I (Lorna) went away to as Vegas in the summer, and Steve was very busy turning the wheelhouse into my new painting studio.
Step 1 was insulating. We pulled up the old floor, packed it with celetex, then relayed the floor on top. There was just one tricky bit where there was a hatch down to the engine room that we had to leave accessible.
We also insulated the ceiling ready for winter, but need to get some thinner ply to finish it all off.
Steve pulled out the old tongue and groove woodwork, I welded on brackets for new battening and cut some sanded scaffolding planks to size for my perfect desk and then vanished for a week. Steve put insulation between the battens and carefully cut ply to size.
He then filled in the screw holes, primed the plywood and neatly cut sections of the reclaimed flooring to size to make window sills and edges.
He gave it all a lick of paint and it looks so neat and tidy. He then laid the floor, leaving a removable section to keep access to the engine room. This used up almost all of our remaining reclaimed flooring (which we used in the corridor). Being solid wood it is going to withstand greater wear that the wheelhouse will have so was a good choice.
He built a fancy support for my homemade desk, utilising some more of the scrap wood that had been pulled out. The raised section at the bottom is there to give more headroom for the galley below. As my feet will be kicking around on it a lot, it was worth putting flooring down on the horizontal surface of this too.
As soon as I returned from America, I could make it really feel like home and put all my art stuff in place.
And my carnivorous plant collection too.
