Headliner Idea - Thoughts ?

[Christian Van H]

Originally Posted by Tropic Cat

What is used to keep the varnished strips in place?

Although I have never had the panels down on the Morris nor the Discovery in the pics, I assume the hardwood strips are screwed and glued to the overhead.

[slowshoes]

Originally Posted by FloridaWriter

I would suggest 1mm or 2mm thick white or off white Formica panels, held in place with bright finished wood battens. You could glue foam insulation to the backs of the Formica if you wanted to. It gives a nice, classy, traditional look I think. The Formica will take to the curve of the cabintop easily, it is tough, impervious to water damage, and handles heat well, it never needs to be refinished, and is easily cleaned.

I think David may be onto something here - I've actually seen this done with varnished teak battens and it looks good. Even if you use the formica and decide you don't like it for whatever reason, just reuse the battens with a material you like better, using the formica pieces for a pattern for the new material. The formica is inexpensive so you won't have wasted much money.

[bob kingsland]

This is one way to do an overhead... somewhat labor intensive, but I like the look. 1/2" teak ledger boards with a 1/4" rebate holding up fibre glass panels which I made using fake tongue and groove panels from Home Despot to make a male plug, then casting the panels from that. Gel coat and 2 layers of mat. The panels could be anything... I've seen it done by routing 1/8" deep v slots in 1/4" ply, then sealing and painting. It's a lot of work keeping the routed slots straight and aligned, and then sanding and finishing them, and if they droop at all they look really bad, so they have to be pretty stiff and well supported.



I personally like it when most of the supports go athwartships, unlike the pic Chris posted, just because that's kind of what my eye expects, I guess left over from the days of wooden boats and substantial athwartship deck beams... but that's just me.

Best, Bob S/V Restless

[Ex-Calif]

Originally Posted by bobfnbw

On our Endeavour 40 the headliner is a vinyl stapled to thin plywood that is then screwed into the deck overhead. Of course after 25 years it is pretty nasty. I have removed several pieces in order to rewire, and have decieded to change it out. I figure the plywood adds up a bit in weight while giveing no insulation or sound barrier. So I have a large roll of ultraleather, in a light shade of cream. I Figured on gluing it to sheets of closed cell foam, or polyeithelene foam, and then using a hook and loop type to secure it to the over head. Maybe a screw or two if needed. The idea would be to 1) cut weight 2) allow easy access 3) add thermal and sound insulation 4) dress up the cabin a bit.
Any reasons this is not a good idea? I have read thru the forums on headliners, but not seem anything like the question I have....
Thanks,
Bob

We have vinyl glued to thin ply, screwed through to strips epoxied to the ceiling. I haven't considered or thought about hook and loop.

A sister boat has recently had her headliner removed and sent to an auto upholsterer for basically the same design. I am very interested to see how she comes out. I like the idea of closed foam.

The original design lasted 29 years so far so unless something really compelling happens I will probably go with original.

My ply and veneer bulkheads and cabinetry has about 1 season left in it. I am not looking forward to having the boat out of the water for the work but in a way I am looking forward to tweaking a few things. Next July for a 3 month haulout is about all the planning I have done so far...

[Stevens 47]

I am using the material from Home Depot, it is used as a wall covering in bathrooms and clean rooms. I think it is a frp material made with a chopper gun. Cost is about $30 per sheet in SD. I have installed it in the stateroom and it looks good. It will have teak battens strips to finish. I used plywood firring strips. The problem with Formica is cost at least double and it does not like to be bent in multiple directions, it will tear. The stuff I am describing bent to fit the stateroom sort of dome shaped. No way I could fit Formica or plywood to the shape of it. The original was vinyl glued to open cell foam glued to the under deck. Jack

[Southern Star]

Steven is correct on all counts. Not only do the embossed GRP panels flex very well (I have bent them to fit corners inside deck hatches) and cost less than arborite, but they have another advantage: the embossed finish looks exactly like some molded ceilings and eliminates glare.

Brad

[bobfnbw]

Wow some excellent ideas and pictures. Bob that ceiling looks awesome, but since I have so much to do, and not wishing to spend a lot of time or money on it right now... will have to pass on the labor intensive stuff.
The home depot material sounds attractive. I will have to look into that.
Yeah I agree that trying to get a hook and loop system to match up can/would be hard. And the cost of quality hook and loop can be high.
Still in the planning stages of this.
Thanks for all your thoughts.
Bob

[s/v Breakaway]

Like half the posts here, I have to redo my main cabin headliner this year, as well. I was planning on using the same approach as bobfnbw. I got a big roll of white vinyl on ebay, wood strips for athwartship attachment, and blueboard closed cell insulation from Home Depot already, but installing it neatly and keeping it up there keeps me procrastinating!

