Pedestal seat

The front seat is going to consist of a high-backed rope seat on a swivel mounted atop a pedestal seat big enough to house a cooler. The way I approached this was to build the seat as a free-standing project and then mount it directly onto the deck. The main reason for doing it this way rather than building it in place was to simplify the sanding and finishing of the seat.

In retrospect, I'm not sure if was a good idea. I found it pretty much impossible to get the seat completely aligned with no "warping" so I'm going to have to add a few trim pieces to cover up some blemishes. I'm also having to plane away a various pieces to make them straight. I think it'll land up looking ok though.

 
 
 
  


I discovered one major flaw with the design. The seat had to be high enough to fit a cooler underneat. However, when adding the swivel seat on top, it's going to make the seat too high for comfortable sitting - the feet of anyone shorter than 7' tall just won't reach the deck! So what I had to do was cut out the deck so I can countersink the seat by 3 or 4" (hopefully enough). This turned out to be a royal pain in the ass. It's also weakened the deck and I'm going to have to retrofit some cross supports. Another problem is that it's now going to be an additional joint where moisture could make its way under the deck over time. LOTS of epoxy is going to go into those joints.