Let there be light (in the bathroom)

We were very keen to put the bathroom window in today (weren't we Jeremy.)

This before and after shot shows that where before, the light always needed to be on (and Lola can't reach the switch yet)

After, it's great. And we can look out across the canal while we're having a shower! Need to get a blind sorted out...

Spider graveyard

The amount of spider residue is amazing on this side of the boat. While I have been staring at it these last few days, I have calculated that there are around 2 live spiders and 18 dead spiders, plus around 12 web/ egg bundle things per square foot.
This side of the boat is approximately 420 square feet. Think on that!

The screws are in

I kicked a box of screws in by mistake this morning. We managed to fish them out with the rake (my arm wasn't long enough). The water is much deeper than it looks. Unbelievably the little open topped box landed upright and we didn't lose one.

and Jeremy's in!

The pontoon 'capsized' apparently. It happened while no-one else was around.

By the time I got back from the vets (where Minky took his injection 'like a man' whatever that means!) Jeremy was fresh and clean and very smartly dressed.

Ring! ring!

Oh dear, I seem to have painted the front door to look like an old fashioned telephone box. Also, I've realised that my carefully chosen 'colour scheme' is actually the exact colour of Lola's Rainbows uniform!

Tiles are off!

Well we made a start on the canal side of the boat. And all the tiles were off in three hours. It looks so different. Working on the pontoon wasn't as bad as we thought it would be. And the weather is lovely!

There is more than one chance to skin the boat!

We have a time reprieve, 6 extra unexpected days to try to finish what we started. So first things first, let's take the kitchen window away!

That's all done now, good work Jeremy and Pete. Now we've just got to rip off the tiles, construct the skirt, fibre glass the...

Static houseboat

We have been very unlucky with the weather, every time we have tried to squeeze in a bit more work, it's rained. And rained.
This is what we have left to do:
Attach skirting to this side of the boat.
Painter's mate around windows
Paint top coat on tongue and groove
Paint window boxes
Clad window end
Prep another 15 sheets of tongue and groove with two coats of paint
Strip off tiles from canal side of boat
Make gunwale
Fibre glass gunwale
Sheet side with polythene
Batten
Add insulation
Clad
paint.....Maybe we will wait until the canal freezes again and then we can stand on the ice to do the work...

Colour

The lovely colour consultants at Johnson's Paint have kindly sent me some large colour swatches so I can work out what colour I really want the boat to be. I've chosen a blue that's the sort of equivalent of the green. It makes sense to me!
Meanwhile the door has been undercoated and we roped in our lovely friends and neighbours for one last push.

But our window of opportunity has now closed: we've run out of time to work on our boat, because the next canal boat in now underway...

The colour

We're feeling a bit confused about the colour. I have to admit that I love it in theory, but when I look at it on the boat, it makes me mad! Too minty. It doesn't make sense because we chose the colour so carefully, a dull grey green.

I tried an experiement for the door colour and I think red could really work well, but I just can't understand why the paint looks so different on the boat. And then tonight it occured to me that maybe the reflected green off the trees and foliage is making the colour appear much greener than it really is...We need to buy more paint anyway, it's just what colour...

Cladding begins

Today the first cladding boards went up. It went quite smoothly on the whole, quite tricky when cutting a whole window out of a single sheet, but otherwise fine. Except we've run out of cladding, need to route more sheets. But it keeps raining.

Silver boat

About half of the boat is now covered with the insulation board and it looks really neat. And quite cool, maybe we've chosen the wrong colour for the exterior...

Finally!

Jeremy fell in. Actually that's not true. He went in deliberately, had to stand in there to trim off the fibre glass along the apron. Lots of duck weed.

Gas powered nailing

Aran has been using his gas powered nail gun to attach the battons. It's quick and loud.