Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Project: Interior Woodwork

One day when I first got Windsong I opened up the door to the v-berth and it basically fell apart at the seams. The wood was intact, but had separated at all of the joints where it is glued together. It consists of a frame, two thin veneer plywood pieces, and slats. I decided to take the door home to begin its reconstruction and restoration. The door would then be my test piece for my interior woodwork restoration process.

Windsong has a ton of wood in the cabin, mostly teak trim or veneer with teak & holly sole. The varnish and what appears to be stain on the wood has dulled and needs to be redone on most pieces. Some of the bulkheads are plywood with varnish but I would like to convert most of them to white or off-white by either painting or applying formica to the surfaces. I have begun taking wooden trim and other pieces off the boat to take home so that I can do the woodwork during the week.

As you can see here, the trim is dull and dirty, and needs re-working. I plan on taking it all off so that I can paint or re-surface the vertical surfaces with something white. The galley counter tops, nav table, and other areas with formica surfaces will also be redone.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3316/3666460683_fe177d9e7b.jpg

In the v-berth on both sides and in the starboard side of the cabin there are long wooden slats decorating the sides. These will also be taken off to be refinished and so I can clean and paint the surfaces behind them, also hiding the chainplates.


http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3340/3666453929_662a52ffbb.jpg

You can see here the large bulkhead which I want to be white, along with most other vertical surfaces.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3605/3666454703_888f66454c.jpg

There are also some areas of damage that need to be attended to. The portside wood cabinets and adjacent bulkheads have suffered water damage and rot from a long term leak. Shown below is the galley and you can see the cabinets behind the stove where the problem is. The bottom and middle shelves of the cabinets need to be replaced, but the front piece of plywood and the trim are fine. The bulkhead on the right side of the picture has suffered wet rot in the area behind the cabinets and needs to be fixed or replaced somehow. That piping is for the heater and will be taken out.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2467/3587926130_a4ed805520.jpg

Here is the rest of the length of that cabinet as it runs along the port side. The bulkhead at the end has suffered a lot of wet rot near the edge and needs to be fixed or replaced as well. You can't see it here, it is under the edge/behind the top bunk. I'll try to get better pictures of it so readers can help me with ideas on how to fix it.


http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3336/3587926474_745d0a9862.jpg

Another area of concern is the anchor chain locker which has a lot of rot in it from some leaks around the bowsprit. Shown here is some of the damage, note that the cabinet door is completely torn apart.


http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3398/3666454467_a1601f2f00.jpg
Other damaged areas are mostly cabinet doors which can be replaced pretty easily. The sole has its share of damage, but is in fair condition overall. I do think I will be replacing parts of it, however, since I will be recondition the boat as a whole. Here is a big area of damage near the compionway steps:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3593/3587926940_da083c1a7f.jpg

As you can see I have a lot of work to do, but taking pieces home to start with has given me a first start. Working on the v-berth door has helped me develop my process for stripping the wood to be prepared for new finish. I will detail this in another post.

3 comments:

Robert Salnick said...

Refinishing the interior is a huge job, but in compensation, it is hugely satisfying when done.

Why did Downeast use that crappy formica? Was that stuff in style in the 70's? I removed the formica from the nav station, and found that under it was beautiful teak!

After pulling the fiddles, I covered the formica in the galley, the heads, and the "make-up table" with another layer of formica - this one a grey granite-looking stuff. It was a part of refinishing those areas, so adding re-9installing the fiddles was trivial. It wasn't a very big job, and it looks great! (I wonder if there was teak under those areas too?)

bob
s/v Eolian
DE45 #11
Seattle

audeojude said...

Eric,
I cross posted this article over to the downeaster website. :)
Looks as if you are making good progress. We are waiting on a bunch of parts to come in and then we will be back to working on valkyr.

Bob,
Our chart table doesn't have laminate on it and doesn't look like it ever did. Not sure what it is. Solid wood. It's very pretty. I have seen a couple of pictures of other boats where they removed the laminate and found teak veneer under it and finished it. They looked great.

Anonymous said...

We're going to use HDPE (gar-dur) for the chain locker and for skid plates below. You might wish to look at the stuff.