Fwd cabin repaint

Some of you may remember from an earlier post about the dry rot repair in the forward bulkhead how dark the forward cabin was. As the shipwrights who carried out the repair could not exactly match the existing timber I decided to paint the bulkhead white. The effect was to lighten the cabin and rather than put off the repaint until later in the refit  decided to do it now.

I enlisted the help of my youngest son Paddy (don't call him Patrick) to remove the batons and doors in preparation for the refinish. The insulation behind the batons was in good order and except for one panel well adhered to the hull. I decided to leave it in place and give it a good clean with sugar soap prior to refinishing the cabin. With thoughts of making the cabin lighter I also decided to paint the aft bulkhead white. The remaining bright work I decided to re-varnish. The pictures below show the process in stages. even though I used a sealer on the aft bulkhead it took three coats before the oil in the teak plywood stopped bleeding through.

Primed ready for paint

Bright work after 2nd coat

Forwad bulkhead no longer the dark cave

Aft bulkhead - light and bright