[Roaring Girl]

We (well Pip really!) took down and replaced all the old insulation and headlining on RG when we bought her. The rotting, thin fake fur wasn't really cutting it anymore.

We glued 9mm closed cell, fire retardant foam all over the inside of the hull to below the water line. This is a great insulator, keeping in the cool as well as keeping us warm, depending on the climate. Over this, the headlining is usually vinyl glued to board with teak battens. You absolutely need a rigid backing for your vinyl, or to use something that has inherent rigidity like some of the solutions above. The formica is great if your starting surface is smooth - we used it to line our heads and it's great. But our cabin 'ceiling' is far from smooth, what with through-deck bolts, a significant amount of dorade vent moulding etc.

It was a Big job! Getting the old stuff off was foul - involved removing large amounts of joinery and being covered in white spirit to the elbows for over a week. Putting it up was hard - lots of overhead work. I (Sarah) can't remember what the glue was, and Pip's not here right now.

We bought the foam from a specialist plastics supplier in the UK and got a good price as we bought a lot. 6mm foam would do the job fine and be much easier to mange. The vinyl came from a UK marine supplier, and we bought a big end of roll at a boat jumble, which saved a fortune.

We're really glad we did it, and we know we can get the headlining down (relatively) easily to get at wiring, bolts etc. But it was a lot of work and it easily becomes something that makes your boat difficult if not impossible to take sailing. So think carefully before starting on it.

[pressuredrop]

bob - all the wood is giving me some wood, is that wrong? seriously when are you going to put some more of those pictures on your website?

[sarafina]

ok, carefully read thru all this wealth of info and am still at a loss for how to exactly go about this. We have no headliners to use as pattern or example... just yucky painted ply-underdeck sandwiched to the core. so in the vberth I have really nice ultra suede to line the overhead and the walls as well.

My originla plan was to epoxy redwood battens (inexpensive and not prone to rot in humid environments) to the hull where I planned on attaching the fabric. Between the battens I planned on contact cementing down the silver bubble insulation. We can't afford to give up much vertical clearance. Then I was going to stretch and staple gun the fabric to the battens, covering the insulation and finish the edges with mahogany trim to cover the staples. The mahogany trim was the priciest part of the whole thing, but all our wood is mahogany so what are ya gonna do?

Now I am concerned about the fabric sagging or waving and looking funny.

Would I be better off getting some material like the frp board and covering that with the fabric and then screwing that to the battens? Can I screw thru the frp with out cracking it? or would it need to be pre drilled? (hard to do with fabric over it?)

I will be running some wiring to ceiling lights along the battens as well.

[Roaring Girl]

Your second solution is much better - though I don't know what frp board is?! If it's likely to crack then thin ply will do it. You lose about 5mm maybe!

The holes need to go through the fabric and the ply, and then you get these little screw caps which cover the end of the screw. If you directly staple gun the fabric t the battens then if you do need to take it down you will have great trouble protecting it from tearing.

I can't believe we are the only people who've had to look behind headlining after it went up - wiring issues, leaks, new bits of kit bolted to the deck ...

[bob kingsland]

Originally Posted by pressuredrop

bob - all the wood is giving me some wood, is that wrong? seriously when are you going to put some more of those pictures on your website?

Thanks pressuredrop; glad you like it. I've been meaning to update that website for a long time, and actually have quite a few pics now to do it with. But the site was done in dreamweaver, and it's a bit tedious and takes quite a bit of time, and I'd rather be working on the boat. 90% of the website was done from film, not digital, but I have a much better digital record of more recent work now... just have to get to it.

As far as overheads go, there are a lot of different solutions but the one observation I have is that they all look pretty bad if they droop. This means vinyl has to be securely fastened to something stiffer... usually 1/4" ply. The foam backed stuff can be ok for a while, but in my experience the foam eventually deteriorates and causes problems. Perforated foam backed was all the rage for a while, but it doesn't last forever.

Best, Bob http://www.sv-restless.com

[forsailbyowner]

For upholstery purposes we use pvc foam board. It comes in 1/4" - 3/4" thicknesses. You can heat it and shape it into coutours. Is strong enough to use for seating. Light, easy to work with and comes in 4'x8' sheets. I get it from manart-hirsch.

[Stevens 47]

Would I be better off getting some material like the frp board and covering that with the fabric and then screwing that to the battens? Can I screw thru the frp with out cracking it? or would it need to be pre drilled? (hard to do with fabric over it?)

Even if you can screw through the FRP the fabric will wind onto the screw and make a mess. IMHO use the PVC foam board that forsailbyowner suggested. I have used the FRP panel, it is has a bubbly glossy finish combined with teak trim battens it gave me the clean attractive finish I was looking for.

Jack