Rude and Crude but it works danged it

Murphy's Law

 Some where in this house I am about 99.9999 % certain I have a 1/2 inch notched trowel for  ceramic tile work.  Murphy's law says if something can go wrong it will.  I'm betting some where there is a law that says after you go out and replace something you cannot find,  it will show up. Serendipity comes to mind.  You know, the one that says when you stop looking for something it will show up. I did some checking. One of the local hardware stores offered me a 5.00 discount off of a new  notched trowel. That's not a bad discount.  Money is tight and spending 11.95  on a tool for one small job like the wood stove surround, if I  don't have to, aint happening if I can figure this out. I can get the plumbing stuff for the sink or a new trowel.

  Time for the Dremel to earn  it's keep again.

It's rude and crude and did not cost me one red cent, unless your including the electricity to cut it out with the Dremel. It was fall off from all the plexiglass we used to replace windows  recently

 

Bath room lavatory pre cut

I put the sink on top of the counter upside down and  traced the sink outline. ( Outer marks)

Then I  measured the under side of the sink and marked inside the  tracing to know where I wanted to cut it.

 After cutting it out with  circular saw on  main lines and using a hand saw to get the corners it's ready to put the sink in.

Now all we have to do is go get the plumbing and we are done with it!

This week has been busy. We are finishing up the bathroom,. Have been installing trim, painting and all that good stuff. We are sanding the bath room floor to get it good and clean for vinyl tile to go down. I do not want any thing making the adhesive on the tile to not stick. I'm cheating.We are using the self adhesive tiles.  I had bought these to use in the kitchen. On a whim, becasue I really want to get this bathroom finished, I took them in there, They match the tan commode, sink and counter  my son picked out perfectly, so it's a done deal.

A Little Bit of this, A Little BIt of That

Wow I can't believe it has been so long since the last post.
If you have been following this blog the last post was about getting my bedroom floor finished.
I'm in there on my knees sanding and realized we had not refinished the window.. What was supposed to be a fast refinish it and put it back, turned into a full fledged OY!!!!
As it turns out some where between it getting out of the window and into the work area, the window  fell apart in our hands, literally. The only thing that was holding it together was the frame around it.    Rebuilding a window was not what I had in mind for this week but......
The choices are:

1.buy a new window that fits exactly. Have you ever been able to match a window in a 90 year old house? Neither have I.

2. Get one as close as is possible and have to rework the siding. We just yesterday finished he exterior of all that tiny little details with only one small item left to do, once payday gets here. I AM NOT, I repeat NOT  redoing an entire side of this house just to match the siding in the window area. 

3. Rebuild the existing window.

Let us not go into that except to say it is getting done.

My bedroom turned into the work room while all this is getting done. Hence the floor awaits. HOPEFULLY this the week we get my bed room cleared of all side projects and I can actually  continue on refinishing the floor.

The good news is  the shelf is finally up in my closet, a LOT of stuff is packed and loaded into the boat ready to go. the tiles have been bought for the kitchen floor, the lower cabinets are almost finished, the door to the  corner cabinet in the living room are waiting to be installed and  a LOT of stuff has been disposed of. Craigslist is a great place to put a curb alert on things you don't want to waste time taking to the good will. My closet is almost empty and my bath room is darned near empty of all that stuff that has been taking up space.
All things  considered a lot has been getting done.
For those of you just joining us, the question might be occurring, what does all this have to do with sailing much less building a home made catamaran?  It is simple , it has to be done so I can sell the house to pay for  a blue water boat I can live on.

I have decided what I am going to do with The Toy. I will strap it on to the V 22 and take it with me.
Fair winds to all

EZ Kitchen Cabinets

If you really need kitchen cabinets but cannot afford them or do not know how to make them , here is a simple, cheap and effective way to accomplish that goal. 

When I removed the original cabinets in the kitchen I was shocked. It was nothing more then a bunch of supports nailed into the walls that supported the drawers and shelves attached to the walls then a facer board put over it . Simple yet served purpose for many years. Here is what we did to duplicate this simple , cheap and effective  cabinet making. 

As you can see form the photos it is basically stained and polyed board fastened to the studs with metal brackets.  Then a facer board and doors put in place. It works well 

Tyhe upright s support the top. This side is til in process of being completed.. 

                               This side we already have facer board and doors on 

What I (we) did during my summer "vacation"

Some Misc Pics that never got uploaded:

June started out  with 105 degrees and stayed that way until Sept, which surprisingly brought cooler temps. Needless to say not a lot done on boats but wow what we got done in house is great!
In no particular order......

