Painting & Finishing

After I'd finished coating the Pirogue with epoxy I was almost tempted to varnish rather than paint it as the ply looked surprisingly good considering that it was just £8.95 per sheet from Wickes. A cup of tea later and I opted for the paint rather than varnish as it's easier to get a good finish with paint and I don't know what green varnish would look like but I bet it's not nice...
I would have been more than happy to leave it at this point and have called the project complete apart from the fact that the epoxy had to be covered with something to prevent long-term ultra violent light damage.

For paint Uncle John suggests that you use exterior house paint (water based). This water based bit caused me to think a bit. Now all the exterior paints I've come across have been oil-based - a sod to clean up after and smelly (I don't get on with High VOC paint - and I can think of better ways to get stoned) so the idea of being able to find a water based paint appealed.
Now in America I can go to Home Depot and buy a can of 100% acrylic exterior latex (water based) paint however, in B & Q I got "You want what pal? Never heard of it we got white gloss, that do ya?" Needless to say I didn't want white gloss (maybe next time - it could look quite nice against a dark deep blue...) so I checked out all the diy webpages and local stores and warehouses. There was a point during my "thinking" time that I spoke to Uncle John about paint having originally rung about scarfing joints and epoxy.
It came down to one thing, as long as it's covered it didn't matter much in what as long as it offered some UV protection. Homebase Quick Drying acrylic paint won. It was cheap and I could get the colours I wanted. It's an interior paint but as the Pirogue will live under cover when not in use and can be touched up a couple of times a year I didn't see the point in getting stressed over a couple of coats of paint.

As you can see from the picture I chose a fairly light green for the inside as I thought white might be a touch bright on a sunny day and I didn't want the boat to stand out (too much...) when it was being used. As for the outside I wanted a black bottom and another green (similar to British Racing Green) for the sides. I do tend to favour green and black generally so the whole colour scheme was probably decided before I had even started looking at paint.
I did have fun though looking at all the different colour options (I think I'm being subjected too to many decorating programmes by Mrs Levelt).
Usually wherever I am at home I have a small shadow that follows behind and this day was no different except that she'd never turned up in a finished Pirogue before!

Launch Day