Slow Boat to Nowhere

Foamy Fun....

2011-01-22T19:39:00.000Z

... Coming soon

This weekend we are be mostly...

2010-09-11T17:54:00.001+01:00

...slapping Vactan on everything.

Sea Shanty

2010-08-09T22:16:00.014+01:00

Thank you to everyone that commented on our last post, so we made a phone call, the wood appeared and when we woke up in the morning the boat pixies had been and everything was finished. OK not quite how it happened!

I called a friend who works in his dad's woodyard and he helped me translate my measurements into wood speak. Timber measurements are bizarre to say the least, lengths appear to be in metres but width etc seems to be in imperial with metric equivalents. Planedwood is measured before planing and sheets are measured in Klingon. Anyway after translation the wood wasdelivered and paid for. Our wood friend very kindly helped us transport the wood along the pontoon and get it all on board, you don't get that kind of service normally. Usually it's just dumped in the car park and we have to move it ourselves and as we're about 300 metres/yards from the car park that adds up to a lot of humping.

OK, wood on board, time to put it altogether. The joists were to lie on the ribs of the hull and then bolted down in strategic places. This is where we found that, although we knew not all the ribs would be level with each other, they seemed to be all over the place. This meant each joist had to be notched or packed to make it level. Fortunately this problem only seemed to be concentrated in one area and the rest went down fairly smoothly. The biggest problem we had was the weather, we had decided to do this on what turned out to be two of the hottest weekends in years. Without any insulation in this area it got hot, it got very hot, it got so hot i'm sure we could've fried eggs an' all that. So we had to take a lot of breaks and have a large fan going full tilt which blew the sawdust around nicely. A bit like working inside a roasting tin that's full of sawdust.

Next job was to get the insulation down between the joists, another lesson learnt quite quickly here. We should have spaced the noggins to be either a full or half length of Celotex/Kingspan/foamy silver stuff apart. Still never mind, we got it right for the rest.

Now the the slightly tricky part, man/woman handling 8x2 sheets of chipboard over an area that is fairly narrow timbers with the spaces filled with deceptive foamy stuff. If you didn't concentrate you could easily attempt to step on the insulation which really didn't want to take any weight at all. Result - some swearing and lurching around with large sheets of chipboard that got heavier as the day went on. But it all went down ok in the end, unfortunately I haven't got any pictures of the finished item yet, but this is only half the floor area so there's more to come.

Anyway you've read all of this and are probably wondering what this has to do with sea shanties. Well we recently bought ourselves a new hi-fi with cd player (yes I know they're soooo last week, but we have a lot of CDs and like playing them). So we were looking through our collection and came across a disc we'd almost forgotten about. A friend of ours writes and plays his own music and as a moving in present wrote a song for us, and with any luck if the link works you'll be able to hear it for yourselves. I've had to save the file as a movie in order to be able to upload it, so you'll just get a blank window with music. I've also found that this relies on Flash, so if your system doesn't support this you'll not be able to play this, sorry.

A Question

2010-04-11T18:58:00.003+01:00

This is going to be a short post for now, we just need a little question answered. We're about to order the wood for the floor in the bedroom/bathroom area, and someone suggested that instead of using WBP Ply we could use P5 Moisture Resistant Chipboard. Now this appeals to us as this chipboard is half the price of WBP Ply but even though it's suitable for use in Bathrooms etc is it suitable for a houseboat. Any ideas or experience will be gratefully received.

Time flies like an arrow;…..

2010-01-26T11:39:00.005Z

Fruit flies like a banana.

I was doing my regular tour of the blogs that I’ve been following, when I thought it must be a while since I’ve updated ours. That was a surprise, our last update was May 2009! It’s not that nothing has happened, it’s because I’m not very good at keeping a diary. I enjoy reading other blogs, however small the detail, but I can’t do it myself. I love notebooks and have several, but after the first couple of pages I forget them. I really want to put all my thoughts in a notebook because I have so many ideas in my head but for some reason I don’t write them down. This means that those thoughts disappear after a while or I end up working it all out in my head. When I had a brief, but enjoyable, career change and studied garden design there were a lot of art projects and we were encouraged to keep a notebook but all I ended up doing was writing down the brief, doing all the design and then filling in the notebook afterwards. A bit like maths really, I’d have the question, I’d produce the answer and then get marked down for not showing all my working out. It was all in my head. So when I thought it was about time I updated this blog my head then overflowed with all the things I needed to write down and by the time I’ve finished writing this I will probably have forgotten half of it. I think I’ll buy a nice big shiny notebook today and try again to write everything down.