Before shot of ceiling, Wood stove smoked up a bit and ruined ceiling paint.,

No home remodeling is complete until someone puts their  foot through the ceiling

Oh the joy of remodeling a house while your trying to actually live in it.

CONSUMER ALERT!!!!!

CONSUMER ALERT!!!!! READ THE  MSDS on any product if someone tells you it is the same as another product BEFORE YOU BUY!

Well I thought I was good to go on the rudder for doing the fiberglass this week or as soon as the weather warmed up. It  turns out there is some sort of mix up with the bondo samples that were  sent so it appears that completing  this part is going to have to wait until payday.  I have an email sent to the tech I have been talking to so will see what happens. People make mistakes. It's not a big earth shaking deal. If I sound ungrateful it is because THIS IS SO frustrating!

 As stated through out this blog, I have WAY to much Scot in me to waste the samples sent. I have been thinking on this. What I am going to do is use the NON marine stuff sent on the inside to laminate the boards together where water will not touch them and use the BOAT YARD on the out side.  If I do it right the inner NON marine grade bondo will never see water, so it will be fine.
 I am still going to use the Boat yard product line since it is a lot cheaper then the other fiber glassing epoxies. If it was not for price difference I'd go with the  west or systems 3. I'm going to test it and see if the rudder holds up. Why am I being so hard headed on this? It is MY BOAT we are talking about here. I'm not expecting that every one I deal with have the sailing bug but sheesh!
 
I did the research. The end user sources online ALL agree, the NON MARINE grades of bondo are TEMPORARY for marine use, same as using duck tape and a piece of cardboard wrapped in a zip lock bag or  a piece of ply wood with a water  proof  5 minute epoxy to get you to shore are temporary fixes. 


 I asked about using the tempera paint  as a substitute since finding marine grade materials is not so easy in this land locked location. According to the same gentleman who told me the samples sent are identical in nature as the boat yard line,  TEMPERA is not a good idea since there is no way to know what fillers etc they put into the tempera.  Some additives will prevent bondo products from curing! According to this same tech support person, I can use  3 ounces of the strongest universal paint tint they have at any place that tints paint such as HD or Lowe's  (for white) and it will color one gallon of Bondo  to opaque. If he is correct on this issue we have a source for cheap custom colors. The question is do I want to trust him on this after the mix up on the other or not. I HATE being put in this kind of a position!

Cold hard facts time. We are talking about a rudder, not a hull. Do I want to take the time to rebuild a new rudder if he is WRONG on this as well? I did a search for bondo colorants, I went  to their site. That site is NOT user friendly. I got tagged for a survey and I actually did it. I gave the web site related questions  1 on everything,. If I could have given zeros I would have.  After going through the process of adding a - minus sign to all the various NON relevant terms and items that came up I found NO link to colorant so I guess they are not making marine colorant any more.
Bottom line, I have entirely to much Scot in me to waste time on a product the I have reason to believe might let me down later when I need it the most.  I'm putting a lot of work and materials into this rudder and I'm not going to risk bad advice for false economy over the cost difference of proven colorant vs non marine paint colorant..

I have looked up universal marine colorants in bulk. I found nothing that was specifically mentioned as for marine use so I'm back to getting something probably from jamestown.  Granted I did not search through all the zillions of links but then I'm not into spending hours upon hours looking for this type of item.

 If I can find a cheaper source of MARINE grade tint that works with bondo I'll let you know.  If bad comes to worse and I POSITIVELY HATE this idea. I'll forgo the colorant and just paint it with marine grade paint. Chips I'll just have to  keep on top of so it does not look shabby.
Repeat after me.  It's about getting in the water!
 I decided to submit this question  to yahoo answers. 
Will see what happens.

We Test Sail

Today we tested the sail on the make shift mast in the front yard. It has no rigging except for the halyard and some ties I slipped under the battens to practice the concept of reefing but it looks really good. The idea is if I cant get all the blocks etc for the rigging this next month I can at least sail it as a crab claw. Went to take a picture and the camera was not charged so the camera is charging and tomorrow I will take a pic and post it.

Other then that today has been about saw dust. YUK! One of the guys cut me a LOT of chines for the # 1 hull. I have part of them sanded just enough to take the splinters out. Have coated all sides with Thompson's water seal.

 Tomorrow is going to be about finish sanding the chines and applying a coat of water seal on them and hopefully start assembling the bottom  out side of the hull.  Once I get hull # 1 finished getting hull 2 done should go a lot faster since I will have the basics already accommodated.