Pontoon Stuff Articles - Helpful tips and insight. This section will display certain articles and information relevant to pontoon boats and how to restore them, whether or not you should rebuild the one you've got and other bits of stuff we think you might find important.

Pontoon Boat Article 1: Should you restore a used pontoon or buy a new pontoon boat.

Okay, so we are a bit biased on this one seeing as we make it our business helping customers with the restoration of their pontoons but we get this question a lot and wanted to make a point in answering it truthfully.  The quick answer is, pontoon boats are basically two tubes with an aluminum frame, wood deck, some aluminum railing and an outboard motor.  So long as your pontoon tubes, railing and engine are in decent shape you can rebuild the pontoon boat you already own or go out and buy an older pontoon, restore it with our pontoon seating and pontoon parts and have a pontoon boat that is comparable to a pontoon you'd spend $15-$20,000 on from a dealer.  If you own an older pontoon that needs to be fixed up you can spend between $1,000-$3000 upgrading it to "new boat" status.  You can usually buy a used pontoon with worn out carpet and furniture with a trailer for less than $3000, preferably less (try to get an older pontoon boat for around $1500 if you need to replace everything)  Remember, you don't need to rebuild the pontoon yourself, hire the neighbor kid to tear the deck off or have a local upholstery shop put the boat back together, we'll ship your new pontoon seats and supplies anywhere you'd like so don't hesitate to employ a local handy man to do the project for you if you don't want to do it yourself.  Of course if you've got some carpentry ability, you can tear down and rebuild the entire pontoon boat in a weekend or so. 

So, if that was the short answer here is our long winded answer...

In all honesty, what we here at PontoonStuff.com are trying to do is create an entirely new market within the pontoon boat industry.  We want to drive customers to restore the hundreds of thousands of pontoon boats that are currently cast aside as "junk" or to rebuild the used pontoon boats they already own rather than going out and buying another used pontoon or spending the money on a new pontoon boat.  The goal of our business is to convince you, our potential customers to build your own pontoon boat using the framework off a older used pontoon boat.  Restoring a pontoon boat is actually a very simple process and you don't even need to do it yourself, hundreds of our customers have their new pontoon seating and accessories shipped to a local upholstery shop or to a local handy man whom they pay hourly to fix up their pontoon boats.  The process is pretty straight forward, most of the time required to restore your pontoon boat is in the tear down process.  Removing the existing furniture, console, railing, side trim and carpeting/decking are the most time consuming and require the most effort.  Now you may decide that your carpet and deck are in fine shape and that all you need to do is replace seating.  If this is the case then re-building a pontoon boat is very simply.  Just remove the sun damaged or rotted pontoon furniture and stick your new pontoon seats in place.  Be sure to clean up the carpeting first and if you need help coming up with the best replacement pontoon furniture layout just send us an email or fax with your current layout and we'll come up with some sample furniture designs.  Now if you are going all out and replacing the pontoon flooring, pontoon carpet, furniture and pontoon top you'll have a little more time invested but in terms of money saved you'd be amazed at what you can accomplish.  It came as a big surprise to us when we first built this website that the majority of our customers purchased large quantities of our premium pontoon furniture.  In all honesty we were expecting to sell a few of our least expensive seats to a lot of people but the opposite has happened, we've ended up selling complete pontoon boat interiors to customers and most have chosen our premium pontoon seats.  What I believe has happened is that people are beginning to recognize more and more the opportunity available to them by simply restoring their used pontoon boat rather than spending $20,000+ on a new pontoon boat, either going into debt or liquidating some assets to pay for a boat most pontoon boat enthusiasts tend to use infrequently.  While most pontoon boaters use their pontoons for recreation and simply enjoying some swimming and sun bathing with the family they do want a boat that is clean, comfortable and new looking.  We provide our customers with all the pontoon supplies needed to upgrade any older pontoon boat to "new boat" status, saving you thousands of dollars in the process. Think about it, if you have some carpentry ability or know someone who does, you can re-build a used pontoon boat and make it every bit as nice as many of the new pontoon boats found in dealer showrooms for around 12% of the cost of new.  For example, the pontoon boat pictured in the link below cost less than $2,100 to completely restore, a similar new pontoon would cost you around $20,000, that's 10% of the cost of new.  If your engine, tubes and railing are in decent shape save the money, restore your pontoon and take a trip around the world with the $17,900 in savings!