So, here goes, what have we been doing since May.

After getting back from dry dock and settling down into our new mooring and getting on with enjoying life aboard we set about painting the deck. This involved much rust busting, Vactaning (if that is a verb), priming and top coating. This went well and we used different colours for each coat so we could see were we’d been, but life kept on getting in the way. So for this year we're left with the foredeck, aftdeck and gunwale and the fiddly upright bits between deck and roof (I have no idea of the correct nautical term). Inside we’ve got the current living space more or less right, but it’s still just a huge bedsit and started work on the other half. This will be the bedrooms, proper bathroom and study/office. So far in there we’ve removed a ton of scrap metal and sold that (we still have about the same again to remove), scraped about half the bilges and cleaned and Vactanned (is that a word?) half the hull. The plan is to lay half the floor to give us a working space and then clean up the rest. Well that gives you an idea of where we are, sorry about the lack of detail, I will try harder this year.

Whilst rambling on about notebooks I took a look at one in my collection and found a piece I intended to write last year. It was about waste, not the most interesting subject, but something I’ve grown not quite passionate about but more a case of a little heated. We try to recycle and make regular trips to the local tip. But if you spend any time at a tip/recycling centre you’ll see an enormous amount of waste. I know there are problems with recyling mountains where no one really knows either what to do with it or the cost is prohibitive, but some of the things I’ve seen thrown into the landfill bin when the appropriate recycling bin is yards away winds me up. Probably the most extreme was when I saw someone throw a mini-moto motorcycle into landfill, I’m sure it no longer worked but to throw it like that is… is… Grrrrr! Anyway rant over, I’ll still get wound up when we go there but what can you do, we do our bit and hopefully the majority of other people do too.

I had to take away the ability to leave anonymous comments on our blog after we received loads in Mandarin. After getting them translated in Google I found that these were basically ads for things that included rubber women. So if you want to leave a comment you’ll have to have an account etc. I did check Google Analytics and was surprised to find that even though we hadn’t posted anything for nearly a year we were still getting quite a few visits.

OK, I’d better go now.

Now, what was it I was going to buy……………..

Evidence of Global Warming

2009-05-29T22:26:00.003+01:00

Crocs in English river!

Icebergs!

Barge performs 180!

2009-05-21T21:02:00.001+01:00

31 Days

2009-05-17T22:48:00.005+01:00

Well, that was an interesting 5 weeks. Real went into dry dock to be cleaned up, have a bit of welding done and a new coat of paint. This was originally intended to take two weeks and during that time we went to stay with my Mum. The work did indeed take two weeks, with a couple of days added to take into account the Easter Bank holiday, but…

When she went back into the water she sprung a leak and had to go back up the slip to have it fixed. Unfortunately no one called us to let us know and when Maureen called to check that everything was OK we got the bad news. By this time Maureen was staying with friends as it was much easier for her to get to work and I stayed on at my Mums, but this made communication both between us and the shipyard a little difficult and complicated.

A few days later having had her little leakage problem sorted out Real was ready to go back into the water and once the tides were right she did. But the old lady decided she didn’t want to go back and sprung another leak. So it was back up the slip again and lots of conversations about not only fixing the new leak but what we could do to prevent any more problems. It turns out that as she came down slip the stern began to float earlier than expected which meant she was basically balanced on the stern and bow and was flexing in the middle, something she was never designed for, as there is no real strength end to end. But there wasn’t really an answer on how to prevent this happening.

By this time we were both beginning to feel a bit stressed and checking on the prices of scrap steel. Seriously, we were.

The tides weren’t going to be right again for another week and a half, which not only meant we were basically homeless but there was a queue forming for the slip with other boats moored in various places waiting for Real to leave. We moved home again and stayed at an empty houseboat that belonged to a neighbour at the marina. Together again at last!

Two days before launch day we were let down by the towing company who wouldn’t be able to tow us back to the marina, so after discussing the problem with various people we came up with a plan. I’d take the day off and armed with broom handles and quick setting concrete Real would go back into the water however much she protested. The broom handles would be used to plug any new leaks (although judging by the previous holes pencils may have been better) and then concreted in, and we’d deal with the problem later. As far as towing was concerned after many frantic phone calls and favour asking, a tug was found that could do the job. But not cheap by any means. The tug was big, too big to get us into the marina, so we were going to be assisted in by a couple of small workboats.

Launch Day III. I arrived at the shipyard armed with hole plugging equipment and waited for the tide.

The tug arrived, it was huge, probably about two-thirds the length of Real.

