Plastic Classic Forum

In Sept. 2010 I decided to rehab the head vanity aboard Early Light (my 1982 Sabre 34 MK I) It was beginning to get a little shabby and was showing her 28 years of use. The laminate on the vanity counter top was ugly at best. The fixtures were very dated and in need of upgrading as the chrome plating was getting extremely pitted.

I started by removing the teak fiddle and the original faucet/shower fixture, the whale foot pump spigot and the stainless steel sink from the vanity top. Removing the fixture left a large rectangular hole as shown here..

I plugged this using a scrap of 1/2 inch marine ply that was shaped to fit the hole and then epoxied in place using thickened West System epoxy.

A trip to a local custom kitchen and bath cabinet shop proved fruitful in obtaining a small piece of laminate cutoff for short money that was to my liking, After roughing up the original laminate with 60 grit on my random orbit sander this new laminate was applied over the original using contact cement.

A new Scandvik faucet with integrated shower head was purchased from Defender and a liquid soap dispenser for shower gel to mount on the new vanity top was purchased from ACE Hardware. The original Whale spigot for the foot pump was cleaned up and retained for reuse.

The new laminate was cut to accept the sink and the holes for the whale spigot and the soap dispenser were cut using appropriate hole saws.

The sink, fixtures, spigot and soap dispenser were installed as shown here.

The the original fiddle was reattached and the screw holes were plugged with teak bungs. I also added 3/8" x 3/8" teak quarter round molding to the back and left side of the vanity top.
This is the completed project.

Total cost of the makeover was approximately $150 and took 5 man hours exclusive of varnishing. Best of all, the Admiral likes it. :-)

Tidy! Also amazingly quick and thrifty (but without coming off as "cheap").

Always nice to get a photo-report :)

Rachel

Looking good!

Rachel wrote:Always nice to get a photo-report :)

Hmmm, all I see is the word "image", I don't see any pictures.

Looking good!

I'm planning on doing a similar rehab of our galley countertop. It's even older - coming up on 43 years now. White laminate that is looking very tired, indeed. Being that there is a little cupboard on top of the countertop, to completely re-do it would require tearing out some cabinetry, but I don't want to go that far. So I figure I'll make a template and trace around the cabinet sides, and then do exactly as you did - rough up the existing laminate and lay down a new one on top.

Maybe in the fall; maybe over the winter; maybe next year...

Right now I just want to get the current projects done and get the boat back in the water so I can GO SAILING!!

I only see "image" but imagine it looks good

For those of you only seeing "image," there is a trick that sometimes works for me (I'm seeing it this time but sometimes have this problem with other images). What I do is right click and select "view image" and then it will often load.

Thanks Rachel. But when I do that I get a new web page that wants to help me set up my own server.

Okay, that's obviously not right! I have to run right now, but if I get a chance later I'll download them and re-post them. We can't be depriving any forum members of project update photos - that's just not right.

If you are having problems viewing images, try right clicking on the word "image" and then click on "copy image location". Then paste into the URL or Location box in your browser and open the image

That worked (copying the image location into a new browser tab) - thanks.

Great job!