GroupWBench

The veneer work is done. It turned out pretty good. Teak would have looked better than oak, but the cost was out of balance with the value of the boat.  We had enough extra to do the face of the couches and the base of the entry from the living area to the bathroom and bedroom areas. The trim went back on just fine and doesn't clash too much. Once we got the carpet down it all looked much nicer. The raw fiberglass floor in there is pretty ugly.

Here is a during and after comparison of where we had to cut out a fair sized chunk from the cabinet.

With  that task done, we opened up another can of worms…

This is just some of the enormous rat's nest of wires that has been growing on this boat for 45 years. Time to rip it all out and start from scratch. We'll do all of the DC first. Then, if we haven't burned the boat to the bottom or electrocuted ourselves, we'll do the AC wiring. We started by pulling out the wires for the forward running lights, bedroom fan, and the lights in the bathroom and living room on the starboard side of the boat. We taped new wire to the old and carefully fed it through the maze of nooks and crannies all the way back into the lazarette (what I call the basement of the boat). I added new LED running lights at the front of the boat. They are the little red and green lights there. They don't look all that bright in the picture, but they shine just fine. These won't eat up too much battery and will let us do some evening/night sails.

We'll start on the lights on the other side of the interior next. We are replacing all the interior lighting with LEDs. They make them to replace the old bulbs now. That means we don't need to order new fixtures, which will save us some money. We've ordered a ton of electric stuff. Shrink wrap connectors, wire, LEDs, new exterior lights, a new fuse panel…this one is a big job. We're trying to do it in small bites since it is pretty complicated and requires a lot of interesting crawling around in tight spaces. replacing the wiring and fixtures or bulbs on the steaming and anchor lights will require us to run up the mast several times. Won't that be fun?

Pulling the mattress out of the v-berth so we could get to the wire runs there has us thinking about replacing it with some nice foam. Plus, we got to looking at the walls in the bedroom area and think we might pull out the vinyl liner and replace it with wood to match what we have in the living area. Other than that, we haven't had the job start snowballing on us just yet. I'm sure something will pop up, though.