Sand Epoxy Sand Paint (Again)

The head is finished.  We haven't dropped in the new bronze Groco toilet unit, but the tiny "room" looks like part of a nearly-new boat...  or at least a well-loved boat.

The two fiberglass wall repairs from the previous post were faired with thickened epoxy to cover the weave of the the glass cloth.  The room is now a continuous fiberglass bowl from the counter height down.

The fiberglass floor is part of the original interior mold.  Through the years and owners, it had received at least three "renovations" and was a mottled mess of four layers of paint: bright green, red, tan, and seafoam, all on top of a factory-molded honeycomb "nonskid" grid that prevents water from flowing freely to the drain.  It is humid and icky enough in the tiny head without having standing water in the floor exacerbating the problem, so we sanded, chipped, and ground out the paint and honeycomb texture as best we could, and then filled and faired the floor with thickened epoxy as well.

No matter how much work you put into fairing/sanding/fairing/sanding, you will always find tiny imperfections.  Suck it up and move on.  That is why they make: Paint; the beautiful concealer.

For this application we used Petit EZ Prime and  Interlux Brightside, a one-part polyurethane, in pure white.

The anchor locker was also attended to.   AJ removed/sanded the old flaking paint as best as he could, then painted it with gray Interlux 2000E, aka "barrier coat."

We scraped the V-berth back down to gelcoat.  The paint chipped off the smooth gelcoat sides in rather large pieces with a paint scraper fairly easily (easier than sanding!), so for the past couple months whenever one of us had some spare time, we'd go and chip away at paint in the V-berth until eventually it was bare.

Pics of the repairs to the back wall of the port side of the V-berth are below.
I used thickened epoxy to fill the depth/gap left by removing a delaminated layer of plywood, and I filled many large holes in the back wall that wires ran through before. We have also been scraping paint off the ceiling for months. The ceiling is not smooth like the sides, so it wouldn't flake off in sheets. It had to be picked off slowly and painstakingly.  We stripped the ceiling the best we could because we did not want the Reflectix falling down due to weak paint adhesion.

On the starboard side a previous owner drilled holes in the base of the V-berth.  He probably wanted to allow the compartments below to "breathe." but when he realized that he just drilled holes into the tops of the only totally water-tight compartments in the boat, he decided not to continue.  The holes allows for dust and debris, and most importantly, water, to fall/drip into the contents of the drawer below, so I filled the holes with thickened epoxy...

...  And then painted it all with Petit EZ Prime and Pettit EZ Cabin Coat, also bright white.

We hope to move to start moving aboard in about a week.

... and to take it out for a daysail shortly after that!