Chapter 3: In Which Deconstruction Takes Place & Construction Begins
I really should have kept better track of what we’ve done to the thing, but I can give a pretty good run down nonetheless. For the first couple months – Minnesota winter months – we didn’t really do anything. When spring rolled around, we got busy hauling out debris and cleaning, but also being careful not to throw anything that could be useful away. Here’s a general listing:
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Pulled out the rotted carpeting
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Removed the broken window pieces
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Removed and separated pieces of wood (counter tops, floor, paneling)
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Pullout the interior paneling; almost all of which was broken or rotted
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Swept out approximately two trash bags full of leaves, dirt and debris
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Wiped the whole boat down several times
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Removed rust from the inside of the hull
Getting the rust out of the interior of the hull was by far the most intensive, dirtiest and longest of the cleanup jobs. I first swept, and then shoveled four 5 gallon buckets of flaky, stinky rust out of the bottom. I vacuumed, then sanded, then again vacuumed and sanded the bottom free of rust. It was so nasty that I didn’t even take any pictures, as the camera would have been ruined from the dust.
After an extensive search on how to treat the bottom, I bought a product called POR-15 paint, and after wiping the bottom down with a special cleaner, applied the first coat. The paint is made to chemically bond rusted metal and literally convert it into a solid metal again. At $115 per gallon, I was looking forward to results, and wasn’t disappointed. The stuff is really thin, and coats really well; when it dried, I had a hard, covered surface — it’s really pretty cool stuff, even though it isn’t eco-friendly.
Once the boat was relatively clean, we were in a position to start doing actual renovations. To be building was nice change of pace. One of the first things we did was cut a new sub floor for both the interior cabin and rear exterior deck. The deck would be exposed to moisture, so it needed to be treated. I found some 3/8 inch plywood with a health/eco-friendly treatment that is arsenic and chromium free, and unlike normal treated lumber, the saw dust is not considered hazardous material. Once we had a nice floor to walk on we went after other projects:
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Solidified the interior frame
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Braced the roof above the galley, which was sagging
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Re-glassed a crack in the front of the cabin roof
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Cut acrylic side windows
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Sanded off bubbled paint from the exterior fiberglass cabin
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Sanded, filled and painted the metal cabin door
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Painted the front sleeping cabin
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Framed in built-in shelves from boxes at the Reuse It Center
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Solidified the frame of the galley counter; secured a stainless steel top.
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Cut spaces for the drop-in stove and sink
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Place plastic sheeting on the cabin walls for moisture protection
Besides those items, we had an eccentric junk-collecting friend of my dad make two small front cabin windows out of extruded metal framing and weld together the broken hand rail for the roof top. He did it at a fraction of the cost of what a normal business would have charged for these small jobs, all from the comfort of his home shop.
I got my first installment of scrap maple and birch cupboard material from a friend, and began framing in the interior cabin. Peter is a carpenter, and his business regularly threw out various sizes of scrap material. Making the interior out of this material would give it a “puzzle piece” effect, and probably wouldn’t look great, but will still look nice – especially for free.
