Boat Interior Transformation

Welcome onboard this transformation tour of our self-renovated boat home!

As a short recap, Seabird is a custom-made steel boat built in the 1970s, and we have performed a major renovation on her during the past 5 years. If you want to read what has happened in this project earlier, we recommend checking some of our older boat build posts. In this post we will show you for comparison pictures of her interior when we got her and what she looks like now, after countless hours of work.

Our interior style can be summarised as light Nordic style. It doesn’t look like a traditional boat inside, instead it feels more like a modern Nordic apartment bobbing in the waves.

Kitchen and living room

When you step into our home you are greeted with a spacious area, that makes our kitchen/living room/guest room. We decided to modernise the galley quite a bit, so most of the old kitchen was torn down, and yes unfortunately the funky red stove was out of order. We even have a modern fridge, a dishwasher, and a washing machine.

Galley with a funky stove and indoor cockpit

Bedroom

When it’s time to sleep we head out to the back of the boat. This space got a total makeover, and we are wonderfully happy with the result. Big triple glazed windows allow us to enjoy a panorama view of the sea around us. The big bed is super comfy and there is lots of storage space underneath it.

`View from bed towards front of the boat.`

Hallway

Connecting the two big spaces of the boat we have a hallway packed with storage space on both sides. The right side has some cupboards, while the left side has been reserved for a baby/toddler’s bed. We’ll add an image of it once it’s ready.

Bathroom

Okay, so the old bathroom looked kind of cool with it’s nice blue tiles, but the rest of it wasn’t so pretty. It was of course better than the “bucket toilet” some boats have. As humans we have to go to the toilet several times a day, so we saw it fit to make it an awesome toilet/shower/sauna combo. It was a puzzle to piece it all together, and the result is a very compact multifunctional room the way we love it.

Wanted to share a small glimpse of the renovation process, it is messy.

`A perfectly fitting sauna door for the toilet.`

The darker colours of our bathroom were inspired by traditional smoke saunas in Finland, but don’t worry this sauna has a chimney! Our sauna works with a diesel stove with rocks piled on it securely, and once heated you can throw water on it, and you get nice ‘löyly’ (steam). We could write a whole post about the sauna, it’s so amazing. Finnish people are sauna people, and the Baltic Sea is cold most of the time, so you really need to have one.

`Ah, the sauna stove, warming us before and after a swim.`

`For the time being a bucket is our shower, in addition to the sea.`

Systems

Now it’s time for some technical stuff, the systems that really enable us to live out at sea.

Electricity: We have two 300 W solar panels connected to an 8 kW AGM battery pack and from there the electricity runs through a 48 V inverter converting it to normal 230 V AC and enabling a 3 kW max power. As a back-up we have a petrol-powered generator. During the winter we buy electricity from the harbour.

Heating system: First of all, the hull is insulated with 50 mm thick extruded polystyrene (Finn foam) we don’t want that precious heat escaping. The old stove was replaced by a Mitsubishi heat pump, as it can be used to heat up the boat even when no one is home. As a backup the sauna stove can be used for heating. Someday our floor heating system will also function. If you sail in the north and stay in ice for winter, you really need to have a good heating system.

Water systems: We have a reverse osmosis-based desalination system, simply put we have a water maker that filters freshwater out of saltwater. We can make around 25 L of freshwater per hour. The water then flows into our two 110 L water tanks, and it can be heated with our 50 l boiler up to 60 °C.

Waste systems: All our grey water goes into the original 150 L greywater tank, which fills up quite quickly when you do laundry. Our new toilet uses water, to be specific it is a macerator toilet, so we converted the old 700 L water tank into a septic tank. Our toilet uses 1-1.7 L of water each time.

Hope you liked the tour, and Joe especially is sending you some good energy for your own renovation projects!