I put the second coat of gray primer on the inside of the boat.
Not too cold to paint
I brought a small space heater out to the garage. It’s a little one that has a fan that blows air over hot electric coils, rather than one that heats oil inside a radiator. I’d tried a radiator one last year that didn’t seem to make much difference in the garage. This little blower guy raised the temperature from 49° to 51° in the time it took to paint, maybe an hour or a little less.
Clean brushes and roller to use again
The second coat worked well to cover the underlying wood grain, I’m happy to report. I figured it would.
At some point I decided to use a gray primer instead of white. I’m not really sure even now why I decided this. I guess I was thinking that white primer would be better for the yellow that I’m planning to use inside the boat and gray would be better for the red that I’m planning to use on the outside. But no way am I going to buy two different primers, so I figured the gray would be okay for the yellow as well, while I didn’t think the white would be okay with the red. So that’s it. Probably.
Paint and painting supplies
Home Depot did not stock the acrylic exterior gray primer that I wanted, so I ordered it, hoping it would arrive for the weekend before Halloween. It did not arrive for the weekend. As a backup alternative to painting, I thought I would buy the 1× material I’ll be using to make oars, but it was an otherwise busy weekend and I didn’t buy anything. I didn’t do anything for the boat.
First coat
So the next weekend brought a very busy Sunday, but I did have time on Saturday to tape the wales and apply a first coat of primer to the inside of the boat. I was quite surprised by how much wood grain still showed through after the first coat. I’d always planned on applying more than one coat, so it’s not a huge problem, but I really thought the first coat would cover better, especially with the gray primer. Also, the marine caulk didn’t take the paint nearly as well as I expected, despite being labelled as being paintable.
First coat, stern
Unless I can find time on weeknights, it’s going to be like a month of painting. I’m worried about the weather, since I need it to be above freezing for the paint. The garage was in the upper fifties on Saturday. Let’s hope for warm autumn weekends.
