Headliner replacement Page 2 General Forum Forums

heheheh.... your going to hate life... the staples are evil personified. The little bit we have pulled down has been very not easy. You can just rip it out brute force sorta but it leaves lots of edge bits behind with the staples.  It took me 3 hours or so to get 95 percent of the staples out of where the piece in the head was. the other 5 percent had rusted to the point that you can't pull the legs of the staples out. You grab the top of the staple and it just pulls off the legs. Most of the ones you can get out are very hard to pull. First get an awl or other sharp pointy prying thing and a wood block to pry against and try using that to pull the staples. That might get it started or get one leg out. Then use needle nose pliers to pull rest of way out. Now repeat 10,000 times for whole boat. Just the head alone probably had 400 plus staples in it.

I like the looks and the functionality of the vinyl but the impairment to accessibility to deck hardware behind it is a veto for me. I have seen boats where they put a long slit over hand rails and other hardware and then installed a zipper in those places. It was functional and looked good. Lot of work though. 🙂 We will be going back with luan wood panels and hinged storage compartments in the overhead that gives us access to the  deck hardware from below. I will tape reflextix in place against the fiberglass for insulation. Easy to pull down and tape back in place. Won't looks as nice when you open the overhead compartments but I like a warm or cool boat 🙂 depending on the time of year.

lol.. we are not only beside the dock master's boat but almost dead center on the marina office 5 slips down the dock from the main boardwalk. We have been catching hell lately because of some of the board members complaining about stuff on deck. We have water proof 5 gallon pails and other similar stuff plus various other project materials sitting on the coach room under the hard dodger and under the cockpit where we have a tarp running from the aft end of the coach roof all the way to the dingy davits. According to most it is just one or two people complaining though. I just about laughed at some of the complaints though.. One was about our bean bags on deck. You know how most of these boats just have a flat deck aft, well we decided not to build seats etc.. We bought two large long neck bean bags from west marine. Absolutely love them. I was tempted to tell them that when I saw them pull their cockpit seats out of their boat I would get rid of my bean bags. We just listened and straightened

Honestly.. If your a everything should look perfect sort of person then our boat is going to get on your nerves. Were busy  living here which also includes a two year old with a tricycle on the foredeck 🙂 It worries me the attitudes I see slowly moving through our society. I can remember driving past those country eyesores, you know the falling down barn or a few dead cars on blocks. This is way out in the country.. Now days most of that is gone... They have zoned it out of existence and taken the people to court to make it go away. I always thought that in a admittedly ugly manner that it gave character to the country. Nothing creeps me out more than driving through a newer neighborhood that has a POA/HOA Everything looks the same and is rubber stamped out of sameness.  30 miles inland near where we live it is slowly becoming that with the county zoning laws now in effect. you don't even see farm equipment sitting out on farms anymore. It seriously lacks character. We are becoming a nation where not just by social pressure but by law the nail that sticks up is hammered down.

East coast is still pretty easygoing in some areas re work done. Tightening up all the time though.

We love the spice racks.. still need more space for spices though. 🙂

scott

when your using a power sander in the boat make sure you use one with a good shop vac attachment and a great shop vac. It will help with the sanding dust a lot. Even so I would advise removing all cushions and other fabric from the boat as dust will get everywhere. If you can tape up plastic to contain the dust to just the area you are sanding it will help a lot also. Fiberglass dust gets everywhere and itches forever 🙂 I have put off some projects  inside indefinitely just because of the sanding dust issue and us living on the boat.

As old as our boats are, between 30 and 40 years for most of them, it is sometimes hard to tell what was factory vs an owner modification. Some original owners spent more money on their new boats by having upgraded features or alternative layouts installed on their boats so even if its a bit different it is still factory. On the other hand a lot of owners have gone crazy over the years and upgraded a lot of the systems and or layout of their boats. Some are fairly easy to recognize as owner additions but there are some things that are so well done that you just can not tell it was added later. 

Most of the differences I see between different boats are small interior upgrades and changes, and then on deck changes such as alternative layouts for running rigging and differences in bimini's and dodgers, davits or not etc..

Get ready for sticker shock anyways. We bought new foam and fabric and redid everything but the pilot berth in the boat ourselves and I would estimate we spent a grand on materials alone... about 7 dollars a yard for the fabric and cheaper foam... I would spend the extra and make absolutely sure you get good foam.. We would probably explore a different fabric this time. We purchased from a local company in three separate orders to break up the cost as we were doing the project over about 5 months or so.. Somehow we got different weight foam mixed up in the orders. Regardless of that none of it is holding up to full time sleeping or sitting on it as well as I would like. It seems the spots that have the heaviest use or where the most weight on it are softening up a bit already a year and a half later.

We used a acrylic fabric from Tommy Bahama with a pattern in it and while we like our crazy jungle pattern the fabric has been washed a couple times now and is piling up just a hair and the texture isn't as nice as when new.They seem to be wearing fine though.. no thin spots or anything like that. Also it seems easy to clean stains and such off.

Scott