Complete Interior Fit-out Labour

[Cheechako]

Originally Posted by TrentePieds

Quote: " I will keep looking".

Sensible man :-)!

2 men for six months is one "man year", normally 1,750 hours. Atoll sez 2,500 hours which fits with a 6-day work week. $35 to $50 per hour would be the going rate around here, but competent help would be hard to find since competent help tends to be in permanent rather than "precarious" employment.

There are lot'n'lots of boats ready to go for a "fully found" price of about 1/2 of what you would spend just on the labour, let alone the materials, to build the interior.

What you buy "off the shelf" won't be your ideal layout, of course, but you will soon adapt to whatever it happens to be.

TP

....And having designed my own interior on a boat, after sailing a while I realized, that my own design wasn't any more optimal than the standard design. Too much thinking ahead of time can get you in a box. There are pro's and con's to each design. Most of them work fine though.

[roverhi]

Built a Westsail from a Bare hull but with engine installed. Only took me a year of 12/7 work weeks to launch it and still and another year of not quite so dedicated labor to completely finish it. My wife had a real job but she helped in her off hours. Within a month of starting the project had more money in it than buying a completed boat from the factory and it was still pretty much a bath tub inside. You may save some time if the boat is completely rigged. Even then you are looking at 1,000's of hours of labor that will dwarf the material costs. In my case, installed the interior plywood, insulated, painted it, but hired out much of the finished bright work below. I did all the wiring, plumbing and mechanical work, varnished and installed the doors and drawers. Some of my time was wasted learning how to do stuff, occasionally tearing things out and doing it over, and I was probably a lot more particular than a professional would have been.

There was a lot of satisfaction in building the boat but it was a year and a half of labor that we could have been out cruising. It was definitely not a money saving project. Forgot to mention had an accident with a table saw that shortened four fingers luckily on my left hand. So think very carefully about the enormity of the task you are thinking of undertaking.

[TrentePieds]

In my opinion, you absolutely CANNOT do joiner-work to a standard that will make a boat resell-able UNLESS you have both the skills required, and a FULLY FOUND, shore based cabinet maker's shop to do it in. Joiner work in boats is excruciatingly more complex, difficult and time-consuming than cabinet work ashore, because in boats there are no right angles and no straight lines to speak of. A great number of the panels require the making and fitting of templates from which the final "to install" panels are made. In consequence you can add 50% to the materials cost of the installed panels and you can add 25% to the labour cost of producing templates.

Therefore, take the cost of materials and labour derived from the construction plans/specifications and, assuming materials and labour are about equal, add about 40% to your total cost calculated from the plans/specs.

TP

[Ken Z]

Working with wood for over45 yrs. I have seen a lot and am overly picky on workers. Some are fast , some are slow, some I feel I have to check their pulse. Fast can be good, if your good, slow can be bad if your bad. Prices per hr. all over the place. I would estimate a minimum of 41/2 months. painted or stained and varnish, doors drawers or cubby holes? all of these things add measurable time. Most pieces need to be scribed , patterns made of ply or cardboard prior to cutting, probably 3 cuts per piece, attaching wood to a steel hull. Just a few items of concern before even looking at your plan.If possible I would look for a more finished boat, you could easily spend $125-175,000 and not be done.It is an exciting idea . You could buy a beauty for that money... not to sound negative...

[Rick Williams]

I agree with everyone! And Alan Smith says it correctly: they can be such a seductress. My wife correctly characterizes my 38' ketch (a 6 month refit has turned into an endless rebuild..) as my mistress only no man in his right mind would spend as much time and money as I have.
You can't stop until it's done and even if you have the firm intent to "go cheap," you never do.
You can all your time fixing up a fabulous deal or you can spend your time sailing something that someone else has already spent his life fixing up!

[Zach]

Get a thickness survey of the hull done before you proceed. Most steel boats don't get their interiors stripped unless for welding work, and if they did the paint job to make it look like a lot of work was done but not all the welding work, you'll end up with a boat that needs the interior ripped out a second time.


You really can't weld much if the spray in insulation is still in place, so if the interior is missing and the spray foam is still there and not brand new... and the outside looks good, you are probably staring at a money pit to end all.

[lateral]

Bought a boat.
Didn't like how it was built.
Completely rebuilt it.
Could have bought three or four boats the same size by the time I finished , with no effort.
The hull and deck was the quick part.
It was fun, not 3-4 x fun tho.

[Nikki S]

Does anyone recall seeing youtube videos by a young couple doing a DIY refit of a similar sized boat and itemizing the cost? Vague recollection that it seemed to be taking them a year or so and costing 40-60K in materials + yard fees + living expenses (their food).....

