Ceiling Installation

I took Thursday, October 21st, as a day of vacation and spent a few hours on Froonie re-installing the v-berth ceiling. It is good to be putting so much of Froonie back together...the prep work has been a long, long process.

I took the original ash ceiling down as part of the initial deconstruction process, numbering and bundling them for future use. I sanded a lot of grime off the boards during a previous day on the restoration, but they have invariably picked up dust from a lot of project work in the interior. I vacuumed the boards during today's installation, but will need to come back at some point in the future with a light solvent wash down. In removing the original ceiling, I also took the opportunity to remove the ceiling backing strips, grind off the polyester tabbing and prepare for new backing strips and re-installation. Once the new backing strips were tabbed in (West System epoxy), I put a few coats of Bilgekote (Interlux) on and finished with a topcoat of Brightside (Interlux). This work has brought me to today...ceiling installation...

Here is the v-berth ready for her ceiling to go back in. You can see the starboard forward ceiling boards bundled below. I separated the ceiling boards into four bundled: starboard fore and aft, and port fore and aft; and numbered them to make the install that much easier.

Here is the first starboard board installed. I put up the boards without fasteners (holding them in place was a little difficult) to get the spacing correct; the middle board here presented itself as the best starter board to balance the completed installation.

Starboard side completed.

I followed the same procedure for the port side installation - dry fit without fasteners, and then began with the middle board.

The install took roughly three hours, and helped to push the restoration forward quite a bit. I will be turning my attention to the aft quaterberths / settees next.