Storebro 34 Rebuilt: Walls in forward and aft cabin replacement

Wall covering replacement forward and aft cabin.

Few years ago when the inside of the boat was taken apart the wall covering panels were removed and taken home and stored in a dry area.

It was known that some parts of the plywood were rotten away but the impression was that the actual wall covering could be used again after properly cleaning.

I have tried several chemicals to clean the vinyl and was partly successful but the biggest issue was that the foam behind the vinyl had been wet and that mold has been growing in the foam.

Even after several years of drying the foam did still smell as well as that on several places the foam was gone or falling apart

Further there were at several places damages to the foam on points which are visible.

Most of the panels in the bow did had water damage and the wood was deteriorated and falling apart.

It was then decided to replace all panels with new wood and new vinyl. To buy the wood is reasonable easy but to get the same type of vinyl was impossible in Holland did find this type of vinyl in the USA but with shipping cost and the amount of vinyl needed it would become to expensive for me. I found an acceptable alternative which is very close to the installed one but without the stitching of the lines, so called rail road tracks.

The first step was to remove all the vinyl from the plywood panels to be able to fabricate the new required plywood panels.

This was not too difficult but a lot of staples needed to be removed and the good thing was that the vinyl foam layer was not glued onto the wood.

New marine plywood was bought same thickness otherwise in the aft cabin it would not fit into the slots of the wood.

The plywood was painted both sides to protect the wood for future moisture .

The old panels were drawn onto the new panels and the panels were cut out, the rims of the wood were painted as well.

The next step was to fit the new panels in the boat to see if there were any mistakes made during copying from the old removed panels, bearing in mind the thickness of the to be installed vinyl onto the panels.

It was decided with the supplier of the vinyl to glue the vinyl onto the wooden panels.

Cutting the vinyl is not that simple a good pair of scissors will do the trick but placing the vinyl onto the wood especially where two panels meet each other is more challenging especially in the bow where, the panels are not square shaped.

The panel was positioned onto the vinyl keeping in mind the required overhang to be able to fold the vinyl around the wood and having enough material left to fix it onto the wood.

To make sure that the vinyl lines would follow the required pattern and no changes would be made to the position during the gluing of the vinyl onto the wood the first part of the vinyl around 10 cm was glued onto the wood.

When this was dry, next day the rest of the vinyl was glued onto the wood.

Another day of waiting before the material could be folded around the wood and be fixed in position

To be able to glue the material which needed to be folded the area which needed to be glued was left open while the area where no glue should be was protected, I uses spray glue specific for this material.

When one folds the vinyl at the corners a thick part of vinyl will be the result which will be thicker than the rest of the fold over vinyl this will result that the corners will be thicker than the rest of the panels and when mounting them this will be visible.

Therefore at the corners the foam layer of the vinyl was removed.

When both sides were glued in position the corner needed to be glued in position.

We placed very thin double sided tape on the wood and positioned the material in the right position, then one side was folded into the correct position and fixed with staples. The next step was to fix the other side in position and fix with staples as well.

Although a difference can be seen between old and new panels I do think is is a major improvement.

Original the panels were fixed with a brass nail onto the boat I decided to fix them with a screw this way it will always be possible to have them relatively easy removed without damaging them.

The aft cabin is where the aft two panels are placed into a groove between two pieces of wood therefore it is important to keep the panels at the corners as thin as possible.