The big project

So originally I was thinking of doing this as 1 massive post but there is simply too much going on for it to all fit in 1 post.

WHAT is it that we’ve been up to then? Well we’re building ourselves a master stateroom. Although this is a fairly large project in and of itself due to our ship being… well… our ship the whole process ended up being rather complicated and involved. This isn’t to say that this project is even nearly complete at this time. In fact as of this post we’ve been working on it on and off for basically all of October at this point. True that we’ve been working in spurts and goes at times but for the most part we’ve been focused primarily on the area in question nearly exclusively.

So what is going on with this project? The fo’c’sle (or forecastle, or v-berth, or the room near the bow of the ship that’s kinda triangular in shape) is being totally gutted and redone to be a suitable bedroom with a queen size mattress in it. Here’s what’s involved in order:

1. Remove some of the original insulation (this stuff has been in there since 1954 and technology has moved on since then. We’re going to replace all this with Roxul insulation: click here for details on what that is)
2. Remove the old hatch in the deck
3. Remove the old port lights (we needed to do this since the old ones have cracked glass, don’t seal properly and are caked with paint)
4. Install a new hatch combing with 2 new deck hatches over the hole for the old deck hatch, and a new hole that we cut in the deck in a similar location on the starboard side.
5. Cut 2 new port hole holes for our 2 new port lights that we’re installing later this year
6. Weld over the old port hole holes.
7. Remove the rest of the old insulation.
8. Install the new port lights
9. Put up wood strapping along all frames in the fo’c’sle (using bluwood)
10. Install all the new Roxul insulation
11. Vapor barrier the insulation
12. Put tongue and groove wood up along the walls.
13. Build an artificial bulkhead near the bow to hide the chain locker a bit and to give us more insulation and storage at that end
14. Build hanging lockers/closets at the stern bulkhead
15. Redo the flooring
16. Move in.

A LOT of work is ahead of us. We’re around step 7 at this point. I’ll be putting up pictures of how things have been going later on along with a post on the materials we used and why.

Wish us luck!