I also left off in June with the bathroom main cabinet finished and a start made on the toilet cabinet. Since then I have also almost finished the toilet cabinet, made the shaving cabinet, finished the plumbing final fit in and also created the laundry cabinet. I cant quite finish the toilet cabinet yet, I need to buy another toilet as you might recall I dropped and smashed the one I had. (So in fact I still have to buy 2 more). I need a toilet in order to know exactly where to cut the top away to the drop down level of the toilet.
The toilet front panel is the mirror image of the main cupboard shape and made from the same mold. With the panel faired and cut to height and length and the kickboard already glassed into the boat, I again used a cardboard template to create the shaped cut out needed to house the half protruding toilet. The kickboard has a round platform of ply glassed into the kickboard half in half out protruding into the open space. This is what the toilet will bolt to. The kickboard follows its original contour with an addition to support and match the round base plate above and so that it looks planned which of course like many things on the boat it wasnt. I just didnt have the depth to fit the toilet without it protruding. And so that the toilet does not protrude too far into the room I have put it on an angle, well as much as you can put a round bowl in on an angle, so that you sit on it on an angle to the room, which gives the area more space or leg room if you will.
Above the ply plate and rising vertically to the underside of the bowl, (once the toilet is fixed in place) I will also make a cover to mimic a fully concealed toilet. It will fit flush with the edge of the play base completely hiding it. But that is to come. For now, with the half a toilet bowl I have left from the incident, I am able to rough in, roughly. With a front of cardboard I was able to mark out and cut out the toilet contour. Also a tip, something like a toilet is symmetrical especially a round one, that is, it is the same shape one side of the centre line to the other, so if you can trace out half of it, you can fold over your stencil like a butterfly image to make the other half exactly the same. I use cardboard because it is forgiving. If I cut it wrong I can make another. I dont have that luxury with the polycore, especially a front I have molded and faired to a specific curved shape. Once satisfied with the cardboard template, it can be marked out onto the actual panel and cut out in the knowledge it is correct as the progression of photos show.
Once cut to shape with the toilet in the exact position I glassed the panel into the boat. It now just needs the tops (2, one each side of the toilet) made but their exact size is not yet known because I wont cut the full width of the lower toilet recess into the panel until I have a full bowl to work with.
Next it was on to the shaving cabinet. I have made the vanity top removable. Even though there is access to the plumbing from the vanity cabinet door, some is difficult to get to from that door and would be much easier to get to from above. I have the top fixed in 3 places plus the waste pipe and to a lesser extent the faucet will also act to anchor the top down. Through the back edge of the top there are 5 conduits of varying size for power and water into the kitchen and also a waste pipe from the kitchen down into the bathroom so that it can exit the boat on the chamfer panel. But because some areas are absolutely zero discharge (I think the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is one of them) that even includes kitchen waste so I have fitted a Y valve that allows me to divert the waste to the sump so it can go into the holding tank. I want to avoid holding kitchen waste as it contains food scraps that rot and stink in the sump but I need to at least have the ability to stop waste going overboard if I am to enter nil discharge areas.
With all of the plumbing in place and fitted (glued in) including some conduits to take 2 water, one hot one cold up into the kitchen, and 2 power (one 12v one 240v) conduits I could make and fit the shaving cabinet. The cabinet consists of 4 shelves and one side wall as the bulkhead creates the other side wall. The top and bottom shelves also act as the top and bottom of the cabinet, above and below which are voids used to hide wiring or plumbing. I glassed the shelves to the side off the boat so it was essentially made before final fitting. Once made it was simple to glass it into the boat (I screwed temporary shelf supports into the bulkhead to ensure they went in level and removed them once the glass had set) on all sides except the bottom as the top on which it sits is not being glassed in so that it is removable should I ever need to do major plumbing refitting. The top and bottom shelf protrude 25mm further than the 3 internal shelves so that sliding mirror doors can be fitted so as to end up flush with the front of the cabinet. The top section will have a light fitted to it in the style of a Hollywood dressing room, 5 or so light globes. They will look like light globes but in fact will be led globes made to look like incandescent globes.
For now this completes the construction of the bathroom. I already have most of the shower constructed, I just have one more wall panel to glass in, it is cut to size and sitting in position but behind it must go some copper pipes that are also in place but wont be fixed (glued in) until the mast posts are in. More on that later, but suffice to say, the shower is as done as I can get it for now. So I moved on to the laundry cabinet.
Because I moved the black holding tank to behind that shower wall and it is glassed in, I have space now for a laundry tub as well as a space for a small washing machine. (the machine has to have at least one dimension less than 500mm as this is the width of the doors, we toyed with the idea of putting a domestic front loader in but decided not to for 2 reasons, first they are incredibly heavy, they put concrete or other weight into them deliberately because of the high speeds that the horizontal axled drum rotates at and because they are too big to fit through the doors so should it break down or be junked getting it out would be a major problem.)
The cupboard in the laundry serves 2 purposes, besides providing a housing for a laundry tub (actually just another of the same sink we are using for the kitchen, a round stainless steel sink we bought from Ikea, we thought we got a bargain at $59 when we bought one for the kitchen but when we went to buy another now that we can have a laundry tub, we found they had dropped to only $24. So we got 2 for $83 or $42 each. I do love a bargain. The other reason and perhaps more importantly is that it hides all of the plumbing and wiring and halyard pipes that pass through that section of the boat. And there are a lot of them. Water in both directions (due to this area housing the watermaker and hot water service), power in both directions (because of the shore power in) in 2 different voltages that must be housed separately and the halyard pipes. So having all of this inside a cupboard or structure makes sense.
I started by glassing in a shelf along the chamfer join. I put a rail under it at the front so that a removable front panel could be fixed to it, and put another rail along the floor for the same purpose. This was slightly complicated by the 2 level floor I put in to elevate the washing machine, which I did because elevating it added the width I needed due to the hull flaring as you go higher. I then made a panel of 5mm polycore glassed each side with only 200g cloth, cut to shape to fit against the rails and the 2 level floor. I then had to cut away a section to allow for the waste pipe for the laundry basin and washing machine that has to be set away from the hull side to accommodate the halyard pipes and various conduits for power and water that will run along the hull side. Once cut and fit exactly to shape I gave it a white epoxy coat. This completed the part of the cabinet to house the various pipes. I then mocked in another cabinet above the shelf to house the sink. A cardboard mock in at first then once the cardboard was correctly shaped I transferred the shape to panels, cut them and glassed them in, including a top with a sink cut out. I will leave the front off this as the washing machine stops there being doors opening with hinges and I couldnt be bothered with sliding doors, I may still do that, but for now no front.
Because the blog has been neglected, I have not kept the hour count as fastidiously as I have in the past, however, I worked on the boat at about my usual pace and over the past 6 years, I average about 60 hours a month. But for 2 weeks of July Jo and I were in the USA so lets call it 30 hours for July and 60 for August, so at the end of August I am up to 3924 hours. And Dean helped me for about 12 hours so lets call it 3936.
