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Interior Cabin Walls

8K views 44 replies 13 participants last post by  Freesail99 
#1 ·
Unfortunately my boat came from the 70's and the walls are lined with carpet - they aren't even shaggy so they won't attract a young Jane Fonda into my boat!

What I'd like to do is go with tongue and groove horizontal planking and then paint them a nice piano white.

Has anyone had any experience with doing this? My concerns are moisture and plank buckling and what type of wood to use.

thanks
 
#2 ·
The ceilings (by the way, what you refer to as "walls" are properly called ceilings in a boat, don't ask me why, and what you might ordinarily think of as the ceiling is referred to as the "overhead") of our boat are stripped with teak battens. But there is a gap between each strip, for ventilation purposes I presume. I'm not sure you'd want to do tight tongue and groove, unless your boat is very well insulated. It seems like you'd want the air to circulate a bit along the hull to help prevent condensation, avoid mildew, etc.

I'll be interested to hear other replies. I would like to do something similar to the overhead in our boat.
 
#3 ·
If you can afford the weight, then putting in furring strips and mounting thin boards for the ceilings or overhead is a good idea. Just make sure that you can remove them fairly easily, in case of a holing. :D You will definitely want to have a small airgap behind them, to ensure that you get good air circulation, and allow any condensation to drip down into the bilge. Unless your boat has a cored hull, the tongue and groove might be a bit too restrictive in terms of letting air get back there.
 
#4 ·
I've done this on several boats, it's not too bad a project and the results are very satisfying.

You definitely want to allow for ventilation, and epoxying vertical furring strips is one way to go. You will likely have to kerf cut wood strips so that they will conform to the hull curvature unless you use foam for that purpose (it can be glassed over to provide a surface for a screw to grab)

In my current boat (single skin hull) I put wooden furring strips as described, about 3/4 inch thick, then glued 1/4 inch foam insulation to the hull to discourage condensation. The remaining 1/2 inch gap provides air circulation. I then used two inch battens to plank the area, leaving a small 1/8 or so gap.

I would not use tongue and groove because I think you need the circulation all around. The toughest part is getting it to lay cleanly as you adapt to the compound curves - some twist will be required and some pieces simply won't want to go in easily. Another tricky bit is deciding what line your planking should follow - this is mostly an aesthetic decision - do you want to follow the shear line, or the top of the berth, or find some middle ground? There will be tapering required at the ends of each section.

But by all means give it a go - looks WAY better than carpet or any other such liner.
 
#5 ·
You won't have much success trying to put the wood directly on to the hull unless you use very thin strips of veneer. It will work loose pretty quicky and is liable to rot underneath the paint as JohnHPollard mentioned.

Furring and ceiling is a very big job - it will take you weeks to do it if you aren't working, and months if you are. If you don't do a good job of it, your boat will be worth much less than when you started.

Don't mean to sound discouraging here - it's not that hard to do - but the reason that you usually find it on the high-end boats is that it's such a labour-intensive process.

Have you thought about looking for a synthetic leather/vinyl/fabric that you like and using that ?? It's much faster and easier to do a nice job with.

Get a large roll of brown paper and make accurate patterns, then cut out your liner and use contact cement to adhere it.
 
#6 ·
You can get 3/8 x 2 or 3 teak tongue and groove pre finished flooring. The brand I used was Bellawood. It cost me $4.00 a sq. foot.
 
#7 ·
Unfortunately my boat came from the 70's and the walls are lined with carpet - they aren't even shaggy so they won't attract a young Jane Fonda into my boat!

What I'd like to do is go with tongue and groove horizontal planking and then paint them a nice piano white.

Has anyone had any experience with doing this? My concerns are moisture and plank buckling and what type of wood to use.

thanks
What others have said re the difficulty is quite correct. I'd intended doing the same thing on one of my previous boats but in the end the amount of work required dissuaded me. I ended up battening the hull and using sheets of ply that I painted. The end result was quite satisfactory and in reality had I gone with the tongue and groove timber most of it would have ended up hidden behind bookshelves and suchlike. You can buy fake tongue and grooved board but it not the v-groove type which to my mind is the nicest.

What you could do is get a couple of lengths of t & g and play around with it to see if it is likely to work. Thickness of the material may be the hardest part.
 
#8 ·
FullandBy ...

Have 38' empty steel hull and this winter am faced with same project ... a local company produces wood trim for home construction, baseboards, etc. ... they'll mill to specified width and thickness if desired and splice to any reasonable length ... a softwood certainly, but light, easily bent, and reasonably priced ... I plan on painting anyway so exotics or synthetics are just a waste of funds for frugal Bob, and painting is just soooo much easier than varnishing ...

leave space between and behind for air circulation ...

good luck :)
 
#9 ·
BTW, there is an article on doing just what you're talking about in the current issue of Good Old Boat.
 
#10 ·
Walls not overhead

I think you are missing what FullandBy said: Interior Cabin Walls

I don't know why JohnRPollard said:(by the way, what you refer to as "walls" are properly called ceilings in a boat, don't ask me why, and what you might ordinarily think of as the ceiling is referred to as the "overhead")

FullandBy said nothing about overhead or ceilings. My guess is when he said walls he meant the sides of the hull being walls. Funny how things get mis-understood so easily.
 
