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Can anyone give me a good reason to paint under the floorboards? I can't think of one, and unless someone can give me a reason I don't plan to. It's not just laziness or the extra time it would take. I think of the area under the floorboards as structurally crucial and if I ever have need to inspect under there paint could mask any damage or potential failure. Even sanding would make things more difficult to see.

The most expensive and nicely fininshed house will have pretty crude-looking crawl spaces and I doubt the furnace room will look all that great. I have of course never been on an expensive yacht, but my guess is the engine room or space is nowhere near as pristine as the cabins.

I didn't think of whether to paint or not. I guess inspection would be easier without paint. One unusual benefit was immediately helpful for me with paint though. My garage is a favorite haunt for spiders, especially brown recluse. Seeing them against the white painted interior was much easier than bare wood! Haha.

I Agree. It's so much easier to find loose hardware that's fallen into the bilges when painted a nice bright color.

Bill

Hi. Didn't paint any of the interior. Just glassed, gelcoat(s), nice bright, smooth finish to allow all that pretty wood to show. But, paint works, too. I would think that if you glassed inside and out, paint is just a finishing option. Good Luck. Jer, aka mtsailor, s/v Carlyn J, Flathead Lake, Montana. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtsailor95/

Well, paint and/or varnish, at least on all the parts that will be exposed to the sun. That's what I thought may have been John's logic--that some sunlight can even peek through the floorboards from time-to-time.

Fellow builders:
The major safety issue regarding any ladder is structural strength and integrity. The same should apply to below-the-floor parts of a boat. Has anyone ever seen a painted wooden ladder? Probably not even a varnished one.

Thanks to everyone for the input. I finally decided to paint the bilge with an epoxy-based bilge paint. 1. This forced me to sand some areas that needed smoothing out under there. I might be reaching around under the floorboards some day and wouldn't like getting cut by any raw edges. 2. On the off-chance that some areas, such as under the limber holes, didn't get sealed in epoxy, I made sure that the epoxy paint flowed down enough to seal them. This was probably over-kill.