Paul arrived with workboat number one.

The tide came in.

Real moved slowly down the slip and into the water.

She didn’t leak. It must have been the good talking to that I gave her, or that fact that the previous two launches had found all the weak spots.

We were on our way. Backwards. As the tug was so big it didn’t really matter which way we were towed and it meant less manoeuvring if we were tied up along side and taken as we were.

So I had a river trip in our home, checking for any leaks along the way.

As we’d left the slip at high tide time was now against us to make it back to our berth in the marina. The tug made good time, very good time, I think we may have arrived before we left. Now came the tricky bit, towing her in with two little workboats against the tide. This is where I felt particularly useless, people were running around with ropes, shouting instructions and getting the job done and all I could do was watch. I was given a tyre on a bit of rope to use as a fender, and as chief tyre on a bit of rope holder I did a brilliant job. Maybe not so good using it as a fender, but excellent at holding it and then being told to run down the other end and hang it over the side. Real was finally stuffed into to her new berth and the workboats took off at high speed whilst I helped get her tied up. I later found out that there was actually quite a lot of panicking going on, the tide was going out fast and there was a serious risk of everything getting stuck on the mud. Hence the rapid stuffing into the berth.

Our home was back.

The following day she was turned around, as all our waste outlets were facing the pontoon. This would have meant a bit of re-plumbing, which I was OK dealing with but the offer to turn her was made so we took it.

During all of this I had no real opportunity to take any photos but fortunately one of our neighbours did, and took a series of Real pirouetting into place.

We’re now in the process of unpacking everything again, and getting back to life aboard and the rest of the work we need to do.

photos will follow shortly, as soon as I've worked out how to get them in the right order etc etc etc.

Painted Lady

2009-04-23T21:31:00.006+01:00

Not the best picture in the world, but I only had my phone on me. She's all clean, welded and painted, ready to go back in tomorrow and, all being well, back home in time for tea.

Saturday 25th April

I knew I shouldn't have said anything! Due to some minor technical problems she's not back yet. Due on Monday now, but as we've found out with boats anything could happen.

High 'n' Dry

2009-04-10T14:08:00.004+01:00

Not much to say at the moment apart from 'She's out and having her bottom washed and painted'.

We still can't fit her all in one photo!

Back on the Bilge Gang

2009-03-16T20:58:00.008Z

There must be something you can do with rust. There must be a way of recycling it. There has to be a use for it rather than ending up in landfill somewhere. And if we knew what it was and how to do it we’d be loaded. So until we’ve worked it out we’re back scraping the bilges, this time in the unconverted half. I read somewhere that 10mm of rust amounts to 1mm of metal, that’s good news for us as ours is about 2mm at it’s thickest (the rust, that is), but it’s still heavy when it’s soggy sticky rust mixed with nasty sticky greasy stickiness with a bit of water thrown in for good measure. Still if it wasn’t mixed with grease it would probably have been a lot worse, and we’d have 60mm of rust and no water keepy outi-ness. On the whole it’s not too bad and as the sides haven’t been covered with insulation or anything the rust is only on the surface and cleans up easy enough ready for treating with Vactan.

Whilst cleaning the underside of the deck area we’ve found a couple of small holes which explains how the water is getting in and I’ve now taken the chipping hammer away from Maureen as she kept finding more. I know we need to find them all but it’s a bit disheartening when holes appear. On a temporary basis we’ve covered these with flexible flashing tape, which is basically bitumen and lead like metal on a roll and sticks to almost any surface really easily making it water tight until we either get to weld them up ourselves or get someone in. Hopefully we can time this with our next visit to dry-dock, which is due soon, but I’m not going to say when as that seemed to jinx it last time.

Promotion

2009-02-01T22:01:00.005Z

We’ve reached a bit of a plateau as far as work is concerned on Real. Incidentally we decided from day one that it should be pronounced “ray-all” as in Real Madrid, I’ve no idea why a Belgian Barge should have a Spanish name but then we know very little of her history . All we know is that she is almost definitely Belgian, she was once moored on the Thames in Plumstead and has a General Motors engine that came from an American Tank when she was converted to a self propelling barge. We got most of the information, except the Plumstead bit, from Frederic Logghe and his excellent Blog/Website.

So I decided this week, as we haven’t got much to report, that I would take this opportunity to promote some of the Blogs that we’ve been following and that have either provided inspiration, information or just plain entertainment.

