I purchased my current boat in 2009, knowing that it needed the interior to be redone. In February of 2016, we found this shop, Four Seasons Custom Sewing located in Howell MI at the Detroit Boat show, that seemed like they would be the perfect shop to do the job. The carpet and seats were this yellow/brown color and so it was decided that during the winter of 2016-17, the boat was going to get totally rebuilt.
We decided to change very minimal things based of the original design of the interior. I didn't like a few aspect of how the interior was originally designed. A few of the things that bugged me most was the excessive stitching on the cushions (Red pen). I found that it just attracted unwanted dirt and grime in the threads and it just created another opportunity for the threads to pull apart so I am eliminating them. I also really dislikes the verticle slats that were in the lower half of the cushions on the back seats and the passenger seat (Blue pen). I thought they aged the boat quite a bit so we are going to make them flat instead of the slatted look.
Colors of the Seats! (Not the flooring I am using) above is the SeaDek floor which I talk about why I am not using now below.
Once we got out slotted dates for the boat to be worked on, we started pulling apart the interior. (We did this to save on labor costs).
For the flooring, we were originally going to put SeaDek in it for the flooring. I'm not sure if you know what that is but it is basically a soft foam like material. There are a few reasons that changed my mind. 1.) Cost. I was going to be nearly 2K in just the exposed areas of the floor. What I mean by "exposed" areas? The area that you can see with all of the seats in their place. So this wouldn't get underneath the seats in storage areas, in the engine compartment or any place that you wouldn't visually see. It would've been a tremendous amount of money to be able to get every surface area on the floor. Plus why put the brand new SeaDek next to the carpet that it wore out, 13 years old and needs to be replaced and I just don't have the money to spend that it would take to cover the entire boat after the interior job. 2.) Durability/Reliability. I was worried that the floor was going to start peeling or wearing out after a couple of seasons. I didn't want to spend thousands of dollars on something SeaDek wasn't going to really cover. They could give me a basic warranty on the material but because the boat did not come with it installed and it was an extra add on, they wouldn't go any further than a year, which is a big deal breaker in my opinion. The boat spends its time on a covered hoist so the likelihood that something would happen isn't that likely but I am not willing to take that chance with something that would cost so much.
So I ended up liking this wicker weave floor. The upholstery recommended it being easy to keep clean and cool on you feet in the summer. I wanted anything that would get me out of the conventional carpet because the amount that we use our boat it seems like the carpet never has an opportunity to dry. If you click on the link below it is the gray colored one or "color #4". http://infinitylwv.com/view-our-collections/nggallery/collections/wicker-weave#
Just a fair warning, ripping out the carpet isn't that hard, it is getting the glue of the carpet off of the fiberglass. It is a PITA!!! It took 4 days (5-6 hours per day) just to get it clean enough for the new floor to be laid down. The upholstery place wanted an extra 1K to do this so I just decided to save the money and do it myself.
I used:
"Purdy Carbide 4 Edge Scraper" http://www.purdy.com/products/prep-tools/premium/carbide-4edge-scrapers (Bought at my local Sherwin Wiliams)
I also bought a ton of extra blades for it (Bought at my local Sherwin Wiliams)
Lots of MEK cleaner (we tried Acetone but MEK seemed to work a lot better)
and a lot of rags and muscle
Some more pictures of the seats not yet put together
Here is a picture as you can see the extra stitching that I talked about removed. I think it provides a much cleaner look IMO. There wasn't anything that was changed about the front seats beside adding the gray into the bow filler cushion. It was originally plain white and I thought it just looked boring.
Here is the final product. These photos are from the night that we brought the boat home.
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