I have been looking for a pontoon for a while.  New price to high due to my wife just had a baby.  Long story short my father in law drives for UPS and found this boat.  After seeing this and debating I decided to give it a try.  It is a 1981 crest with a 50 hp motor.  Plate says it is 25 foot.  Talked the guy down from $800 to $650.  That included the trailer, and motor.  It has been an adventure, but well worth it.

I took extra tools, straps, and an air tank.  Had to pull it 80 miles.  But now it is home.  This is a picture of my wife and son.

Carpet has been laid and on boat.  Pretty fun.  Much easier than getting algie/crust off toons. Took 9 gallons muratic acid, and 2 gallons coil cleaner. 

Next picture is after cleaning the rails with coil cleaner and painting the sides. They were light blue, but metal in good shape. First time at using a pop rivit gun.

Father in law found old seats without bases when making a delivery.  Got them for free, but they did not have the bases/compartments.  The seams were coming apart, so got an old sewing machine and marine thread.  Lot of time, but it worked.

Took four trips to finally get it ready for fishing.  First time went out found reverse not working.  Friend/mechanic fixed reverse gear for me. I'll describe in another post.  Second time had a short in the wiring.  Third time weather problems.  Fourth time steering problems. Ended up purchasing new steering and cable from PS.

Notice my canopy/tarp.  $4.00.  it will work for this year.  My wife is a red head, needs the shade.

As you can see I built boxes and console.  No gadges yet.  Wondering what I should get.  Did use MY GPS and boat goes 11-12 mph. 

Rigged boat up for trolling.  This is the biggest fish so far. 13.5 pounds from Barren River.   So far boat has been out 22 times.  Total investment $1500.  Including $300 to rebuild trailer. New barings/seals, cross braces. Back brace only had one eye of bolt holding. Front braces had 2 places paper thin.  Looking to  add trolling motor, gauges, and live well next year.

***Realigned text, resized pics as best as I could but some were not correct size, had to crop a lot of white space out of pics, then resize best I could, some were lot better than others for resizing***

Hello Kevin (aka KEVnKY), welcome to the forums. Got a great bunch of people here. Glad to see you come join us. Be sure to post some pics of your boat(s) in the 'Show Off Your Pontoon' section (or rebuild depending if you have before/after pics), as we'd love to see them. Also tell us your story in How did you come to join the forums? (just click on the red link and tell us all about it ).  You probably did like a lot of us have. Looking for pontoon accessories and either found it through www.PontoonStuff.com ebay site or web store. Jim (administrator) and Andrea (pontoongirl) Myers (our hosts) have excellent staff members to help them help you find whatever it is you're looking for your boat and has excellent shipping and customer service. Have fun and happy boating. Be sure to edit your signature line to include details of your boat and motor so folks won't have to ask for it if questions arise later. Also visit our other sections like Where are you? so others will know what part of the country you're from. If you need any help editing your uploading your photo's, check out our primer here How To Upload Your Pontoon Boats Image, if you need help resizing them check out Software that helps you with pics & such. Be sure to review the posting rules and policies of the forum. If you have any issues with seeing photo's this link will explain it Issue regarding seeing photo’s on site. Please read all the posting rules. Some forums have additional specific rules for that category.

I did the best I could with the smaller pics, if you got the originals (without modifications) you can email them to me or any other admin/moderator and we'll fix them up so they'll be much clearer than those that are blurry. You did real well on the boat/trailer repairs and you just showed that members can find good deals out there, but the rest, such as skills, depends on the end user or having the right friends (like scbadiver helping me with mine including the whole cast at pontoonstuff.)

Welcome to the forum, look like you and your family are enjoying all your work already!

great job anf thanks for sharing