And in no particular order we have:-

Tim Zim and Lady Jane.
This was one of the first blogs we found about houseboats and boat conversions. Tim has loads of information on his blog and led us to set about doing our own spray foam insulation (you might want to read about our exploits with Spray foam here). The brilliant thing about Tim’s blog is he writes regularly and about anything that’s happened with Lady Jane. I sometimes wish we could produce something like this.

Next there’s Seb and Bee and Wendy Ann 2. These two work so hard, keeping down about 8 jobs each, working 27 hours a day 12 days a week on Wendy Ann 2. But the job they are doing is amazing; they’ve welded up what seems like a million rivets and are producing a fantastic wheelhouse in Teak, and write from the heart.

Then there’s Steve and Lorna and Serenity. Occasionally when I read this I wish we’d bought a fully converted barge, but they’ve still had a lot of work to do. But the best bit is that they photograph everything, which always makes this worth reading.

Next there’s Simon and Mary and Misterton. This reminds me a lot of when we started, they're still at the clearing and planning stage. What I look forward to reading here is Mary’s View, a very funny non-technical insight into buying and converting a Barge.

There are another two Thomas H and Hendrick. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to read these two fully but basically Thomas H is in the process of conversion and Hendrick is, as far as I can tell from what I’ve read so far, more or less complete. Apologies to both if I’ve got this wrong.

And Finally… we have Frederic Logghe and MS Watergeus. This website/blog has an enormous amount of information about all types of barges and I think is a must read for anyone either thinking of starting out
with a barge or in the middle or working on one.

So, there you have it, this weeks thoughts. Maybe next week we’ll have made a bit of progress on clearing out the bedroom end, but if it’s as cold up that end as it is now, then I doubt it. Still, what’s the rush, we’re beginning to live the relaxing lifestyle we wanted.

Area XL

2009-01-18T22:05:00.002Z

This weekend we decided that we should go to the London Boat Show. Although we didn’t really know why, but we thought we should as we live on a boat. The show was OK and probably very good if you have a yacht or wanted to buy a huge gin palace but we were a little surprised that more areas of boating weren’t represented such as powerboats, hovercraft, canoes/kayaks and of course houseboats (although we didn’t really expect that). We did pick up lots of catalogues and brochures from the various chandlery stands and picked up some information on paints and 12 volt supplies which will come in useful when we get going again properly with Real’s conversion. The biggest selling item at the show was… inflatable aliens from Fusion. They were everywhere and by the end of the day Excel was beginning to look like the final scene from Close Encounters. I have no idea what Fusion make or sell as their stand was only selling Aliens, but as an advertising campaign it was probably very successful, I just need to look them up on ‘tinernet to find out what we’ve brought home and why.

Two Goldfish in a tank…

2009-01-10T20:50:00.008Z

…One says to the other, “have you any idea how to drive this thing?”

Sorry, a bit late for Christmas cracker jokes but it leads very nicely into the story of the Fuel Tank and the Teaspoon.

A while back, (it seems ages ago, but it’s probably only a few months) we had our lovely Somy Delta F25 boiler installed. The name makes it sound like some sort of Jet Fighter, the type you see at air shows flying vertical with afterburners scorching the grass from 30 thousand feet, actually there are times when our boiler sounds like that.

Anyway, boiler needs fuel but at the time of installation the state of our existing fuel tank, which was originally intended for the engine, was unknown and for some reason, our tame marine engineer, didn’t seem very keen on it, suggesting we buy a new plastic one and stick it on the deck. This wouldn’t have been ideal for several reasons and top of the list was cost, so in the meantime our fuel feed came from a 20-litre jerry can. This worked quite well during the late summer and autumn, I just had to nip to the local garage every few days on my way home from work and top up the jerry can, but this wasn’t going to work well in the long term. So armed with a torch I ventured into the depths of the engine room.

We’ve got two fuel tanks, each should hold about 700 litres, and should normally be joined by a balance pipe. This pipe seems to have disappeared but as there’s a stopcock on each tank we would be able to use just one. The top of the tank is about 8 feet from the floor of the engine room making it a bit awkward to get to as you need to be perched up a ladder but once up there I opened the small hatch (about 18 inches by 10 inches) and looked inside. It looked OK in there, no obvious rust, but there was about an inch of nasty looking sludge covering the bottom and after poking it with a stick I then realised that the outlet was via a cylinder (about 3inches in diameter) at the bottom. The idea of this arrangement is that any water in the fuel will end up at the bottom of the cylinder, which can then be periodically drained off, with the fuel outlet slightly higher. The problem is how to get the sludge out from the tank, including the outlet/drain cylinder, which is 6 feet deep through a small hatch 8 feet off the floor.