[picklesandjesse]

In the early 80's it took 3 of us 8 months to fit out a steel boat working full time. It was 54 foot and 15ft beam. The standard of finish was as the owner wanted, for charter use, so not that fancy, but good quality work. 2 were shipwrights who were ex Halvorsen employees. But we did make louvered doors, not too many drawers. Nice wood trim around the ports etc.

[1Sunseeker]

There are an awful lot of 1/2 finished boats sitting in peoples back yards. Unless you are very capable forget it, find another and go sailing not working.

[barnakiel]

Plenty depends on what quality job, materials and finish you expect. There is no upper limit though.

If I were to do this with my team of friends, I would ask about 40k in labour, plus our costs. You cannot effectively work and live in such a hull.

Cheers,
b.

[ReminisceTheNow]

Hey, I'm not sure if necroing this thread is fully the right thing, but I didn't want to spam a new post.

I recently purchased an old boat, and unlike some of the posts in this thread, I am only trying to get a small part of my interior redone. My boat was originally sold with multiple options for a layout, and the one I ended up purchasing has a double sea berth/bunkbed layout midships across from the galley.

I'd like to replace this with a convertible dinette / U shaped bench area. I don't really know what the cost of this would be (I'm awaiting an estimate from a yard now actually, in addition to some other things) and I'm curious if it's going to be extremely expensive, or not that big a deal.

I'd assume that just modifying/adding existing elements to the interior would be much less than a complete overhaul/refit, but I really have no clue where to start here.

I appreciate any and all info.

[Cheechako]

Originally Posted by ReminisceTheNow

Hey, I'm not sure if necroing this thread is fully the right thing, but I didn't want to spam a new post.

I recently purchased an old boat, and unlike some of the posts in this thread, I am only trying to get a small part of my interior redone. My boat was originally sold with multiple options for a layout, and the one I ended up purchasing has a double sea berth/bunkbed layout midships across from the galley.

I'd like to replace this with a convertible dinette / U shaped bench area. I don't really know what the cost of this would be (I'm awaiting an estimate from a yard now actually, in addition to some other things) and I'm curious if it's going to be extremely expensive, or not that big a deal.

I'd assume that just modifying/adding existing elements to the interior would be much less than a complete overhaul/refit, but I really have no clue where to start here.

I appreciate any and all info.

It would take some good pictures to help figure this out. It depends a lot on how the bunks are done. It is likely very doable though. Simply removing bunks, leaving the lower one as a settee maybe, can't be too difficult.
Build on a back for that settee, buy or make a table and pedestal etc...

But if you are talking having a woodworker do it for you, it will likely be pretty expensive.... depending on what you want. Let's say 150 hours at $80 an hour..... that's $12000 + materials! Cushions? or at least Back cushions? If you find a good independent guy to do it at $40 an hour it's still $6000....

OTOH, If you can live with just removing the upper bunk, sitting on the existing lower bunk, buy your self a table and pedestal off Ebay, or even a table top from an antique shop, it could be fairly cheap in comparison...

Very cool boat by the way. Do it right!

[Zzmeyer]

Originally Posted by ZULU40

If anyone has a Skene's 'Elements of Yacht Design' (mines out on a borrow)
theres a calculation in hours per displacement

World's best book. I have it handy, but having trouble finding that section. I did find one that did a complete build out and how to estimate weights, but not time. If you point me, I'll find it and forward it.

[ReminisceTheNow]

Originally Posted by Cheechako

But if you are talking having a woodworker do it for you, it will likely be pretty expensive.... depending on what you want. Let's say 150 hours at $80 an hour..... that's $12000 + materials! Cushions? or at least Back cushions? If you find a good independent guy to do it at $40 an hour it's still $6000........
Very cool boat by the way. Do it right!

I definitely want to do it right, and I plan on having this boat for many, many years.

That said, 12k is significantly more than I'd expect to spend just for a dinette (that should have an existing design I imagine they could follow since they came standard). I do believe the local rate is $80/h, but is 150 hours an accurate estimate?

If it is, then could I potentially save on costs by demoing/clearing out the current area myself?

My main concern is, as it is right now, we don't have a foul weather table/seating area. The cockpit isn't fully covered (no dodger/bimini) and that's our only other table besides the nav station, which I currently use as a desk for myself.

From looking things over and speaking with the previous owner, there was a folding table that went down in front of the lower bunk. He removed it, but gave me the hardware that goes on the wall for it (previous owner is absolutely fantastic, has given me tons of info and advice and is overall a class act, the boat is in very good shape, just needs some slight modifications for my use cases).

I could potentially try to rebed that in the wall and reinstall a table on it myself if it's gonna be more than a couple thousand I suppose.