We have no shortage of boat projects going on right now. We are tirelessly ticking things off our list to get the boat in shape for our family honeymoon to the Dry Tortugas and Key West. Some of the projects are musts, like regular maintenance and getting spare parts for the engine and generator. Other projects are things that have been on our list since we bought Blue Turtle 4 years ago (you heard that right!). Ever since we brought her home, I’ve been drying to pull the mildewed, stained, peeling wallpaper off the interior walls of Blue Turtle. If we had an endless supply of money and time (which we don’t) I would have loved to do a wood veneer finish on the walls. Randy and I finally came to the realization that this wouldn’t happen and opted to paint the walls instead. We tested this out on the v-birth first and likes the result so much that we did our aft cabin a few weeks ago. Since then, I’ve been dying to tackle the main salon and finally got my chance this weekend.

On Saturday, Randy helped me de-assemble everything. By this I mean remove the mini-blinds and the panels of wood that cover them, remove the panels that cover the tops of the doors, remove basically anything (cb radios, storage shelfs, etc) that would be in my way of peeling the paper off and painting. Once this was done, I tackled the paper while Randy went to work outside finishing the painting of the hull (more on that in a future post).  Basically, it took a full day to de-assemble the salon and get the paper off and prepped for painting. 5pm rolled around and Randy and I decided to take the dinghy down to Time’s Square for a much needed beer and dinner.

On Sunday, I started in with the Kilz to lay down the base for the paint to adhere to.  We had a few areas of wood damage near the windows where there must’ve been a leak at some point. The wallpaper had literally become one with the paneling. I did the best I could to preserve it and in a couple spots decided to leave the paper in place and paint over it. This turned out to be a good decision since it would have been much worse with the damage it would have caused to remove the paper. Kilz does an amazing job of giving a surface on anything for paint to stick to. After that, it was 2 coats of white paint. The project literally took the entire weekend, but we are very happy with the result: a fresh, clean appearance on the interior of our boat. It was a lot of work for so little wall surface in the salon. This is because a lot of the wall surface is covered by mini blinds and wood panelling. Still, it all had to be removed to do the job right.