The kids’ bathroom renovation is complete. We call it the kids’ bathroom because the adults abandoned it immediately upon making the master bathroom operational earlier in the spring. No adult wants to share a bathroom with four kids.
The renovation was a prolonged project involving demolition of the old floor, replacing it with teak grates to match the other heads, painting the walls, and installing a new toilet. For three weeks, the kids had to huff it up to the marina pool to use the bathroom there. There were several nights when the Eli, Sam, and Rachel had to sleep in alternative locations due to fumes from various paints or epoxies. They’re now rewarded with an electric toilet of their own: a Raritan Sea Era fresh water.
Like the Raritan Marine Elegance in the master bathroom, the Sea Era uses a centrifugal pump. I assume the pumps are equivalent, and hoped it would be the Marine Elegance’s equal in terms of uncloggability, but in fact I think it might be better. I plumbed the Marine Elegance with 1” hose since I wanted to reduce the volume of stuff standing in the hose. With the kids’ bathroom I had several compromises already made for me, and the Sea Era’s discharge was going to use the 90 degree elbow option and 1.5” hose. I don’t know if it is the shapes of the bowls or the difference between the discharge line diameters, but the Sea Era has a much more powerful flush. I prefer the Marine Elegance’s smooth one-piece ceramic shroud to enclose all the parts, but that just wasn’t going to fit.
Our goals for the project were to make the floor easier to keep clean and dry, and improve access and air flow to sump area underneath. To accomplish that, we tore the old solid floor out completely and replaced it with a pair of teak grates. The toilet sits on a solid teak shelf and one grate slides beneath it. The other grate drops in place in front of the toilet. We also ground down, faired, and repainted the walls and sump area to improve the appearance and overall cleanliness of the area.
While it must seem that we get excited about very mundane things, this bathroom has been on the wish list for a long time and we are very happy to have it addressed. While we still have work going on, this bathroom is probably the last big interior improvement we’re going to make. It got pushed way down the list because our original concept involved removing thru-hulls, which requires hauling the boat out of the water, which requires an act of God. In the end, we decided just to keep the thru-hulls for now and retain the option of flushing directly overboard.