Bathroom update

All the foam in the bathroom has vanished behind the finish work.

I had some green bead board left over from the kids cabin and installed that for the ceiling. I think I'll tone the green down a little and paint it a more neutral color such as a tan. The access panel for the 4" exhaust fan is finished along with the port light trim ring. I also finished the trim work around the cabinet. It's so nice not to see foam anymore.

Since the ceiling and ceiling trim is installed there was no reason not to install the shower fixtures. The shower is now functional including the wiring of the shower sump. I still have to address the faulty sump switch, but someone told me Rule has an excellent replacement policy and as long as the switch is less than a couple of years old, they'll replace it with no questions asked.

I have the hatch framed in out of Cherry, so I'm ready to fabricate the hatch that accesses the shower sump and valves that direct the sump discharge. I'm going to install a new floor in the bathroom as I'm not happy with the Cherry plywood I have under the composting toilet. The fit is less than great, and it bothers me. I ran into a hard wood floor installer I know the other day and he has enough scrap of Brazilian Cherry in his shop that will do my floor. I only need about 15 square feet and the few dollars a square foot I"ll pay him is extremely fair to me.

I installed one 7 watt LED can light in the bathroom. In a perfect world, another light would be ideal, but the one light does the job and gives the room a nice glow. All the lights on the boat are controlled by wall switches, and I prefer that much more than having a switch on the light. The can light pivots, so we can direct light either in to the shower or in to the cabinet above the toilet.

I think the next move after I complete the bathroom is to do some DC electrical work on board. I want to get the battery cables installed along with the battery control panel for my three battery banks. I can now install the lower air conditioner along with the duct work and then button up the starboard chase way.

Passage door update #2

All five passage doors are hung in their openings and have two coats of urethane finish on them. Another fairly large job can be, for the most part, checked off of the list.

Because of having to build the boat in two sections ( hull/ wheel house @ salon), I cannot install the ceiling in the hallway and master cabin. Because I cannot finish the ceilings, there is no point in casing the doors, so that job will wait until the boat gets to the launch site.

I purchased a mortise lock set for the master cabin bathroom door. The lock set is solid brass with a brushed nickel finish so my hope is the lock set will handle corrosion. I installed the lock set and I'm happy with how it looks and works. Installing a mortise lock set is a slow, time consuming job with very little room for error. I roughed in the mortise with a 5/8 forstner bit, then cleaned out the mortise with a chisel. I had to make a jig to hold the door plumb with my drill press, and other than cutting the mortise a 1/4" shallow, all went well. From start to finish, I had about 2 1/2 hours in installing the lock set with 1/2 of an hour consumed with building the jig for the drill press. The lock set has a dead bolt so we can lock the door from inside of our cabin. I think I'll have dead bolts on our cabin doors, and the bathroom doors, but will use lock sets without dead bolts for the other doors.

I brushed two coats of gloss urethane finish on the doors. I'm not incredibly happy with the finish and I think I'll spray the final coat of finish on the doors. No matter how hard I try, I just can't seem to brush a good finish on my work. I think my problem is I'm expecting too much out of two coats of finish. Next summer, when the boat is at the launch site and we're putting the final finish coats on everything, I'm hoping I'll get some help on getting a decent top coat on all the wood. For right now, everything is getting two coats for protection, and that's the story I'm sticking with.

The next job is to get the bathroom completed. There is really not a huge amount of work left to finish that room, and I should be able to get it off of my list in a week or so. I have to install the exhaust fan, install the ceiling, fabricate the interior trim ring for the portlight, and install the portlight.

Passage door update

All the passage doors are built with three of them hung in the openings.

Like I said in my last post I decided upon mortise and tenon construction for these doors. Just to give an extra added bit of strength to the joint, I through pinned each joint with two 3/8" wood dowels. The day I needed the dowels ( more of my great scheduling skills), I went over to the wood working supply store to get a few things and some Cherry dowels. The store was out of Cherry dowels, and in my haste to get a door assembled, I decided to make the dowel a design element, and went with Walnut dowels. The dowels all but guarantee the joints will never pull apart, and to be honest with you, I like the dark contrast of the walnut dowel. I think the doors will really pop once I have some finish on them. In order to prevent blowing out the back of the door while drilling the dowel, I clamped a block of wood where the drill exited the door.

The door project has put a serious hurting on my pile of air dried Cherry lumber, and I'm going to have to harvest a tree or two before too long so I can have dry lumber by next summer. I really do not have enough time to air dry by next summer, so I might be building a solar kiln late this winter to speed things up. In order to save lumber, I decided to buy a sheet of 3/4" Cherry veneer plywood, rip the jamb stock off of the ply, then miter the stock back against itself to make it look like a solid board for the jambs. This worked out well ( more of a suggestion from Captain Ted of LTS Builders), and only took me an hour to rip all the plywood, miter all the end caps and glue and nail theme together. All told I fabricated ten jambs in an hour. I used my brad nailer to pin the miter pieces while the glue set up. You will not see the nail holes as I held the nails away from the miter, and my door casing, with its 1/4" reveal, will cover the nails.

The lumber pile is for sure on the down hill side of the ride, so I had to use some pieces that had a few flaws. My biggest concern regarding lumber quality was finding straight grain, and no cracks or checks. The styles and rails are 4" wide, and while it seems it would be easy, finding ten, six foot long pieces, that I could mill into the correct width with no cracks was a challenge. So given those search parameters, I used some pieces with bad knots. A bad knot is what I call a dead branch knot, meaning a dead branch created the knot. Dead branch knots will fall out or have rot around them. I dealt with the knots by routing them out the same way a dentist would remove a cavity, I then filled the excavation with a Dutchman patch. I really like the character the Dutchman patch gives the piece, and like not having to waste wood. I built five doors and I had to make four Dutchman patches.

I'm pre-hanging the doors on my plywood jambs the same way a pre hung doors comes to any building site. I should have the doors hung and cased by the end of the week, then I'll get some finish on them.