Headliner Replacement

	The vinyl headliner is starting to fail in my 1989 Beneteau First 285. The foam backing is breaking down and without support the vinyl looks awful. There are several ways to fix the problem. You could just tack it back up with contact cement, or put strips of wood up to attach the vinyl to, or you could replace the foam and reattach the vinyl. One side has been scraped and the other side is how it looked when I pulled the vinyl off. (it took very little effort to remove)
Another sailboat I owned had the entire interior covered in carpet. It never dripped and was warmer in winter as well as cooler in summer. So, I ripped out the vinyl and used the old pieces are templates to cut out the new carpet pieces. Using the old vinyl sections as templates worked so well that I'm going to pull off the rest of the headliner and cut the carpet at home next week.
	I chose to just replace the lower sections in the V bunk to see how the process would work. I love it! It took less than an hour to scrape the old foam off the fiberglass, just a few minutes to cut out the carpet pieces and it didn't take long at all to cover the fiberglass with contact cement.
I tried two types of contact cement. I had a gallon of regular contact cement... And I bought a gallon of vinyl contact cement at Home Depot. It's by the WW Henry Company. Home Depot only stocked the 356 Multipro Flooring Adhesive. The 263 WeatherPro Outdoor Carpet Adhesive is waterproof, but they were out of it. The 356 is water resistant. If it ever dissolves, I'll have lots more to worry about than sticking the carpet back on the walls. It shouldn't be too hard to replace all the rest of the headliner in one weekend. The WW Henry product didn't have any odor and was a lot safer than working with regular contact cement. Regular contact cement is a tremendous fire hazard as well as dangerous to use in confined spaces. I put up one section with regular contact cement and won't use it again. Both seem equally strong after one weekend.
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