Interior lining and painting

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tallwoody

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Hi All,

I own a Gib Sea 76 sail boat and I am suffering from sagging head lining. The situation is quite desperate so I am thinking of removing all of the lining and looking to paint the fibre glass rather than re-line her.

Please can anyone give me any advice on whether this is a practical approach, and if so, what the painting process is and what paint I should be using?

Also, does anyone have any tips for removing all the old foam? Can you use a wire brush attachment on a drill or will this damage the fibre glass?

Any tips would be most welcome.
 
Boats without headlining suffer badly from condensation so not a good idea, I chartered a non headlined boat very many years ago and every morning it was effectively raining in all the cabins.

If you can make up plywood panels to cover most of the deckhead this makes the task easier. Replacing the glued on stuff is messy and nasty but really very well worth the effort.

You can get a carpet like material too and some prefer this.
 
When we built our boat we lined the deckhead with cork tiles. These are stuck on with contact adhesive, joins filled with flexible filler and painted with vinyl paint.

If you need to get at a deck fitting, cut out a small piece with a stanley knife, do whatever needs to be done, refill with a new piece or the old one if it is undamaged, fill and paint as necessary and it's as good as new.

The tiles are remarkably flexible and easy to bend around curves - even quite tight ones. Most of ours have now been there about 28 years without needing any attention apart from an occasional touch up with paint. If they do start to come away (as they tend to over the galley) it is simple to remove them, re-glue and re-fix, or renew a small area.

We have no condensation problems.
 
I did the opposite in the fore cabin because of the condensation dripping on us in the night. I glued headlining to the inside of the hull, and attached two plywood boards to cover the deck head. The main cabin is bare and painted white. If you have a slightly curved cabin roof and sloping side decks then the water will run down into the bilges, as we have in the main cabin. If it is flat, as in our fore cabin, then condensation will gather at a point directly above your forehead and drip on you once every 30 minutes between pub closing time and breakfast. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif
 
Royal Navy ships used to be painted on the deckhead with some kind of anti-condensation paint containing cork granules. I have often [well, now and then] wondered if it would do for grp hulls. instead of headlining. Anyone tried it?
 
I've removed the foam on my boat, much of it was peeling away anyway, The problem isn't so much the foam but all the little flecks and glue that are left. I used a scraper to get off most of the foam, and then an angle grinder with a knotted wire brush attachement (available from screwfix) to get rid of the glue and stubbon bits.

It is very messy though. I took out all the furnishings and put down dust sheets first and then cleaned up and washed down with hot soapy water afterwards.

I experimented with a little patch of paint stripper first, but that is just as messy, and if you get any spots on the varnish then it'll strip that too. Also glass fibres were coming up, so didn't think it was doing the fibreglass much good.

Also tried vigours rubbing with a cloth and acetone, that worked, but it was a lot of work to remove only a small patch, so wouldn't recommend it for the whole cabin.

So, wire brush on an angle grinder worked well. Wore a proper dust mask, not a paper thing, but a decent rubber respirator type with dust filters. Wore overalls, glovese, goggles, but a major clean up afterwards.

Go steady and lightly with the wire brush attachement and the fibreglass will be OK. If your heavy and dig in then yes, you'll start to grind some nice grooves.
 
Have just done exactly the same thing and I can agree with you completely about the mess. The wire brush is really the only way (some people have mentioned petrol as a solvent to remove the glue, but I don't have a death wish). An angle grinder is a bit fast for a wire brush really - if you can get a 2 speed one, or use a drill instead that might be better. Don't catch the end of your window blind/curtain in the wire brush as it will rip it off and throw the grinder across the cabin, narrowly missing your head and the opposite window if you're lucky..... /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif (you'd have to be an idiot not to remove them first of course).
I found the spray-on glue from the carpet section of B and Q remarkably good and fairly cheap when it came to re-lining (with cheap carpet).
 
You could use Korkon anticondensation paint. Has liitle bit of "cork?" in it. There is also a fleck type paint system which gives a speckled finish, used to be called Poraflek but now has a new brand name.

John C
 
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Can you use a wire brush attachment on a drill or will this damage the fibre glass?


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Halfords (and B&Q as far as I recall) do a circular attachment for Drills and anglegrinders for paint removal. Its made of a knotted plastic material and wont harm the fibreglass - it's very similar to the ones recommended/used by Hawke house who seem to know everything there is to know about removing and replacing headlining. You can also get them direct from Hawke house as well.

We found the drill versions to be useless, but the angle-grinder version worked well - and safer than a wire brush angle grinder attachment.

I like the idea of anti-condensation paint - but I thought about painting too and dropped the idea for two reasons - condensation as mentioned, and also the cosmetics - the paint will not cover up the minor imperfections that lining does (apparently often part of the reason lining was used in the first place). The surface underneath is unlikely to be perfectly flat, and even if it was suitably fair, it will be a bitch to prepare it properly for painting.

I read the many recommendations for covering plywood panels, but didn't bother with it. I would use panels next time though - more laborious (measuring etc.), but definitely easier I reckon, and easier to fix down the line. Bond thin batens to the GRP surfaces if necessary where you will expect to fix the panels with screws. (screw covers etc. available from Hawke house etc.)
 
When our head lining went I vacuumed it off the board and the material using the oval shaped fitting on the vac. and 95 % came off. Used neat pva to both surfaces to re-stick and it has done an excelent job.
 
I removed all the old foam backed vinyl from our Seawolf 26 during the winter. I found that a wire brush attachment with an angle grinder to be the only way of removing the old glue and foam backing at a reasonable rate. Goggles, face mask and gloves are a definite must. I replaced everything with new material purchased from Toomer and Hayter. A very long job as headlining panels and wooden trim all need removing first, but now that it's finished it looks so much better.
 
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