We were going to head down to the boat to paint the walls of the guest berth but before we could, Frances reminded us that we needed to clean all the walls and wood trim first. We agreed, of course, and Frances filled our boat bag with all kinds of cleaners, rags and sponges. Painting is rewarding but scrubbing walls isn't.
Anyway, as usual, she was right. Cleaning all of that old wall covering was certainly worthwhile, as you can see from the way our sponge looked after the first swipe.
As we cleaned we began to realize that a lot of other prep work was going to be needed before any paint or varnish is applied. The wiring for the new reading light for the upper guest berth was going to be hidden in a plastic wiring raceway and will have to be installed first. (The wiring for the reading light in the v-berth is hidden by that plastic raceway shown in the photo above.)
The wiring (power and cable TV) for the television will also be hidden in another section of plastic raceway on the opposite wall. As it is, those wires are all exposed. If we're going to refinish this area, we might a well do it right.
There are also numerous holes where stuff was mounted over the years. We'll fill the holes and smooth over a few rips in the wall covering with spackling compound. Once we finish all of this, there will be no exposed wires anywhere and those walls will look as smooth and even as the galley and head walls do.
As we were disconnecting everything, removed this amazingly ugly 1970s era RV reading light that was hidden away up in one corner. This was original equipment on the boat and there were several more of them that we previously replaced. The light comes from a 12-volt tail light bulb that heats up to about 200 degrees after a few minutes' use. One neat feature is that if you fell asleep in your RV and left a few of these lights on, the RV battery would certainly be dead in the morning.
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