Starting to organize and Clean

The galley has been a mess for 6 months now.  It has turned into a great place to store things and has been the most logical "workbench" in the boat.  I have cut, sanded, carved, planed, sanded, epoxied, hammered and cursed at the surface of the galley counters and the epoxied piece of wood that I keep over one side of the sink for additional "Workbench" space.

Today I had one of those reminders on how this project has really shown Deb and I how well we work together most of the time.  It is not uncommon that she anticipates what I am working on and if I need that 'extra hand' or the next tool, she is right there with it.  It is one of those things I didn't even realize at first.  The seed was planted by my Dad during one of his visits last April.  Deb and I were working on some project (I don't even recall what it was now) but we had it set-up in our storage shed.  As we were working on whatever it was, my my dad commented that we work well together and everything seems planned or synchronized.   At the time, I just took it as a passing comment and thought, "yep, we do" and went on about our project.

A few weeks later, I was working on something when Deb was not around and I realized how much "back and forth" I was doing to get some tool off he shelf and then put it back, when I was done with the jig saw, I rolled the cable up, put it away and dragged out the vacuum.  When Deb and I are working on the project, I set the tool down and move to the next task and it gets miraculously put away neatly.  When cutting wood by myself, I was using clamps and pushing the wood up against the lathe to keep it from sliding as I made cuts.  These are the little things I didn't notice at first.
Yes, We Do Make A Good Team.  More importantly, Deb makes a great team-mate.

With that supportive and intuitive notion, Deb has also realized that I am getting a bit worn out on this refit.  I am ready to have part of the boat back into a usable state.  Something I can go down to and feel proud and enjoy it when I am there.  It was getting to the point where every time I went down below decks on the boat, I came back with a list of things that needed to get done.  It was starting to get frustrating.  This week, Deb has been getting things "setup".  For example in the rear head, she brought towels, toothbrush, soap, shampoo, deodorant, shaving supplies and all of the things needed to shower and make it usable.

Today, she cleaned up my "work bench" and organized the galley.  It is not complete like it will be when we move aboard, but I can get to the cups, and there is some food in the cupboards and some cold drinks in the fridge.  

The navigation station has been the sorting table for screws and small parts (smaller than a quarter) for the last 2 weeks and finding half used boxes or bags of screws everywhere.  Most all of the screws have been sorted by size, stainless or non, put into compartmentalized storage bins and tucked away in some little nook or cranny.  When that is cleared off completely, it will be a wonderful feeling.

Ok, I must confess, I am typing this blog sitting in the salon on a folded old towel because all of the cushions are out of the room preparing for varnish.  I looked up at the nav station and started to giggle a bit.  It is a disaster, I had to take a picture and just give you some insight into what a mess it is right now.  I think this is going to be the thing that Deb and I will struggle most with when living aboard.  No room to leave "stuff" out.  If you need something, dig it out of it's hidey hole and when done, put it all back.  The put it all back part is going to take some getting used to. :)

Galley Rebuild Continues

It has been a little while since we provided an update.  I have been traveling a lot for work and Deb and I have been doing some traveling for pleasure, the down side of all that is that it takes us away from the boat projects and they seem to take longer than we hoped.

Since the last post, we have finished dis-assembling the majority of the items in the Galley.  We removed the cupboards and storage.  This included the galley length cupboard behind the stove, the ceiling cabinet above the refrigeration, the pots and pans storage under the stove and the under the companionway food storage cabinet.  

We rebuilt the new stove cabinets and the new galley length cupboard.  For all of the interiors of those cabinets we laminated them with white laminate so they would be easy to clean and reflect light.  On the outside of the galley length cabinet we veneered it with Mahogany so it matches the rest of the wood in the boat when we are through.

We made some new countertops and laminated them in formica that looks like granite.  On the new counter where the sink goes, we have fabricated an under the counter shelf and added an access panel in the top of the counter.  This will be great can, food and wine storage.

We have laminated all of the existing counter pieces with the same granite looking laminate as the counter tops so that they would match.  This includes sides and under the stove. 

The stove step (area that the stove hangs from it's gimbals) also was fabricated using the old pieces as patterns.  

We have rebid and sealed all fixed ports in the walkthrough and the galley and confirmed that they don't leak.  We have also fabricated new mahogany panels to go along the hull and ensure that the boat has that nice wooden look inside.  (The old pieces that were up were just completely delaminated from leaking ports over the years)

There is not a lot of room to add insulation here so we are only adding a thin insulating layer with a moisture barrier to help prevent condensation on the hull from getting to the wood panels.  We have chosen to use the high quality underlayment for laminate flooring.  It is closed cell foam with good insulating properties for it's thickness and has a built in moisture barrier on one side because it is design to be laid on slab flooring.

In addition to the counter tops, we have started to install the pine slat ceiling as well.  This is looking really good and when the whole boat matches the rear stateroom, it will look phenomenal as well as provide additional insulation for keeping the boat cool or warm (we are adding 3/4" thick insulation between the cored cabin top and the pine ceiling below.  