#13 ·
I think you are missing what FullandBy said: Interior Cabin Walls

I don't know why JohnRPollard said:(by the way, what you refer to as "walls" are properly called ceilings in a boat, don't ask me why, and what you might ordinarily think of as the ceiling is referred to as the "overhead")
Catalina274me, JohnRPollard said that to clarify that on a boat the "walls" are called ceilings and that the "ceiling" is actually referred to as an overhead. The terrestrial terms are in quotes and italics and the marine terms are in boldface.

It is much easier to communicate if everyone is on the same page and using the proper terminology. If I'm calling something a wall, and everyone else is calling it a ceiling...someone is going to get pretty confused, like you did. Before jumping all over JohnRPollard, you might want to sit back and actually read what he wrote a couple times, until you understand it.... it was fairly well written, concise and quite clear.
 
#11 ·
FullandBy said nothing about overhead or ceilings. My guess is when he said walls he meant the sides of the hull being walls. Funny how things get mis-understood so easily.
As JHP mentioned, the WALLS or interior sides of the hull are called CEILINGS. It is indeed funny how things get misunderstood. Mr. Pollard was trying to let FullandBy know that when he was referring to those areas of the boat, if he used the word ceilings then everyone else would know what he was talking about, thereby avoiding any misunderstandings....

You're welcome ! :)
 
#12 ·
Catalina274me,

I'm not a stickler for terminology. I just thought it would be helpful to the conversation if we were all on the same page for this project. No real harm in that, eh?

Sailormann,

I missed this post. Thanks for filling in with your humorous clarification.
 
#14 ·
Who supplies wood trim for the bulkheads (that I could get a hold of on the internet)?

I had a pile of it I got with the Lancer when we bought it, but it only finished 75% of the boat, leaving the quarter berths still covered in vinyl... It doesn't matter if the wood type or grain matches, as long as I can finish it with a wood color... haha... it is too far from the other woodwork we did to notice if there would be a difference in materials or even pattern, so all I need is "wood" from somebody to finish my work.

Now I'm a total wood-noob. I did this on my own, and if I can do it, anyone can:


I have fixed that hanging trim piece too by the way, it was pulled back because we just finished the panels.
 
#15 ·
Very nice Lancer... I can see why you want the whole cabin to match. :D
 
#16 ·
There was an article in the last issue of Good Old Boat that reviewed a project like this. The guy used thin planks with clinker type lap joints. Lots of pics and a good write up on the procedures he used. If you can get a copy, it may help you out with what you want to do. (GOB will send you a free trial copy if you ask.)
 
#17 ·
We just finished one ceiling in our Foc's'tle using tounge and groove 3/16" pine. Our hull is ferrocement. We gutted the ceiling to the bare hull, glued on (Lepages Bulldog grip polyurethane PL premium glue) 1 1/2 " strips for anchoring.

Then we glued on 1" foam insulation. All cracks (missed spots) filled with expanding foam from a can. Trimmed the foam, then glued aluminium faced bubble wrap and taped the edges with aluminium tape. Total thickness of insulation: 1 1/4" to leave a gap of 1/4" for circulation. The bubble wrap also acts as a vapour barrier and there is NO condensation whatsoever. (ventilation helps a great deal)

We then stripped the ceiling with the pine and varnished with a polyurethane. Looks incredible!!

Hope it helps.
John
 
#19 ·
If your planning on using pine instead of the pre finished teak I had suggested. It may be a good idea to varnish or poly the back side of the pine as it will wick water because the pine is so soft and porous.
 
#21 ·
My apoligies

I'm sorry Sailormann, JohnRPollard, and Sailingdog for the misunderstnding. I read JohnRPollard's reply wrong. As I have been around a lot of boats in my lifetime I had never heard of walls being called ceilings before. I am the confused one. :confused:
PS: Thanks for clearing things up as I was not trying to be a know it all.
 
#23 ·
No worries... lots of weird terminology that isn't normally used, especially by people who don't bleed salt water... ;)
 
#24 ·
Great recommendations. Thanks everyone. I will definitely check out the GOB article.

I've been on and around my boats my whole life and my father is a deep sea captain, and neither of us has ever heard the sides of the interior hull to be called the ceiling. I guess we aren't refined enough :) But good to know the proper terminology even if it is a little confusing. The ceiling must have originated after some crossing around the horn and suffering continual blow downs.

I think I will not be doing the tongue and groove but butt edges instead with a 1/8" gap between each board.

Lancer, great job. That is something like I want. I would love to see some other pics if anyone has them of their planked ceilings.

cheers
 
#25 ·
FullandBy,

This is a very funny thing, because where you have never heard them called "ceilings", I have almost never heard them called "walls". At least we all understand each other, and that's what matters.

Here is a photo of our ceilings (hopefully -- this is my first attempt at posting a photo). I cropped this from another photo, so the subject wasn't intended to be the ceilings, that's why it's a lousy shot. But it's all I've got...

 
#26 ·
JRP-

Very nice. :D But I would have used a lighter color wood... that's a bit dark...and probably makes the cabin seem smaller.
 
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