Galley

Before……

The fridge was dead, and dealt with right away. The dinette was OK. Curtains, again, nice but not our thing. They will go soon.

After the fridge the improvements we made were: Lighting, flooring, DW (same destination as the fridge) and the 4 burner cooktop.

Lighting. The goofy little light went away and was replaced with 3 LED strips on a dimmer.

Eventually we’d like to install actual teak and holly flooring, for right now we freshened it up with some new vinyl, right over the top. Sort of reminiscent of the parquet flooring you see in the 70’s Taiwan boats… Cheap, fast and effective. We don’t need a dishwasher. There’s two of us and the space can be put to better use. I plan on fabricating a door for the opening to match the rest of the cabinets.

I don’t need a 4 burner cook top, I am not cooking Thanksgiving dinner for 12 people. (Yes, I am the cook in the house). What I need more, like I have at home and in the motorhome is a culinary “workbench”. Cutting board and a hole into the garbage. To cook on a two burner induction cook top. So, off to the “exotic lumber” place to purchase a few Sapele boards which is a mahogany substitute. Similar in color and texture for a lot less $$.

Very happy with the cutting board. So under it live the garbage can (under the hole) the recycling can and the vacuum cleaner with accessories. I wanted the front to look just like the rest of the galley, but two small doors like under the sink would have not allowed easy in and out of the large items. So I built a door that LOOKS like the sink cabinet front but in fact is 2 feet wide…..

The panels are plywood, the “frames” are sapele. Hinged on the left and the OEM catch.

Then I built up the fake panels out of 1/4″ luan and Afromosia veneered plywood.

The hardest part was the trim. Nowhere on the shelf, including SAM’s, and custom shops didn’t want to quote me for 12 feet worth….. So I ended up making it myself with the table saw and router. Got darn close.

And here is the final product. I am VERY happy with this…….. I “split” the lower panel to make it look like two doors, and I was able to buy two original handles from a fellow HOF member.

Note the new curtains. JC Penneys on sale off the shelf French pleats. All they needed was hemming which a skilled friend with proper machine did for us for a small fee….. I did replace the tracks as the OEM tracks require the sliders to be sewn in to EVERY pleat, which is a huge amount of work. So we went with sliders with rings and hooks in the curtains. It’s all out of sight so it works just fine. (There’s over 80 feet of curtains in the salon, galley and MSR).

This is it for now in the galley. (December 2020)