Enter the Teaspoon.

By screwing a teaspoon to a long length of wood, I would be able to scoop out the cylinder at the bottom of the tank into a small bucket which was lowered inside on a length of string. I could then scrape the bottom of the tank with a garden hoe, scoop the gunk into the bucket and ‘Bob’s yer Uncle’ one clean tank. Well despite sounding slightly insane it worked. With my head inside a fuel tank halfway up a ladder I scraped and scooped for about an hour, occasionally
shouting rude words when my teaspoon of scoopings fell into the cylinder again.

Once I’d taken out the bucket I then need to get rid off all the little bits, so I decided the best thing to flush a fuel tank would be fuel. So I stuck a big bucket under the tank and chucked about 10 litres into the tank, stirred it around with a stick, drained it into the bucket and repeated this about 4 times. Now the inside of the tank was as good as new. I’d already looked at the various stopcocks and filters earlier and decided they’d need replacing, and once done I put some more fuel in, checked for leaks and found all was good. Just needed to connect everything to the boiler and the job was done. We then phoned our local bunkering people, they arrived a few days later and filled her up. Hopefully 700 litres will keep us going for while.

In, Broadbanded up, and ready to blog

2008-12-15T20:29:00.004Z

OK, I know it's been a long time but we've only just got our phone line and broadband sorted out, so here's a entry that's been pending for a while and with luck more will follow soon to be you up to date.

We have lived on Real for about 2 months now. Admittedly our new home now resembles a cross between Steptoe’s Yard (if you can remember that far back) and student accommodation. We have squeezed all of our belongings, the contents of a 3 bedroomed house, into the very almost completed converted half of the hull.

Surprisingly, it has worked and we do have space – so the manic culling of useless items, bric a brac, clothes and anything that had sat still for 18 months – was a success after all and comes highly recommended to reduce the amount you have to find a home for when you finally unpack.

“So, what’s it like living on a boat” many people have asked me. If you already do then you know the answer to this – it’s wonderful! The gentle, almost unfelt, rocking, the creaking of the steel as she warms up and then again when she cools down, the swans “beak tapping” for attention on the side – ahhh bliss.

As yet, we haven’t identified a down side yet, just minor annoyances – like having to fill up the water tank at inconvenient times as we haven’t linked up to the mains yet (its on the “to do” list”), and the same with the oil as the tank needs to be cleaned with a teaspoon (I will let Laurie tell you about that one) and checked for leaks. And does anyone out there, or is it just me, experience a swaying feeling when they set foot on dry land? It’s most unnerving at first as it’s not quite sea sickness just a feeling that your wobbly legs will give way at any moment and you’ll end up shuffling up the road on your knees or worse still over the side of the pontoon making mud angels.

We now have a working cooker/oven YAY! And a washing machine, YAY again! Oh the joy of simple appliances and no more microwave meals in which we learnt 50 ways to cook and serve a potato!

Our cats (Sam and Iz) have taken to life afloat like ducks to water (excuse the pun). Old man Sam is now too old to venture far, but Iz treats it like one big adventure. On his first trip outside on deck he literally bumped into another “seasoned to life on board” cat who just popped round to say “ahoy” and poop on our deck (now I know where “poop deck” comes from!). Iz, who on a good day loves visitors, howled for England and promptly saw the other cat off the premises. On his second trip outside, feeling braver and a bit cocky he decided to disappear for a while, which unbeknown to him (and does he care – I don’t think so) sent us into a blind panic where we had all sorts of visions – drowning in the strong current, pulled down into the mud like it was quick sand. Plans were made to fit him with water wings on his return, we even invented a new cat collar that set off an alarm when it touched water or an attachment that inflated into a mini dinghy that floated him back to safety. I have no idea why we worried, why we ever worry about him. He finally returned, purring his way up the deck, feeling very pleased with himself as if all he’d been doing is tackling the waves in his canoe like a scene from Deliverance. The only evidence we had of his unknown adventure was mud up his legs and muddy paw prints up the gang plank – we can only assume that he jumped in to test his ability not to sink – failed, panicked and ran for dry land!

Time and Tide should wait for us

2008-09-05T16:07:00.004+01:00

No pictures this time, except for this one, fortunately not us.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/yourplaceandmine/belfast/A1033813.shtml

Monday we were due to go into dry dock, we called the shipyard on Tuesday to check all was well only to be told Real hadn’t turned up. After several phone calls we found that the company that were to tow us hadn’t done it as it was too windy. Nice of them to tell us! Fortunately they had told the Shipyard. Anyway, after several days and loads of phone calls (Maureen has done a brilliant job of this) we’re still at the Marina and probably won’t be able to go into dry dock for several weeks. This now means that we’ll be moving in and then moving out again into some sort of temporary accommodation, as we’ve already given notice on the house we’re currently renting. Best laid plans… and all that.

