Another common problem with 20 year old Com-Pacs is that the interior paint
begins to chip and flake off. As you can see in the pictures here, my
CP-16 was no exception. The remedy was easy, but somewhat labor
intensive. I began by scraping the loose paint from the interior walls
with a small synthetic grinding wheel chucked into my cordless drill. Prepare
yourself for a mess! Empty the entire contents of the boat before
starting this project, and be sure to wear eye protection and a particle
mask. If your experience is like mine, the flaking will be predominantly
on the cabin roof - the cabin walls are less textured and for some reason held
the paint better. They were still quite dingy, however, so I decided to
repaint the entire cabin interior. After grinding off the loose paint,
vacuumed the entire cabin - floors, ceiling and walls - and I gently wiped the
surface down with a damp cloth to remove as much dust as possible.I chose to paint the ceiling bright white to reflect light and the walls a light beige, and used the hull/deck joint as the dividing line between the two. My decision was based almost entirely on the colors of extra paint I had laying around in the basement. The "proper" type of paint has been an ongoing discussion on the Com-Pac list-serve, and after reading the posts, it appears that any type of paint -- exterior or interior -- will do. In fact, some people have even primed the ceiling and walls with Kilz primer and never recoated with paint. Call my job a "test study;" I did NOT use primer, but used two coats of white exterior latex paint on the ceiling and two coats of interior satin finish "putty beige" on the walls storage shelf and quarter berths. I used a small trim brush to get into the tight spots and a 4" roller on the rest. Do yourself a favor -- save your back and use a roller extension to paint under the recesses of the quarter berths. You can reach all the way to the back of the quarter berth with a 5 foot roller extension (even a removable broom handle with a threaded end should do the trick). This is much better than crawling head first down the quarter berth with a paintbrush in one hand and roller in the other!!
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The results are a dramatic improvement.
The "putty beige" color roughly matches the beige gelcoat of my deck,
and the teak strips that screw into the hull/deck joint hide the division
between the two colors nicely (the teak strips are just visible here under the
ports). The ceiling is still a bit to white - it's pretty stark and I
certainly wouldn't want the entire cabin this color. But the beige tones
it down a bit, and the white ceiling does seem to reflect light inside the
cabin.
