Wood is on!

The end is in sight. Jeremy and Pete have managed to clad the end and waterside of the boat. It looks great, but it's still mint green. So now all we have to do is:
calk the windows, fill screw holes, install the final window (after painting it) and paint the whole boat blue!

Oh and trim out the inside. It'll give us things to do in the chilly winter evenings. (We have decided to leave the bathroom end of the boat for now.)

Insulated

We've finished insulating and battening the water side of the boat. And I've cleaned the side trim of the roof. It looks really neat. But the duck weed is still there, like another astroturf lawn on the wrong side of the boat.

Fixing a hole in the roof

When it's raining and the wind blows in a certain direction our hall floor gets really wet. The parquet has become to come up. And we think it's the little crack in the roof. So we've glassed over it today.

Polythene

It's hard enough to nail a twenty metre long sheet of polythene to the side of a boat when you have nothing to hold onto and can't see your feet, especially in the wind. Especially when your cat decides to come and help.

The garden party

In my mind the boat was going to be stunning for our family and friends on the day of the party, 2nd October. The weather was glorious, we spent hours tidying, but it still looked (and smelled) a bit like a building site.

The skip

8 cubic metres looked massive when the skip arrived. By 12 o'clock it was completely full. We just managed to squeeze in our old mattress at the last minute. Better go out and buy a new one now.

Fibre glassing

Thursday 29th September. We knew it had to be done. Three people, one pontoon and 20 metres of extreme fibre glassing. We couldn't start until around 3.30pm (partly because it was so hot) and we knew it would be a race against time. But we did it. Jeremy and Pete put on the top coat in near darkness and couldn't open their hands to put down the tools at the end of 4 hours of relentless rollering. We've got stcky grey knees...but the boat looks good.

New windows

The waterside windows are all in (except for the extra one that we're still waiting for). They look great, but are completely different to the old windows in every way. We have loads of patching up to do on the interior. We need to sort out blinds as well. The bathroom looks amaxingly light. We just need to check whether passers by can see us getting out of the shower from the other side of the canal!