Getting this workspace space ready

One thing we really wanted was a boat that we could work on at home. First of all, not having to pay dock fees or storage fees is a great way to save money, but also, the amount of time we have to work on this is somewhat limited by sunlight, work and available time. So not having to haul tools somewhere else, and set things up just to waste time with all that, we wanted to work on it in our own back yard.  But we had a situation ---

The cypress trees. We actually had 3 of them there at one time (when we first bought the house), but when we built our little Stardust vardo, we cut one down.  These trees provide shade, which was nice, but every other quality about them was not good. They continually drop crap all over the yard and anything placed underneath, they restrict the light coming to our solar panels, and they are causing problems with the concrete. We didn't want to park our boat underneath them only to have to continuously clean the whole thing on a weekly basis. Dale's been campaigning to get rid of these trees ever since we bought the house, so now he's thrill they're gone.

This is how it looked when we bought the house ---

they were so overgrown!

Then we had the first one taken down about 7 years ago, and trimmed back the others.

So this was a VAST improvement.  But then we were left with 2 more.....

Before.......

During.......

and 

AFTER!

now it's ready for a boat!

It surprised me that Dale went ahead and backed the boat in right away, without waiting for me to "help" guide him in. Hmmm...probably on purpose.  But now, we have our boat pulled in, and all our tools at hand!

Sanded, holes plugged, primed and ready for a coat of paint!

Boat Project

So we have decided to embark on a new project - we bought a 1976 Fiberform flybridge, 26' long.  Here's our first pic as we drove it home from down by San Diego:

We decided we would like to learn more about boats and originally were going to look for a boat at around 15K - 25K, but knowing that it was going to be a money pit at any level, decided that if we stuck below 10K for a project, we would feel OK if we ended up ditching the project. So when we saw this one on CL for 5K, we wnet out to look at it.  What an ugly boat! all kinds of work to be done, but the engine appears good, and it's all workable. So we bargained and ended up with $4200 as a sales price, and we drove it off.

We have a LOT of work to do on this, but we're excited to learn and get things fixed. I've started with the hull - the previous owners had painted a rubbery, horrible paint over lots of bad bondo, with an attempt to make it look better than it was.  Which was fine, but first job is getting that nasty white rubbery paint off, sand, and repaint.  

. 

I have half done-- and primed, ready for a background coat:

I've got a plan for this boat:  essentially, if we "restore" this boat, we'll end up with a 45+ year old boat that won't be worth a lot, but if we give it a theme and make it more a novelty, we may get someone who really wants it as a party theme boat. So we're going for a tiki theme. This is one idea for the hull paint job:

So that's the plan!  We are going to pretty much update every single part of this boat, learning about processes as we go. What we'd love to do is get a larger boat after retirement, with plans to live aboard and do the Grand Loop, so this is a learning project for us!  We so far are considering this as the name: