Famous last words

I was so sanguine about putting in the rest of the countertop. What a labor that turned into. Took 2 weeks, and several false starts, to get a matching set of brackets. Strange that such a standard item should be so hard to find.

I won't tell you about wiggling the damn thing in and out 8 times a day, chiseling space for hardware interuptus, managing NOT to knock the damn fuel gauge out of the bulkhead, pinched fingers, scraped bulkhead, etc etc etc. My god, what a chore.

[img: countertop in situ]

The countertop is 2 pieces of redwood fencing plank, glued together. I realized that it was the best bang for the buck: smoothly milled, straight & fairly clean, and very beautiful. Since these are rarely cut from heartwood, I had to go through and look for the most promising planks; dug through about 40 pieces to get 6 I liked. (The rest are in storage awaiting future projects.)

Now that it's done, I'm glad it works out the way I was hoping it would. I can still get to all my pans, there's room for everything, and the red oak and redwood are odd together but, in my opinion, perfectly beautiful:

[img: lid raised]

Yes, I have the pix, but my camera is hiding. The cabin is a worse mess than ever.

I did pull the faucet in the head apart. I thought I could fix it, but no go; it's truly kaput. I did learn that, if you park the pump handle pointing away from you, it holds the prime better & you get more out of it. This means the faucet in the galley is working better than it ever has:

[img: gushing faucet]