The ceiling on our boat was installed in 1975 when popcorn ceiling still seemed like a good idea. There are no glitter flecks, but they would not seem out of place.
Even if it did look good, once, it has 50 years of funk and gunk. This photo actually makes it look decent. But it is some weird PVC-like film glued to a thin plywood panel tacked to the roof between the teak beams. There is virtually no cleaning it, as the plastic is degrading such that we are afraid to touch it. What is not pictured is a small section where a previous leak caused a bit of that plywood to rot away and the plastic popcorn film to start to peel off.
After much procrastination, we started the project of replacement, yesterday. We are installing tongue-and-groove in place of the popcorn.
So, we rough-cut a bunch of that tongue-and-groove and sealed/painted it, then headed out to pull off the first panel, not sure what we would find. I had two assumptions, though:
First, those panels are just tacked on with short nails and they popped right off. No glue - no cleanup - just clean, exposed fiberglass, which brings me to ...
... the discovery that the upper deck is not cored at all. There are, apparently, wooden ribs above the exposed teak beams. These are encased in a generous amount of fiberglass. But, between these ribs, it is solid glass. I can see where the leak was. A loose bolt holding on the teak rail on the upper deck had apparently been leaking. But, that bolt just goes through solid fiberglass, so no chance of core rot. The whole roof (what we've exposed so far) appears in great shape. I honestly was not expecting that.
Some of the construction details of this boat are kind of interesting. So, I'll start taking more photos of this process.
We are going out in the morning to replace the section we removed.
Even if it did look good, once, it has 50 years of funk and gunk. This photo actually makes it look decent. But it is some weird PVC-like film glued to a thin plywood panel tacked to the roof between the teak beams. There is virtually no cleaning it, as the plastic is degrading such that we are afraid to touch it. What is not pictured is a small section where a previous leak caused a bit of that plywood to rot away and the plastic popcorn film to start to peel off.
After much procrastination, we started the project of replacement, yesterday. We are installing tongue-and-groove in place of the popcorn.
So, we rough-cut a bunch of that tongue-and-groove and sealed/painted it, then headed out to pull off the first panel, not sure what we would find. I had two assumptions, though:
- The plywood panel would be glued to the cabin roof and we would have a bunch of scraping to do before installing anything.
- The cored upper deck (cabin roof) would exhibit some core damage that would have to be repaired above that spot where the panel was water-damaged.
First, those panels are just tacked on with short nails and they popped right off. No glue - no cleanup - just clean, exposed fiberglass, which brings me to ...
... the discovery that the upper deck is not cored at all. There are, apparently, wooden ribs above the exposed teak beams. These are encased in a generous amount of fiberglass. But, between these ribs, it is solid glass. I can see where the leak was. A loose bolt holding on the teak rail on the upper deck had apparently been leaking. But, that bolt just goes through solid fiberglass, so no chance of core rot. The whole roof (what we've exposed so far) appears in great shape. I honestly was not expecting that.
Some of the construction details of this boat are kind of interesting. So, I'll start taking more photos of this process.
We are going out in the morning to replace the section we removed.