This means I’ve got to put the gangplank back, not the easiest job in the world as most of the fixing takes place over the water, and then back off and on again in a few weeks. Thanks to my brother for his help with this.

Suppose I ought to find some good news.

Packing is progressing well, as is getting rid of things we don’t need.

Kitchen 90% complete, can’t really finish it completely until we have a finished floor covering down and we haven’t quite decided on that yet. Oh yeah and install the gas for the cooker.

That’s about it for now, let’s see what the weekend brings.

Captains Slog

2008-08-26T13:07:00.005+01:00

Brief update on this weekend

We,

moved a loada stuff on to Real, completed pipe boxing on one side, fitted another socket for the cooker, painted toilet door, fitted edging strip on kitchen worktop (twice), plumbed in kitchen sink, hung pictures on the wall, had a fight with the kitchen sink waste that insisted on leaking, booked dry dock for next week to have underside cleaned, welded and painted and to have sides painted ....

Breathe...

.. packed up more boxes and crates in the house, dismantled cabinet ready to move, looked at bank account with dismay, had a cuppa, bought some tools, found an oil drum caught behind the rudder, oil drum behind rudder disappeared, fed the ducks, watched the tide...

Painting, Kitchening and OSCCD

2008-08-21T22:10:00.007+01:00

This is my first posting on this Blog, Laurie’s got writers block or something.

So here goes…

It’s a really exciting time for us and Real. We are moving just that little bit closer to moving on board and calling her home.

We have had loads of ups and definitely some downs and I am still like a cat on a hot tin roof every time I hear Laurie shout “Help!” as visions of him falling overboard still haunt me. I have, in the last few months, contracted OSCCD (Obsessive Shackle Checking Compulsive Disorder) and each time I hear it creak we rush out with tools in hand just to make sure that the gang plank isn’t ready to toss us into the very murky depths of the Medway. My trust is improving and my confidence increasing following a visit from my Mum for the first time last month, she’s 82 and doesn’t particularly like being around water, so if she can feel brave then so can I!
I have painted, not once, but 7 times, one half of the interior hold. 7 bloody times! I now have shares in Dulux who presented me recently with the honorary Old English Sheepdog in recognition of my services to their company. As we have 2 cats I thought it best just to use him as a paint roller before returning him to them for safekeeping. 7 coats of paint – 5 white, 2 grey I ask you – are these the actions of a sane person!? I honestly went snow blind at one time. I now have an extremely good roller arm and would offer my services out if it weren’t for the fact that I now hate painting. And now when so called friends joke around with the comment “you missed a bit” I have a very good use for the fluffiest of paint rollers that would baffle even the most competent medical practitioner!

We now have an almost fully functioning kitchen, YAY! Its installation being very interesting – after all how do you level up anything that floats? We should find out how level it all is when we have moved on and can judge it based on which direction the peas roll on the worktop. Fitting the kitchen we developed a technique called “How much on the wonk”. No it’s not a new name for a game show (although that’s a thought). We started with a corner unit and measured the distance from the floor, making it even. Then we fitted all the other units to this measurement. To get the tops all level we then got out the spirit level and checked how much they were all “on the wonk” and made them all the same.

After building the kitchen we now have a big box of spare parts – screws, nails and other thing-ummies. Out of interest I looked on the suppliers website and found a piece that went something like this: “We only sell to the trade so you get a professional finish with no funny bits left over!” HA! Of course you don’t – the carpenters got a big box in his van full of screws, nails and thing-ummies he’s collected from every job! And another thing - why don’t kitchen manufacturers design kitchens that use one size screw for everything? I am sure that they’d save a fortune.

We also have a working loo – something I thought we’d never in a million years get excited about. Sitting on a proper seat rather than posed over a bucket is something I can honestly say is the best thing ever – more so than a new pair of shoes (which only a woman can understand!). And don’t even get me started on running water – hot and cold! Oh what joy!

Well, that’s all for now.
Late breaking news… we’re going back to dry-dock to have the underside and side cleaned up and painted (along with a small amount of welding),and then… we’re going to move in!!! More on all of this next time.