Plank Ceiling started (With Switches going in as well)

While doing this, we have continued to upgrade the electrical wires as we go, replacing 12v wire with Marine Grade wiring.  We are going with all LED lighting in the boat for primary lighting and incandescent only as backup.  One of the things we did, was found small "puck lights" that are LED and can swivel to direct the light.  We found these at Ikea and they came with a 120V AC to 12V DC adapter.  We simply throw the adapter away and connect these to the boats 12volt system.  I have wired them in such a way that we can have a switch on for ambiance lighting and enough to see, and then turn another switch to really light up the galley including one that shines into the refrigerator and over the sink and stove.  Here is where we will lose our nautical chops a bit.  We decided to wire these into switches at the companionway so they are all easily in reach.  That means in the ceiling we have mounted a household style bank of switches to control all overhead lighting forward of the rear stateroom.

The re-assembly is going good.  We still have half the ceiling planks to install, put the mahogany veneer on the lower bulkheads in the galley and install all the molding and plug (bung) the screw holes.  From there it is Varnish, Varnish and more Varnish.

I am thinking I am going to leave the nav station in a state of incomplete for a bit longer.  I am going to be making a new instrument panel for the new Radio, AIS, VHF, GPS and Secondary Screen.   I have been having fantasies about all the cool things I want to do with the nav station including the "screen" I mentioned.  I think I am going to set it up so that is can connect to the TV, Laptop, DVD and cameras mounted in the engine room and somewhere up top so we can see what is going on even if down below.    See... Fantasies :)

Galley Rebuild (More than we anticipated)

The plan has always been to completely refit the boat from Stern to stem and we did start in the owners stateroom and completed that.  The next section was the walkthrough, nav station and galley.  Lets talk about the Galley.

We planned on re-veneering the wood in the Galley and replacing the formica on the countertop top.  As we started the project we realized that there is always something you find that makes you think "Better to do it now while we have this apart"  

That is what happened to us, as we removed the old counter laminate, we found that around the sink faucet connections, it had leaked over time and the plywood countertop was wet inside.  It was still fairly sturdy but it made sense to remove it and replace it while doing this work.

As we removed that, we found that the back corner of the cupboard was also wet and so was the lower ceiling.  What we found was that after 30+ years of on and off leaking ports, the wood just had soft spots.

So we gutted it.  We have taken most of the parts to our garage and used the old ones as templates to cut and fabricate all new walls, counters, etc.  

Galley after gutting

This was our first time using laminate so we started on what will be the inside of the cupboard.  It turns out that is not so hard.  The first pass had a few small bubbles in it, but we adjusted and the rest looked good.  We ended up putting white laminate on the lower ceiling, inside of the cupboard (bottom, back and sides).   We chose white for it's ability to reflect light in those areas.  For the front of the cupboard (Which was originally white laminate) we fabricated a new piece and finished it in Mahogany Veneer.  

We still have work to do in the Galley, we have to fabricate one small wall that I ended up destroying removing it.  We must re-route several plumbing lines.  We will need to remove the laminate in the stove cavity and replace it with a nice laminate that will match the countertops.  

We also decided to add a top loading dry storage area behind the sinks, so some additional modifications will need to be done to the countertop to create the opening, lid and storage area below.  

As we continue to think out loud, and having all of this torn up right now, we are also considering modifying the rear cupboard to fit the microwave (and remove it from the countertop).  We are also now considering adding LED lighting in the new dry storage area as well as the cupboards with an indicator light to let us know when it is on.  We have kept a flashlight in the galley because it is fairly dark in the back corners of the cupboard so this will be a great improvement.  

Deb is quite the contributor to these boat projects.  We work together on the weekends and some nights that I am in town.  With my work travel schedule lately, I haven't been home during most weeks and Deb has continued to sand and prep for whatever the upcoming weekend work is.  She has been ensuring that we have what we need so when Saturday comes we can start early and work all day.  

As we were routing thin pieces of laminate, She even acted as a "Router Table".  She Freaking Rocks !!!!

Galley Veneer Removal

Like many good ole boats, ours was starting to see the veneer peel off of the Marine Plywood used for several of the bulkheads.  In the galley, it was fraying a bit on the bottom of the cabinets.
We have found that Rockler (woodworking stores) sells manageable sized pieces of Mahogany and teak veneer.  We are going with Mahogany.
In order to prep for the installation of new veneer, we have to remove all of the old veneer, prep the surface, sand and then apply the new veneer.
In this case, we removed the fiddle rails along the galley counters, removed the stove, removed all drawers and cabinet doors.  We also had to remove an added on cabinet that we likely won't put back up and 3 shelves for storing spices, etc.

There was one piece of plywood under the stove that needed to be replaced.  It took quite a while to remove it and I will need to build a new segment of the wall.  While we have all of this down, we will likely also be putting new formica down so we can upgrade the look of the counters.

Here is a small video clip of the start of the veneer project and another one as we were wrapping up the removal of the old veneer.