I think in the last few months I’ve said to Susie multiple times, “It sure was easier and faster to take this apart than it is to put it all back together.” Nothing I’m doing is particularly difficult, it just takes a lot of time.

I’ve spent the last couple of months working on carpet in the boat. This may have gone faster if I lived in a place with more warmth, but Seattle in the winter is just not a location where we see 65 degrees F very often. The temperature matters because the glue used to hold down all this carpet, and all the parts being glued, need to be at 65 degrees. I did a few pieces indoors with the windows open, but the fumes were too much so I waited.

The first bit of effort involved all the pieces and parts that go in the boat. There are multiple panels , seat bases and lids that go everywhere in this boat. The basic steps are: trim the carpet to fit, apply glue to the panel, apply glue to the carpet, wait 15 minutes and get ready to stick. For example, this is the two “kick” panels that go under the bow in front of the driver. I disassembled these, removed the old carpet and then had to trim and glue on the new carpet. If you are observant you can see the wood from other panels and the new carpet ready for trim in the lower left corner of this photo.

So to save time I’ll skip over a lot of that work. It involved a lot of glue, staples, waiting for sunshine and waiting for sunshine. It eventually warmed up.

Next was putting the carpet in the interior of the boat. This was a remarkably similar task to the panels, just scaled up. Trim, glue both sides, wait 15 minutes, align and stick. I did the sides first, then a plastic trim piece that goes between the sides and the floor, and then finally the floor.

Once I had the sides on, the floor was an interesting thing to do. It is all one big piece that had to be carefully trimmed and glued into place section-by-section without adding in wrinkles or getting things out of alignment in other sections too much. By the time it was done I was very satisfied with the end result.

Once I had the carpet in I could hardly resist the temptation to just throw in all the interior. It looks brand-new.

If you are reading this post in the Pacific Northwest and you wish you could have brand-new seats done, you should contact E’s Kustom Fab-Up. I keep thinking that my next project should be a muscle car and I can’t wait to tear into it with the expert advice and fab work from E’s.  I just can’t say enough how great the upholstery looks and I’ve seen amazing things E’s has done with other classic cars, boats and trucks. Plus there are always some cool projects just hanging around in the shop.

I have installed the propeller, primed the fuel system… I think an on-the-water test is near.