Painting Stuff

Catchups:

Since our last input on the technical front, I’ve been busy over the Summer (such that it was), doing the remainder of the jobs we wanted / needed to complete before venturing out into the ‘big-bad-world’... here’s a summary - as always, I keep a lot of the detail for future reference and am willing to share info on request:

At £100 per foot (the accepted estimate from 2 boatyard sources) to have the boat painted,  we decided to DIY the task... 

After chatting to a few boaters and doing the research, I decided to cover over the upper hull section (above the rub-strip) and onto the gunwale step with blackening: The theory is that its easier to patch up if / when it gets damaged and (to quote Dave, ‘it’s a contact sport’), since we inherited some serious previous scrages, it needed to be tidied. Got a 5ltr tin of Inter 20 from Norbury Junction (it’s the next-one-up in treatment technology from basic blackening, is easy to apply, gives a semi-gloss black finish and covers directly onto just about any surface) and spent a day on each side rubbing down, rust-treating and priming the existing damaged areas. Rollering the whole lot was easy and quick, used less than half the tin and ‘cutting-in’ on the top of gunwale was the most time consuming part of the operation. Additionally, being very careful, I was able to do from above the waterline on the side of a low bank area of the cut.

Painting the remainder of DamperVan was a bit more involved:

Following lots of decisions and conversations about colour schemes (tinted by cost, covering ability, pattern and availability) and biased by the colour of the cratch and top-box covering, taking into account the fact that the few hot days we experienced over last Summer turned the inside of the boat into a virtual oven due to the dark roof and many windows (at one point we had to take 2 window panes out to create a through draft)... we went for a light colour on the roof (buttermilk) and post-box red on the sides and elsewhere. 


I considered being clever and panelling both roof and sides to break it up a bit but as I’m a steel-painting virgin, wanted to keep the cost and time down, I thought the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) theorem was probably best - had a 'play' with the roof hatch. Started with the roof... Because of the major colour change it took 2 undercoats and 2 topcoat operations... luckily I have a strong back (because of the roof curvature a 4 inch roller was the only way forward)!!

We painted the sides over 2 weekends on the cut because the Marina got a bit negative when about 4 boat owners decided to do major amounts of redec on the jetties - covering their butts (and rightly so incase of spillage), which was easier than I anticipated after the hardest bit of prep. Luckily our boat was in reasonably good condition (very good if you take into account the fact that it was part of a hire fleet for 6 years) and prep was minimal (no filling involved)... I have since been told that red is one of the hardest colours to apply... oops!

We decided to go for the easier finishing option of vinyl lines and decals - it took a few hours of searching the net to find what we wanted from a single source but ‘The Graphics Boat’ was the answer and despite a delivery booboo, the design page, variety, and service was great... a very steep learning curve was involved in application but I’m very pleased with the result....   So is Me-Julie....So much so that she bought a top to match...

All-in-all the cost was about £550 which is less than 10% of what a 'pro' job would have been for just the major areas (who knows how much they would have charged for the tiller arm - it took me an hour just to tape-up).... 

We have since had a matching dodger made and last week had 2 x 100W solar panels and an MPPT controller installed (now at last, I know what power is available and not a guesstimate - anyone wanna join my Amp-Watch Facebook group??!!! )