To be continued…

Pictures from the edge

2008-05-13T12:03:00.002+01:00

Late an' Long

2008-05-06T22:39:00.005+01:00

Cor! We’ve done some Blood, Sweat and Tears in the last few months, but we’re getting there.
We finished the spray foaming, quite successful if I do say so myself. Brian the Carpenter came back and finished the lining and a fantastic job he did too. All the electrics are complete (for this half of the boat, anyway). Actually, talking of electrics, a piece of advice, don’t hold a terminal block in one hand while trying to hold the wires in place while screwing it up. Chances are the screwdriver will go through your hand or at least far enough to lift the skin on the other side. At least that’s what happened to me and I ended up in hospital for 2 days over New Year and I had to have it operated on to clean all the nasties out. The surgeon did suggest that I use a clean screwdriver in future, so I will be adding an Autoclave to my toolbox. Next, and still in progress, is the mammoth painting job (this is inside, never mind the outside). This involves filling the 8 million screw holes, sanding them down and applying 4 coats of emulsion. Over a space of 15 metres by 5 metres by loads - this is taking forever, but it’s getting there. We are now sick of the sight of white paint and are permanently suffering from snow blindness. Dulux should give us a whacking great discount on the amount of paint we have used!

Our gangplank (an engineering marvel that possibly competes with the Forth Bridge) is held in place by a network of shackles, meaning that it can move in all directions, so that whatever Real and the pontoon do it always remains in place. Shackles…Shackles… another piece of advice, regularly check the bolts on your shackles. The gangplank has been in place for about a year now, we’ve moved loads of material off and loads of material on, up and down the gangplank, we’ve moved 3 wood-burning stoves, a kitchen, vast amounts of rubbish, loads of scrap metal, up and down the gangplank. On what was probably the coldest day this year (it snowed), I needed to get rid of more rubbish. So I waited until high tide as it’s easier to move stuff when the pontoons are level with the car park, and off I went to get a trolley. The gangplank threw me in!!!!! That water was f-f-f-freezing! I called out to Maureen, but she had the radio going and didn’t here a thing, I swam over to the pontoon and held on, I couldn’t pull myself out as I was cold and very heavy (loads of clothes, cold day don’t forget). By pure chance Maureen came on deck as she ‘had a feeling’. She had to go and get a neighbour to help pull me out. I went inside and stood in front of our little Calor gas fire, shivering, while Brian the Carpenter who had just turned up to take some measurements set the gangplank upright and tied it up with rope. I then had to strip off (we hadn’t got proper heating yet) and ended up dressed in a spare fleece and a dustsheet. I looked like some very poor Buddhist monk. I had to walk to the car like this! I did wrap the sheet around my legs a bit tight so it was difficult to walk. How do women walk in tight skirts?? Fortunately there was no one around, although I bet it’s on the marina’s CCTV, and could well be on You Tube.
Basically what had happened was that one of the bolts on one of the shackles had worked loose so that when I stood on it, it just tipped sideways. We now have all the bolts wired up, plus extra steel cable wrapped around so the if anything comes loose there’s still something left to keep it together. We got a note from the marina advising everyone to check their shackles. Horse – Door – Bolt.

Brian came back a couple of weeks ago. He is the most reliable contractor I’ve come across, starts when he says he will, finishes when he says he will and costs what he says it will. He’s now fitted a lovely new roof on the other half (I’ll get some photos posted soon). It’s been done in such a way, that this is also the ceiling, the insulation’s built in so no spray foaming necessary. Barge purists may be spinning on their windlasses at this, a wooden roof on a barge! Well it’s a cost and time thing, so there! We don’t ever intend to take Real out, she’s a static houseboat and the roof looks good, we like it. Actually it looks better than the steel roof on the living area. This is the half we haven’t even touched yet, but will become the bedrooms and main bathroom. So now we’re water tight, no more rain dripping in, which means we can use this area for a bit of storage. When we look at this space it does help remind us what the living area used to look like and does keep us motivated.

Plumbing is in and almost complete, just waiting for the boiler to be set up and we’ll have running water at last. Plumbing isn’t my favourite bit of DIY, it doesn’t matter what you do leaks sneak up on you. Electrics, no problem, they either work or don’t work, and as long as you don’t grab hold of live wires there’re no problems. Plumbing on the other hand, it doesn’t matter how nice a job you make or how careful you are, a leak will appear, and usually where you can’t get to it. At least that was the case until I discovered ‘push-fit’ connectors and plastic pipe. We’ve used Hep2o, and it’s brilliant! Less joins as it bends round corners, and when you do have joins you just push it together and it’s done. No leaks. Leaks in a boat, bad!

