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Cabinet Alterations on a Yacht-Remodel project

September 4th, 2009 Leave a comment Go to comments

It’s been several years ago that I was hired by a individual boat owner to make cabinet changes on their yacht. This was the first time that anyone had ever called desiring to have an alteration done on the existing cabinets of a large vessel docked in a marina. It didn’t take but just a couple seconds for me to set up the appointment. What was I thinking? “These people have money to spend, remodeling this yacht may be challengingly, but it will be worth it.”


To my surprise, I discovered that new cabinet doors needed to be made because the existing ones would not work with the remodel design. We custom made raised panel cherry wood doors to matche the existing ones.

The interior of the boxes were made from melamine board that had a wood grain pattern. I knew there was no way for me to find an exact match; so I had to stain real cherry wood veneer in order to match the pattern. This actually turned out to be a fun project even though I miss calculated the amount of hours it took.

The challenge came into play when the specifics were given to me as to what the yacht owner had in mind for the cabinet changes that needed to be made. Suddenly, what I thought was going to be an easy task turned into a considerable amount of finagling.
The reason I say that is because his plan included a lot of things that he desired to get out of the cabinet renovation which were very specific. Because the cabinet space on the boat was so limited, I had a few reservations about doing the job. In spite of my concerns, I took the project on anyway.

Long story short, I spent more time on the yacht than I had originally anticipated. Just the procedure to get into the harbor took additional time that I had not counted on in my estimate. The first day I arrived where the boat was docked there were people working on the bottom of the boat and I had to wait for them to clear their gear away so I could get on the yacht. I made less than I had planned, but the satisfaction of doing a job well done on this cabinet alteration project made up for the money that was lost.

I finished the yacht cabinet alterations and the repairs went very well. The owner had been out of town and when he finally arrived the boat was completely finished as I had promised. He called me up and said that the yacht cabinetry looked great and that he would be putting the final payment in the mail.

Categories: Cabinet Making
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