Deck Work: Re-Coring

Here is a glimpse of what our entire deck looked like piece by piece over the course of 10 weeks.

Microscopic flakes of opalescent dust dance threw the air to the unpleasant screech and squeal of a grinder. Magical and toxic; exhilarating and exhausting. Quite easily the most difficult process of Felicity's facelift. Encompassing just over 10 weeks we were riddled with itchiness, played musical rooms, we struggled to create space for an amazing amount of supplies and we mentally limped along hoping to see an end in sight.  Financially, this project commanded our attention and we had no choice but to suffer boredom as we couldn't afford to do much else.

In reality, we did manage to get a few things done but none of that came to mind until just this moment, as I am now able to stand up from the rubble and smile at our accomplishments. If you are into numbers, I'll follow up with a post of just how much product we consumed. If you are into wallowing in sorrow, you won't find that here 'cause at the moment, I'm freaking ecstatic!

As I've had time to think about why this project seemed so difficult for us there is only one answer I can come up with.

We had to pay for someone else to do the job.

Typically, we do ALL our own work. (I use the term "we" lightly, mostly GR does the hard stuff.) I mean on previous boats, we painted our bottom, painted our decks and installed our on engine even, BUT this time around we had to (4 letter word) work. (Ahhhhh) The work we get paid to do, so we could afford all the products and the dockage and well the list goes on. With our last boats we were able to stop working, focus solely on our boat and seemed a whole lot happier to go to sleep with bits of wood and paint in our hair. This time, we were just going to work all day and spending our nights buying supplies. "What's he doing drinking the lacquer thinner?" I asked G one day after a particularly crappy day of driving South Florida's deadliest stretch of I-95. I mean we were buying 5 Gallon containers of it?! While I am sooo thankful that we didn't actually have to crawl around on our hands and knees in paper suits grinding fiberglass and pouring epoxy in between spells of torrential downpours and 92 degree scorchers there is a large portion of me that thinks we were cranky that we weren't working on our boat.

Satisfaction comes rolling in when you are able to touch and feel the progress being made on your floating home. That's what we'd been missing.


I'm happy to report the "worst" of it is over. We can now resume painting which is nothing compared to  fiberglass work.