The Salon Remodel begins

This is an old post from September of 2012, I just noticed that it remained in draft mode and was not published according to it's schedule

Now that we have wrapped up the Navigation Station, Galley and Walkthrough, we had friends in town and did some nice sailing, now it is back to the next bit of work on the boat.

So yesterday it started, cushions removed, everything removed from the storage below the settee, cupboards emptied and the demolition begins.

Salon - Port Side - Before

In the "Before" picture you can see both Red and Blue arrows.  The blue arrows point to places where we have noticed water coming in when it rains hard.  The odd thing about a boat is where you see it dripping from is typically nowhere near where it is actually leaking.  In this case most of the dripping was coming out of the florescent light fixture mounted on the ceiling behind the settee.  

The leak actually appears to be coming from 2 places.  One is from a poorly bedded opening hatch about 6 feet from that location.  The other culprit appears to be the opening port just above the light itself.  

The red arrows point to all of the areas where the wood will need to be replaced.  This falls into 2 categories.  The peeling veneer on the back wall is rather easy, typically it is just a thin 1/8" thick piece of veneered plywood as a decorative piece.  The flat top of that counter behind the cushion is a little bit more complex and is 3/4 inch teak veneered plywood and helps to provide structure and strength to the boat by locking the galley and Vbert bulkheads together.  

That is the countertop that the cupboards are mounted to, it is also the top of the storage area behind the seat back and houses the air conditioning vents for the Salon area.  

Salon - Port Side - Wood removed

We removed the cupboards, removed the decorative veneer wall from behind it.  Removed the face of the storage area (Also the back of the salon seats) and then removed the horizontal piece that was rotting. 

As we typically do, we have taken these wooden pieces to our storage unit where we will sand the moulding and all of the good pieces of wood down to fresh wood with 220 grit sandpaper.  For the pieces that are rotted, we will use the old ones as patterns and make new ones.  

The big decision now is if we will put it back the way it was, or try to improve upon the storage that the boat has, and we will likely need when living aboard.  I think we will be doing the later and likely will make new cabinets that are deeper than the previous ones.  We will also work to create dividers and doors across the entire countertop so that we have storage all the way across.  By doing these 2 things, we should more than triple the amount of storage that was above the counter on the Port side of the boat.

The hole in the bottom of the seat is the access panel to the 16,500 BTU air conditioning unit that will be installed as soon as the leaking ports have been repaired.  

The realization hit both of us today, it is amazing that in just 2 day of working  (about 7 hours total) we have gutted this section of the boat again down to bare hull and fibreglass in areas.   It will take us 3 months to build all the new stuff and install it again.  And as we all know Murphy's law (I am convinced he was a sailor) kicked in and it started to rain today and will for the next 3 days when I really need to remove and rebed 2 opening ports and 2 opening hatches in the roof.

We did a small video showing what it looks like in more detail now that we have removed the old "stuff"

Using Git-Rot Penetrating Epoxy on a Bulkhead

As we were rebuilding the Navigation Station we noticed that there was a section of the bulkhead that had some dry rot in it.  I could push my finger against the veneered bulkhead and while the veneer in this section appeared solid, you could tell it was soft behind it.  After removing a little bit of the veneer we could actually push a finger into some sections of the plywood and it was soft.  (not so bad that it was just falling apart, but bad enough that I was really concerned).

I started to read about scarfing two pieces of wood together and then fiberglassing over them.  This seemed like a lot of work and would still be a "patch".  I considered removing the bulkhead and replacing it all together, however on this boat, the bulkhead is tabbed in under the subfloor, tabbed in along the hull as well as tabbed in on the roof.  This particular bulkhead goes up the port side, across the ceiling in a decorative rounded shape and down the starboard side.    I quickly deduced that this was beyond my expertise and would likely be upwards of $5K at a yard.    So I started to really do some reading on penetrating epoxy and it's use specifically on stringers on boats.  If this stuff was strong enough to form a new "foundation" in the form of stringers, it may really do wonders on this small section of the bulkhead.

So with instructions read, and the web researched, I picked up a bottle of Boat Life's Git-Rot at my local West Marine.  I did notice that there are other brands of penetrating epoxy and some are geared toward home repairs.  I am assuming that these are likely similar in concept but I stuck to the one made for marine applications in this case.  (I don't think it mattered, but don't know for sure).

The job started by refrigerating the whole package of Git-Rot because if you are not applying it in 50-70 degree weather the manufacture recommends cooling it overnight in the refrigerator.  I can assure you at the end of June in South Texas, even with the AC on in the boat, it was warmer than that.

We drilled a series of holes into the bulkhead at about a 20degree downward slope being careful not to drill all the way through the bulkhead.  This allowed the injection spots for the epoxy to go through all layers of the plywood where needed.  Once drilled the product was mixed and shaken for the very exact amount of time (60 seconds) and then slowly squirted into each hole.
I started at the bottom of the vertical area to be epoxied and would slowly fill until the epoxy started to come out of the hole.  I would then move to the next.  I did this through each hole (about 18 of them or so) and as soon as I was done with the 18, I would start over again.  The goal is to keep doing this until the wood won't absorb any more of the solution.
I did this with 3 squirt bottles (about 4 ounces each) on the first day.  I started to really see it penetrating the wood because as I would inject the epoxy in one hole, I would at times see it start to seep into the wood below or adjacent to it.  This was a great sign for me as it showed that it was really being absorbed into the wood like a sponge.

The next day, I came back and repeated the process and it took about another bottle and a half (about 4 ounces each).  At this time, no more was being absorbed into the wood.  After letting it dry overnight, I sanded the surface of the wood smooth where some of the epoxy had gotten on the surface of the wood.

The test was in the "knock"  Before I started I knocked on the bulkhead and when I got to the rotted section it went form a crisp knock sound to a thud.  After using Git-Rot, I could no longer stick my finger in the wood anywhere, there was no "give" on the veneer and the knock test sounded crisp all the way across the bulkhead even over the spots that previously responded with a thud.

I would call this process a success and was glad to have been done in a few days (between applying the product and then veneering over the surface where I drilled the holes) rather than attempting to tear out and replace that bulkhead.

As is the case, if we do a project and don't find information or some good step by step "how to" instructions, we have been recording the progress and then putting them together as a video in hopes that it helps others.  It should be known that I am not doing this because of any product sponsorship and I happened to Choose Boat Life's brand but there are others out there that would likely work the same way.  This is being posted in hopes that if you are attempting a project like this, you find it useful.  It also has the secondary benefit of helping my chronicle the work we are doing on our own boat.  Like most boats, it seems that with every repair, we find something else that we determine we should correct as well.