Galley Half Fixed.

I opted for the laminate over painting the plywood in the galley. It was more work, but it matches everything that I'm not going to replace and it wears better anyway. On the up side, I got one hell of a deal on the laminate. I went to a secondhand lumber yard here in town just to see what they had. It was perfect. They had one piece almost exactly the same color as everything else in the boat and they only wanted .35 cents a square foot for it. At a 4X12 foot sheet, that worked out to about $16. The had a sign over the bin that asked that you wait for assistance, so I did. Forever. I asked three different people to help me. None of them did. Eventually I got tired of waiting so I just rolled it up, slapped some tape on it and walked to the counter. The chic at the register asked me if anyone measured it for me. I said no. I told here after waiting too long I rolled it up myself. She said, “how about five?” I said, “five what?” She said, “Five dollars.” I said, “Ah, yeah, that works, five it is.” That was certainly the deal of the day. I paid more for the router bit to trim it than I did the laminate.

The only trouble was, being from a secondhand lumber store, the edges were less than perfect. I wasn't sure how I was going to straighten them up without the use of a table saw. That's when I hatched a plan. Like everything else improvised in Oklahoma, I started with some duct tape and a stick. Most of the pieces I needed to cover could easily be trimmed outside the boat, but I need a piece that would fit exactly the plywood I installed that covers the icebox. What I came up with was a piece of hard wood duct tapped to the top of the laminate that I then trimmed on the router table. It worked perfectly. I couldn't have asked for a better fit.





Covering everything else, of course, was laminate business as usual. I covered the two pieces that fit behind the stove, cleaned up the quarter-round trim I made yesterday, and made some final sanding adjustments to make sure everything fit. All in all I was very pleased with the way it turned out.





I thought about cutting some mahogany trim up and trimming the whole thing out with that, but the truth is, the corded trim they used originally is so much easier to work with. The guys downtown didn't have any in stock, but they did have the rubber cord and the material I wanted to cover it with, so I said to hell with it and made my own. I fired up the sewing machine and awhile later I had just what I wanted. I think it turned out nice. It is completely, 100% replaced with new material. The best plywood, sealed in epoxy on 6 sides, laminated, trimmed and screwed in place. Including going to get the materials, I worked at it for about 12 hours today.


So, to recap. I went from this a few days ago:




To this a few days later.