Day two of renovation weekend wasn’t as bad, even though lots of time was spent plucking staples out of the floor (my favorite!). Once everything was cleared out of the cabin, we measured the floor to see how much wood we would need for an underlayment. Off to The Home Depot we went, returning with the 90-minute rental truck and several sheets of underlayment.
As if the power drill and mallet swinging weren’t loud enough the first day, we broke out the handy-dandy jig saw on Day 2! While Will sawed, I hammered/stapled the boards to the subfloor, and we became one musical duo that made everyone’s ears shutter. “We owe our neighbors a six-pack,” I shouted to Will in between board cutting.
At the end of renovation weekend, we had done so much, but all I could see was a blank slate. Now the real work began as we started reassembling the cabin with our own personal touches.
Will built a fabulous L-shaped dinette, which included large under-bench storage as well as a smaller, behind-bench storage shelf. He also built a cabinet to hide the washer/drier unit and provided us another countertop since we had gotten rid of the other built-ins.
We attempted to make every inch of the boat usable, since we were going from a 1,000+ sqft. town home to less than 250 sqft. of living space on the boat! The side berth would become our closet, and the shower in the forward head would become our kitty-litter room. We took advantage of every nook and cranny, and I was worried I’d never remember where anything was when we finally moved all of our crap onboard.
Each week/weekend was a different project. Will worked full-time, day and night, and I came after work to help on nights and weekends. We ate dinner on cardboard flooring boxes or whatever was available to sit on, and the crockpot became our best friend.
One week was dedicated to replacing and rewiring light switches, and finding a new home for the panel of switches that was left homeless after demolition day. Another week or two was dedicated to prepping and painting the inside. This actually took much longer than we thought, given the size of the boat.
Since the cabin had such odd-shaped walls and narrow edges around the doors and windows, we ended up using a bunch of painters masking tape and a 1-inch brush to paint what felt like the entire cabin.
Once the painting was finished, then came the long-anticipated floor laying weekend. Planning the pattern of each row of boards, and cutting each vinyl plank to its exact measurement was quite cumbersome. It actually took much more brain-power than I expected. So, I left that part of the project to Will, Ha!
I blamed my recent completion of grad school for leaving me brain-dead throughout most of the renovation process. Luckily, Will made a great project manager, researcher, and hard laborer. He took on the renovations with full-force, putting the rest of his life on hold – and for that I can’t thank him enough! 😘
We spent a month and a half on the renovations, working tirelessly to complete the final details such as the plank wall and custom painted epoxy dining table. Even the smallest tasks, like drilling holes for the table legs seemed to come with its own unique set of problems and time and tools required!
Last but not least was the most dreaded project of the renovation… sewing the cushions for the dinette. Ugh!! I put this off until the very last minute, and hated every second of it. Yes, it seems dramatic, but I really dislike the craft of sketching, measuring and sewing. It’s just not my cup of tea.
Even after double, triple and quadruple checking my measurements, I still somehow forgot to account for the extra back space needed to cover the “pit” of the L. 😒 To this day I haven’t gone back to fix the mistake. We just cover up the gap wit a pillow and blanket and call it “good.” Grr… stupid cushions.
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