Pontoon Boat Floor

Have you ever seen the film Babies?  It's a film that follows four babies from around the world - Namibia, Mongolia, Tokyo, and San Francisco.  It's a film with no words, only moments of their lives captured on film.  I watched it on Netflix a few years ago, and it made a big impression with me.  I remember thinking I could identify with the baby from Mongolia, whose family are nomadic farmers, surrounded by open landscapes and cows, goats, and chickens.  That of all the babies, I envied his life the most.  There's a great scene where the baby from Mongolia is lying awake in the yurt, and a rooster comes wandering in.  The baby calmly watches the rooster for the few moments he is on film.  When I talked to a friend of mine who watched the film, who is an urban person, he had the opposite response, and said he felt that growing up in Mongolia would be lonely, that there was too much open space, and that the scene with the rooster near the baby made him nervous.   I thought of this when I took the photo above, of my baby cousin sleeping peacefully on mom's porch as one of the hens breaks the rules and tried to join the party last weekend.  I wonder if when my cousin grows up, she will watch Babies and enjoy the rooster scene too?  

Not everybody got to lounge around with the chickens last Saturday.  Some of us were busy putting a new floor on mom and dad's pontoon boat.  And by some of us, I don't mean me, although I did frequently check in on the progress and offer refreshments and encouragement to those that were working.   In the photo above, Byron is working to remove the railing from the boat, after already taking out the console and roof.  

Once the old carpet was ripped up, the floor was sanded and the leaf blower was used to blow away all the dust.  Good job, Leigh!

Brandon and his team of child laborers assistants used wood putty to fill in some of the cracks in the plywood floor.  

Then the fun part!  While Jamie poured out the glue "Jackson Pollock style", Brandon and Byron used rollers to spread it over the floor.  

Once the glue was applied, the vinyl floor (MeriDeck brand) was spread out and smoothed with a push broom.  

The photo above is the "before" picture.  

This is the "after" photo.  Looks good, right?  This project was proposed as a birthday present for mom, and the whole family, including cousins, assembled for the installation.  Byron, Jamie, and dad started early Saturday morning, and by the time Brandon and I got there around noon, they already had the console taken out, which was a big job.  Taking the boat apart was the hardest part of this project, because sticking the vinyl down went pretty fast.  By dark they had the floor on, but it was the next day before everything was put back together again.  

Now, if only the motor would run!