Removing vinyl padding lining

[Navikats]

Looking at Sea ray 480s to liveaboard. We plan to completely remodel the cabin and saloon mostly by ourselves if we can. I’m reaching out for some help since we do not yet have the boat so we’re going from pictures. As a complete overhaul, we’re questioning whether or not the panel vinyl liner could be removed and replaced with flat walls to paint. It’s a little too padded room feeling. I imagine we’d have to do some insulation under boarding it up. Also we’d remove the plastic shower like covering in the head to make it feel more like a home. Thoughts?

[Tetepare]

Most of the time the foam is glued to the boat, and a big, messy job to remove.

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by Navikats

Looking at Sea ray 480s to liveaboard. We plan to completely remodel the cabin and saloon mostly by ourselves if we can. I’m reaching out for some help since we do not yet have the boat so we’re going from pictures. As a complete overhaul, we’re questioning whether or not the panel vinyl liner could be removed and replaced with flat walls to paint. It’s a little too padded room feeling. I imagine we’d have to do some insulation under boarding it up. Also we’d remove the plastic shower like covering in the head to make it feel more like a home. Thoughts?

We have the same stuff on most of our interior hull surfaces. Where we’ve pulled it back to get access to the hull, the hull surface is rough and raw. I bet that’s why it’s used - it’s much cheaper to glue on padded vinyl than to fair and finish the interior hull surfaces.

But if you also want to insulate (and you don’t mind losing some interior volume) then the hull finish doesn’t matter. Remove the vinyl, glue the insulation to the hull (no gaps between the insulation and the hull), then cover the insulation with primer and a top coat like you would use outside above the water (top coat, flo coat, gel coat, etc). There have been some threads on CF regarding best choices for the foam, the primary quality being not absorbing moisture.

Note that you don’t ‘have’ to insulate - the foam padding is certainly not insulation! But it does remove condensation. If you decide to use hard materials to line the hull then leave an air gap - that becomes a real PITA.

For the shower area (separate from the head?) don’t remove anything - you risk creating leaks! Go over the top with tiles or waterproof wall paper (tile patterned?) if you want to change the look.

But really, you don’t even have the boat yet. Live with it for 6 months before making any big changes - by that time you may have gotten used to it and other more urgent things will have appeared. Talk to any boat owner and they’ll tell you that their pre-purchase list of jobs has been largely ignored and supplanted by other lots of other jobs not even considered earlier, based on actual experience.