few more inches of room on each side and on a boat, a few inches can be the difference between workable and terrible.

We’ve come up with two possibilities:

Solution number 1. Distance from the aft wall to the edge of that middle section is 48″.

Solution number one leaves the starboard berth as is, extends the port berth out about 6 inches, and brings that middle section out  just to the corner of the drawers on each side. The corner of the port berth (hint: we are facing aft in the photo) has been clipped to make it visually more pleasing and protect our thighs from a sharp corner. This is the easiest solution. The distance from the aft of the cabin to the forward part of that middle section is 4 feet, ample room to lay side by side athwartship.

Our other option is this:

Using the cockpit cushions allowed us to play a little more with the space.

It’s difficult to photograph this entire cabin at once. In this instance, the starboard berth is enlarged at an angle from the forward corner, and the port berth is brought straight across, intersecting it at a right angle. That little triangular piece of cardboard that shows in the above photo would be gone. There would be plenty of room to lay side by side in a fore/aft position, rather than athwartship in this scenario, but it would take a little more carpentry work, and the door would not open all the way. It would open enough, but not competely.   Here is a pitiful sketch, not to scale or anything else, but you can get the general idea.

Dotted lines represent what we have now. Note there is a shelf in the middle section that already keeps you from walking or standing there.

And here is a photo of the original drawing of the layout so you can get a better idea of what we are dealing with. Note in the drawing that the little white triangle between the berths is actually a cushion insert, like in a V berth. The solid rectangle connecting the two sides is a seat that is below the level of the berth: 

That’s as far as we’ve gotten at this point. We are playing with how deep to make the mattress. We tend toward having memory foam or latex, or possibly the gel foam that is supposed to be a bit cooler than memory foam. All of that is heavy. Mike wants to be sure that the weight is not an impediment to getting under the berth. I want it to be easy enough for me to do it without his help. Wooden chocks could help hold the mattress and underlayment up and take some of the load so we could tie it off securely. I’m imagining having to get at the steering mechanism out on the open sea and not wanting the thing to come crashing down.

Finally, I want to keep resale value in mind because it’s always a good idea to do that. Of course we plan to have this boat for years, but I wouldn’t want a wonky aft cabin to get in the way of a sale if it came to that.

If you have ideas and thoughts, throw them out here. Any idea what we could use for an underlayment, besides heavy plywood, that would allow us to lift up pieces of the mattress to access the underneath compartments? (Yes, the mattress will be hinged in places, but that’s a different post.)  I’d love to think there is something like a fiberglass grid that would allow airflow under the mattress. Surely someone has invented that already.

 

Update: August 3, 2016  Want to read the entire Aft Cabin Remodel series to see how long it can take us to make a project happen? Here’s the next entry.

P1090441

Bidden or unbidden, God is present. This hangs in our aft cabin, as it hung in my office for about 20 years. Nothing to do with the remodel. I just like it.

 

‘Waiting’ is an Action Verb

Posted on by

I’ve been hanging around our house a lot lately. On the days I don’t work,  I just kind of drift from room to room, looking for something that needs doing right now. I’ll bet this is a little like what a surfer feels like, floating in the water waiting for the next set of waves. Except they are having more fun. There is too much ‘waiting’ going on around here, and I’m right in the middle of that.

Perhaps you haven’t really thought much about this, and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t, but ‘waiting’ is actually an action verb. Remember third grade? There are two kinds of verbs: action and being. And in spite of how passive ‘waiting’ sounds, get real. Sure, there is plenty of sitting around associated with ‘waiting’, but if you’ve ever ‘waited’, you know that there is a lot of activity associated with it. There is foot tapping, pacing, random speed thinking, fear-based storylines running their loop in your head, planning strategies to deal with those fear-based narratives in your head, hand-wringing, and generally the driving of yourself crazy.

The inner narrative goes something like this:

“When will people come and rent our house? What if no one wants to rent it? When will we move onto the boat? How come no one has contacted us yet? Is this going to work? Maybe we should sell, but I’m not ready to sell. But this house is a lot of work, and a lot of money. Maybe we should sell. But it’s our family home. Damn we could be saving so much money if we didn’t have this house. Galapagos still needs a lot of work. We still will spend a shit ton of money getting her ready to go. Damn it! (I use a lot of ‘language’ in my head. It relieves stress.) What is plan B? Maybe we could do a long term rental. No, the rental market in Lakewood is flooded. We can’t cover our costs with a long term rental. I wonder how long it will take before we know if this plan is the right one? Thank goodness we haven’t wasted our efforts getting the house ready because we’d have to get it ready to sell anyhow. Is that our Plan B?  Damn, I hate these kinds of decisions. ”

Do you see what I mean? 