So, when are we going to be able to move in? I don’t know, but it’ll be soon, and once we have we’ll then start on the outside. So that’s 130 feet times 2 plus the deck and the roof of the living area, wheel house…

2 inch brush and 4 matchpots ought to do it.

Been busy and Insulation

2007-12-28T10:53:00.002Z

DSCF0610
Originally uploaded by LaurieReal

We've been very busy over the last few months and I haven't had time to post any updates. I'll fill in the gaps later but here's our latest entry.

This weekend we put the Spray-Foam Insulation on the boat.

For us this was very daunting as we’ve never done anything remotely like this before. I’d made a big wooden box to put the spray tanks in as they have to be kept at between 24 and 30 degrees, in the box was a little fan heater. I put the tanks in the box to let them warm up while we prepared everything. We got a big dust sheet and laid it out, the idea was we would spray the walls first in 8 foot or so bursts, move everything and carry on to the next bit.

Once the tanks were up to temperature and we’d put on all our protective gear, (paper overalls with hoods, ‘Darth Vader’ breathing masks, goggles, and rubber gloves) we got to spraying. As you have to change the nozzles after about 5 mins, Maureen was on hand to hand me replacement ones, if you leave it too long everything goes off and can become totally unusable. We went down the first side with no major problems, got to the end and had a break and admired our handiwork. It didn’t look to bad. So we started off down the other side. Again no major problems. With Maureen rushing around changing nozzles and moving the big box (on castors, I’m glad to say) behind me while I was busy spraying, perfecting my technique as we went. So by the end of Saturday we had the two long (45ft) walls sprayed plus the two end walls (15ft). All that was left was the ceiling and the upper part on the wall.

On Sunday we returned ready to tackle the next part.

We arrived Sunday, rearing to go. I set the heater going, which by the way is pink with daisies on it, and we had a bit of a tidy up and hatched a plan.

The plan – As the upper section of the wall is quite narrow, about 2 and bit foot high, I would be progressing quite quickly along the wall, what we needed was a way for me to be able to get high enough and to be able to move sideways relatively quickly. So, we laid down acres and acres of news paper to protect the floor, got two Workmates and set them side by side. The idea was that I would get up on the Workmate, start spraying and then step to the next Workmate to carry on, while Maureen ran around picked up the first Workmate put it next to the one I was on, moved the big box, and changed nozzles as necessary. This way we would be able to keep up a fairly continuous spraying action with minimum stopping time.

We had a cuppa and admired our plan. It was good. It would work.

We put on our protective gear.

All this protective gear can make communication difficult as the masks make it difficult to hear each other and the goggles don’t help your eyesight (especially as there is a certain about of foam in the air and sticking to everything)

Off we go. I get up on the Workmate, Maureen hands me the spray gun, I say ‘Ready’. Maureen says ‘Ready’ (sounding a lot like a certain Jedi). I start spraying.

First bit finished, I step across to the next Workmate and continue to spray. I hear some muffled squeaks behind me, but carry on spraying. Next bit finished, I step on to newly positioned Workmate and continue spraying. Another muffled squeak and noise behind me (big box moving), I spray some more, and step on to the newly placed Workmate change the nozzle and carrying on spraying. More squeaks and much noise behind me, I spray like a professional. I look down to my right, no Workmate. Tut, women! So I had to stop and find out what’s happening.

Maureen is bent double pi**ing herself laughing. When she eventually regains the power of speech, she tells me what’s been going on behind me.

It goes like this – I step off first Workmate, Maureen runs up and picks up Workmate, Maureen runs round big box, with about eight sheets of newspaper stuck to each shoe and loads stuck to Workmate. She positions Workmate. Tries to remove newspaper from her shoes, moves big box by which time I’m on to next Workmate. She runs round with various bits of torn paper stuck to her shoes and hands picks up Workmate. Now with another eight sheets of newspaper stuck to her shoes and more stuck to the Workmate she staggers round to place the Workmate. She moves the big box and collapses in a fit of laughter, unable to tell me not to step off the Workmate as she’s not moved it but this makes her laugh even more.

As you can guess we abandoned this plan.

We put a platform ladder on the dust sheet, and as I changed nozzles I got off the platform a we dragged the dustsheet/ladder combo to the next position.

Next week we’ve got the centre part of the ceiling to finish.

The plan – Roller skates and stilts.

The pointy end

2007-10-01T15:44:00.001+01:00

Previous blog entries can be found here
http://360.yahoo.com/laurie7927

DSCF0239
Originally uploaded by LaurieReal