some good suggestions regarding 'out of the box' options.
to your question of remodeling...
predicated on the understanding that every
marine project takes 3 times as long and cost twice as much to complete... whatever you want you can have (time and money).
so... a
boat around 35' with a 10-12' beam should get you plenty of gap between your
head and the
headliner and 2 cabins and (maybe) 2 heads. a boat this size would give you the ability to steal a few feet from the
salon to increase the size of the head.
personally, i would suggest a
center cockpit (with aft
cockpit companionway) which will give you additional privacy as a
live aboard.
if you are the handy type, a bulkhead is really just
fiberglass over
plywood. if you can take down, move and
rebuild a wall in your house, you can, most likely, do it in a boat as well.
potential complifying factors:
do you need to re-plumb
add, move / change
electrical
custom fabrication / angles of bulkheads and hatches
architectural constraints (many heads are adjacent to
compression posts etc)
you should probably
budget 30 hours (about 80 an hour) to have someone do a
project like this for you (5 hours of demolition and 20 of building and 5 of finish) plus the cost of any finish materials (mahogany /
teak etc). so you could do the demo yourself and / or the finish and leave the
rebuild to a boat
builder.
i encourage you to not
race into this option. it would be easy to think 'i can buy any boat and throw 2500 and get the head /
companionway i want' but, in reality, changing the head (2500) might mean you need to redesign the
salon or
galley (5000) or take 2 months instead of 2 weeks making the boat unusable / uninhabitable or paying for multiple lay days in a yard or...
good news is there is DEFINITELY a boat out there for you and you have an excellent 5 year plan.
less good news if you have to find the boat that is right for you and, once you do, you might need to do a bit of a
refit to make it personal to you.
gl.
-steve