Removing the dumb bunk

Happy in his work

Our 37 foot Tollycraft is nearly 50 years old, no longer in production, and considered a classic. It's a tri-cabin, which means it has a two cabins separated fully by a salon. There's a V-berth in the forepeak plus a large aft cabin with a double bed. And... a third, single bunk in the aft cabin. This struck us as exceptionally useless. Like, who is going to sleep in the cabin with us? We call it the dumb bunk.

Aft cabin at time of purchase, with dumb bunk on right

Bunk now half gone, exposing exhaust pipe

Mike wanted to remove two thirds of this bunk and replace it with a built-in desk. (The remainder holds the port water tank and has to stay put.) I agreed, but was nervous about Mike doing the work himself. I confess to worrying about the finished product versus boat valuation and had a confusing dream about having to move back in with my cabinetmaker first husband. 

But Mike won the day. Having volunteered at the Carpenter's Boat Shop, he has good boat deconstruction skills, he brought great tools, and was able to borrow the rest of what he needed. Demolition began on Sept. 26.

The new desk - which took two orders to get right, just like the galley cabinet - had to be assembled and modified to fit against the bulkhead and over the exhaust pipe. There was a short argument about desk legs, which I think I won.

Desk assembly

Two side improvements: Mike removed the fiddly, colonial-style railing running atop the chest of drawers, leaving a clean lip with nice lines. And he reversed the curtains so that they're off-white on the inside with the psychedelic side facing out. It really lightened and calmed the room. This is a big cabin that now feels even bigger.

Next came finishing, sanding, staining, spot-painting, carpet-fitting, cushion-truncating, and adding molding. Many trips to many stores. We had to find a wheel-less desk chair - comfortable for long sittings but slender in profile. And a wireless keyboard, because the desk is shallow and has a pull-out typing shelf. All of this took much longer than expected, especially the molding. 

Revised aft cabin

For the record, East Bay shopping is soul-sucking and full of freeways. 

The last piece was the rug, which sadly came by FedEx via the Richmond USPS. This post office gets one star on Yelp along with the warning, "Don't ever go here." They don't answer the phone, they have a broken on-line package tracking function, they don't deliver to the marina if they don't feel like it (which is pretty much always), and if you show up in person they'll refuse to talk to you and refer you to the broken website. We have a coffee machine lost forever in there, currently under investigation. But we did finally extract the rug from them.

Above is the final project, with desk and dog nest replacing the useless dumb bunk. Bravo, Mike! 

P.S. The dog is all stressed out.