Refinishing cabin sole

As a good winter can't use the boat as much anyway project I've been refinishing the badly worn cabin sole. I've learned a few things that are almost too silly to have to learn. Oh well. I started by sanding the upper floor by the pilothouse wheel. This works fine, but with my primitive sander that doesn't have the nice vacuum dust collector system, the inside of the boat got covered with dust. Plus, getting to all the nooks and crannies is really tough.

I varnished those up very nicely with 4 coats of a gloss oil based spar urethane.

But, lesson learned, when I prepared to tackle the bigger lower sole, I realized that using stripper might be one hell of a lot easier. So it is. I can highly recommend using Citristrip, I think it is called, for working quickly and completely and not being too nasty to smell or deal with. I stripped the whole lower floor just today. Put it on, left it on for a few hours, came back and using a plastic scraper it easily came right off.

After wiping it everywhere with paper towels, I went over the whole thing with a cloth rag with some mineral spirits on it. Wow, how much easier, and better, it is. SO easy, in fact, there is no reason to not do it whenever your sole looks drab. This bottom picture is the stripped cabin sole awaiting varnish. I'll take some post varnish pictures to finish this off. It looks amazing.