After examining the bulkheads in the boat, I’ve determined that they were originally all painted. Some previous owner must have preferred the look of wood, and scraped/sanded 99% of the paint off, revealing some nice teak face-veneer under it.

I like wood inside boats, but let’s be here: small boat+plenty of dark wood=living in a cave. The veneers are nice teak, but I wanted to re-apply paint. Besides, the screw holes of the original construction had been filled for paint instead of plugged as they would have been for a “bright” finish.

Knowing I didn’t need a veneer-perfect surface, I happily bored away for new screws where needed, and filled with epoxy filler and nitrostan under the paint. Simple. I used EasyPoxy for the coating; 2-3 coats of their white undercoater as needed, then two coats of Off-White gloss. This is a one-part linear polyurethane; mid-range for an exterior paint, but utterly bomb-proof as an interior paint.

The primer really fills the grain, providing “hide”, and the gloss flows out very well thinned 10-20% with mineral spirits. That percentage sounds really high, I know, but here in the tropics, with the crazy heat and humidity, you need all the help you can get. This way, even hack painters like myself can avoid brush marks.

These are, obviously, before-and-after pics, showing the main salon and V-berth area. I have since painted the galley faceframes and aft salon bulkeads as well. The new starboard quarterberth area has also been painted, and the nav-station is primed. I’ll wait until the rest of the nav station is back in place before finishing the topcoats there.

As you can see, it makes a huge difference! There is still plenty of solid teak trim around the bulkheads, as well as all teak panels behind the settees and as locker doors.
As always, click through for a closer look…