Replacing our butty's rotten cabin

Our butty Christina was suffering badly from rotten wooden sides, roof etc.

We tried getting a quote to replace the outer skin of the cabin, without disturbing the features that we love in the cabin. We were quoted around £8,000, when I asked how many of these cabins he had done, he said it was his first. So it was that I decided to do it myself!

Some of the old wood was so bad that I could pull it off with my bare hands!

One of the temporary repairs can be seen on this side, as I posted a while back, we coated the roof using geo tape re-inforced liquid rubber.

The workshop was insulated with polystyrene, but on the rear cabin Rockwool was used.

The first inner panel has been painted blue at some time, the second has an intriguing collage, almost all of this cabin was built from old scrap bits of wood and ply.

The strange collage

Insulation was either polystyrene or Rockwool, this was removed and replaced with Celotex panels.

The remains of a wood bees nest in the old insulation.

It was a very nervous time when I started to rip the panels off.

The first replacement panel was the most difficult, it curves and twists in two directions, and to make matters worse, it has a porthole that had to line up with the inner panels. All this needed to be duplicated using very expensive Bruynzeel Hechthout marine ply, at £135 + VAT a sheet! So we could not afford to buy any spare boards, one mistake would be a big problem.

The cabin front board is offered up.

The starboard side panels fitted after sealing the edge and backs of the boards with two pack marine epoxy.

The boards had to lifted on and off multiple times.

I've cut sections out of the bottom of each board to allow us to walk on the gunwales and the boards have been given a few coats of Le Tonkinois Chinese lacquer.

Time to swap to the port side...

I used this old speaker cover to act as a fly guard over the outlet from our compost toilet.

Then added this nice brass cover.

After five coats of lacquer, the panels are starting to get a shine.

I then started staining the rear panels before lacquering them, the section that was formally painted grey will be coated in plain lacquer to bring out the grain.

The rear doors were hung using marine stainless hinges