A floor for the locker

Please welcome new contributor s/v C'est la Vie!  In this project posting from June 12, 2010, Jeff shows us how he installed a floor in one of the cockpit lockers on C'est la Vie, improving stowage and protecting a pump at the same time:

With the paint dried and the wiring installed, we turned our focus back to the cockpit lockers.  We decided to leave the port side locker as is, but add a "floor" to the starboard side locker.  Below is an image of the locker...

The black hose on left attaches to our secondary, large capacity bilge pump.  The pump visible in the lower left of the frame is our primary, small capacity bilge pump.  The bilge on our Morgan is very inaccessible so placing the filter and pump mid-line in this hatch allows the filter to be cleaned and the pump to be serviced easily. Typically in this locker we place winch handles, snatch blocks, boom vang, etc. in milk crates.  The milk crates inevitably slide down an rest against the pump & filter.  Hence the desire for a floor.  In the image above I have already added nail strips along the forward bulkhead and the midships bulkhead (these are the white strips and made from seateak.)

Cardboard was used to create a template for the floor...

Once the fit was correct the cardboard template was transfered to 1/2 marine plywood and the  floor was rough cut.  I added a hatch in the center to provide access to the filter and the bilge pump.  Below are all the pieces of the assembly...

As of this evening the pieces were assembled and the non-visible side of the floor was finished with 3 coats of epoxy...

Since this project will not be exposed to sunlight/UV we simply used west epoxy with the fast cure hardener.  This allowed us to glue up the assembly and get a few coats of finish on in a matter of hours.  Most epoxy is not UV stable so projects or parts that will be exposed to consistent sunlight must be finished with an appropriate product (i.e. varnish or Bristol Finish).  Tomorrow we will complete this project by applying 3 to 4 coats of epoxy to the topside of the floor.

... and here is the completed project:

Looks really nice, doesn't it?