I am not a good ‘waiter’. Good ‘waiters’ are like the roots of these Hellebores. They lay quietly during the dark of winter, softly preparing to burst forth in vibrant color when their time is right. They grow bigger, deeper, and stronger, preparing for the day when their many stalks will shoot up toward the sun, cheerful faces aglow with glorious spring color. They are completely ‘at one’ with their mission in life.

I try to be all ‘Zen’ about it, and I do have moments of that simple peacefulness that happens when you actually succeed in focusing on the here and now, just breathing deeply into the present moment, knowing that you, too, will bloom with the timing of the God.  (See how soothing those words are? Kind of hypnotic.) But I’m not the Buddha. Not even close, even if I do know how to do deep breathing and can actually teach others to do it. Big deal.  No, most of the Zen moments I have are really just because I made my inner voices shut the hell up for just a few minutes. 

So right now the house is filled with this action-based ‘waiting’ to see if our plan A is going to work. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. But I sure would like to know so I can move on to Plan B if I need to. There is no way to hurry this. And I should just accept that by finding my inner Buddha. I’m a work in progress. What can I say?

Soon, we’ll be riding another wave of real activity as Claire and Dan return to Scotland tomorrow, after some weeks with us. We’ll do the final ‘moving stuff out of the house’, as though we actually have people waiting to move into it. At least we will be ready then, and it’s stuff we eventually have to deal with anyway. It will feel good to have something to do that makes me feel like there is forward momentum, even though we will miss them. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s packing boxes. hellebore

In the end, when I step back from the waiting, I realize it’s all good. We are housed, and fed, and healthy and happy. The rest is just cake. File this post under ‘here are all the thoughts and feels you will have if you, too, make this huge life change when you are in your mid-50’s. ‘   Maybe you might want to consider doing it sooner.

Meanwhile, here are your yearly Helleborus photos and some snowdrops. They look really nice this year.

 

 

One Giant Leap

Posted on by

Well, the time is here, folks. After years of planning, downsizing, wondering and envisioning, the time arrived this week. We put our house on the short term rental market. I’m writing this post by way of recording what, for us, is the biggest leap of faith we’ve taken. Even bigger than buying Galapagos without having a test sail. Even bigger than getting pregnant. Well, maybe not. But still. It’s big. No, it’s HUGE.

Just want to remember all this.

Just want to remember all this.

Long term readers will know that we have really struggled with the decision about the house. Do we sell? Do we rent long term?  My desire all along was that we somehow find a way to rent this house as a furnished home. That would solve a lot of issues in the short term. We could store things in the attic in a locked space, and if we got ‘out there’ and decided the life isn’t for us (fat chance, I know, but anything can happen) we’d have a place to come home to.

Added to that is the fact that we are 15 years into a 30 year mortgage so we can see the house being paid off someday. It seems like this house should be a good financial investment in the long run, in spite of things like housing bubbles and economic downturns. I have visions of this house providing part of our income, as well as a hedge against our tax burden by continuing to own ‘real’ property. Is it worth it to try to hang on to it at this point? Could my visions become reality? Sometimes I really wish I could foretell the future. But alas, this is where the leaping into faith comes in handy. A certain amount of denial is also helpful.

Really comfy beds. I hope to make the beds on Galapagos comfortable, too.

We feel as though we are in a good position in our location to make this work: close to large military bases where people moving to the area frequently need short term housing that isn’t a hotel. Maybe they have kids and pets. Our house would be perfect for them, and they get a travel allowance that would help them defray the costs of the stay.  We have a good friend who is an experienced property manager and will rent to good people and help protect our investment. The numbers look good on paper and at this point, there is no competition for a rental such as this in our area. Having a good and trusted manager is literally the only way we would even consider doing this.

Other things have fallen into place at the right time. We secured a storage unit with a workshop space at the marina this month. We’d been on the waiting list, crossing fingers that one would become available. My worries about the landscape and gardens have been relieved by my friend Rachel accepting the job of caring for them while I’m away. It’s a win/win because I’ve known Rachel for a long time and she is an excellent gardener. She will also do the housekeeping between guests. This relieves my mind quite a bit because we already know and trust Rachel. She’ll make some extra money, and we’ll be free of worry about those details.

In addition we were able to work with a local insurance agent to update our homeowner’s insurance to reflect this use of the house. Amazingly, we are actually saving hundreds of dollars per year for even better coverage. I was incredulous, but it was true.

Soon the world will be my garden, I hope.

So now the advertisements are in place. Our manager, Edwin, has been talking up this property to all his considerable numbers of contacts in the area. This is the true testing time. So much hinges on it that I cannot yet get excited. No way. We’ve done our part, now the Universe must do its part and get the rental calender on this place filled. We have between now and Spring 2017 to see if this will work. We sit with all of this as though gestating.  Please spit and spin three times, pray, think, focus, imagine, intend, face east, or whatever you do that is meaningful to you to add to the energy of this forward movement of our cunning plan.  We appreciate it!

Will kind of miss that big tub.