locker up

This was one of those jobs that was going to take 2 minutes and ended up taking a morning.

We recently stocked up on anthracite (coal) for the winter, taking advantage of cheaper summer prices, and bought 25 25kg bags (THAT was fun to lift aboard!).

The best place to store some of these was the deck locker in front of the hatch, which already had a few odds and ends in it, which i thought i'd clear out first, all the better to get more bags in.

Somehow these few scraps of wood turned into a huge pile of junk which covered the deck, including a set of boards which formed the floor of the locker, but which were wobbly and falling apart.

Having cleared out all the junk i wire brushed

and hammerited

one corner of the locker which had got rusty, and repaired the boards for the floor, nailing them together securely and adding a couple of extra bits of wood.

Once these were in...

...i could FINALLY put in the sacks of anthracite which i had wanted to put away in the first place! It had taken a while to get there but it was good to clear out a load more junk and make the locker shipshape. We are trying to do things properly when we do them, as this is gong to be our home for years and years to come, and we want to look after it.

hatches battened

One of the simpler, but very effective, things we've done recently is to buy some clear plastic sheeting and chop it up into rain 'visors' for the skylights. Whether it was through the joints in the wood of the frames or under the eaves of the spine of the roof, water was getting in at the tops of the windows when it rained. Eventually we will be replacing all the skylights with double glazed units, but in the meantime, since we put these pieces of plastic in the problem has been far less pronounced. Hurrah!

Fiddling On The Roof

Having tackled the worst of the weathered sides of the wheelhouse, and on the hottest day of the year so far, i decided to take down all the clutter on the roof, and try to fix the leaks coming through it.
I took down the radar, the support strut of which was bolted through the roof causing it to leak

removed the old and rusted navigation light boards (i THINK this type of navigation light isn't even legal any more)


as well as an old pivoting searchlight mount, the ariel for the GPS thingy and a million feet of wire from the radar.

We were then left with the roof itself, the three removable panels of which (for if you need to collapse the wheelhouse to go under a low bridge) were covered with what turned out to be zinc sheet, not lead as i had assumed.

This would have been brilliant waterproofing protection, had various holes not been drilled through the sheets to mount the radar, searchlight and various other bits and bobs.


As it was we decided the best thing was to remove the zinc altogether, paint the wood with cuprinol for protection against damp, and then fibreglass the roof in one impermeable sheet. We took off the (very heavy, unwieldy) zinc sheeting with some difficulty, and painted the wood, and are now ready to put some nice flat plywood sheeting on top of the boards before finally fibreglassing the roof.

Stripping The Light Fantastic

The wheelhouse has been a bit scruffy ever since we bought the boat. It has been exposed to the elements for too long without the love and care it needs and was long overdue stripping and re-varnishing, or else the wood itself would stat to get damaged and rotten.

We started with varnish stripper, scraped that off, and then sanded the wood smooth, leaving just the bare oak exposed, which looked fantastic.


On the left, below, you can see the original tatty varnished wood, and on the right the bare oak.

I would have loved to have left it like that but we decided that varnish was the best way to protect it against the elements and so we then applied a good coat of varnish, which actually looked great too, as it made the grain of the wood almost glow.



I also then sanded and varnished the various strips of wood which cover the gap betwen the roof and walls.

Having finished the front of the wheellhouse we then completed the starboard side, and as they were the worst affected (they must have been in the way of the prevailing wind for the last few years) we can then do the final two sides when we have the time.

what lies beneath

The first room that needs to get a full makeover is what will be the lodgers room; the sooner we can get that finished the sooner we have the potential to start earning rent from lodgers. We need to insulate in the walls and then put a new 'skin' onto the studding for the entire room, to replace the slightly dodgy existing panelling. We also need to insulate and cover the metal section of the outside wall, as in the winter that is a massive heat sink.

I'd been putting it off, but finally i bit the bullet and removed a wall panel

when this didn't release a tidal wave of water, or an avalanche of rust and grease, or any other horrors, i quickly removed the rest of the many many panels on the end wall. This revealed studding, but studding that wasn't actually attached to either itself or the wall, or even floor, no wonder the wall was wonky and wobbly


the next stage was to take out all the studding,

and the rockwool insulation (which, despite the dire predictions of many boat owners, was neither rotten or damp, but which mysteriously didn't go all the way down to the floor either, it stopped about a foot up)

and then give the few lightly rusted patches a quick going over with a wire brush, ready for a new coat of iron oxide paint. Vortex helpfully inspected each panel closely for rust before instructing us where to direct the wire brush.

So really, a very pleasant surprise, considering it's been sealed up inside the wall for at least five years and possibly twenty five, it's in pretty good nick. We now need to take off the remaining walls, weld brackets onto the metal walls to attach batons to, check over all the studding, and put new panels on. Piece of cake!

exhausted

One unexpected result of living on the boat has been that we are finding that we are so much more willing to tackle things ourselves rather than 'get a man in to do it'. The car exhaust has been sounding a bit thunderous for a while but when it banged on a speedbump because it was hanging down, it was so corroded, we knew it was time to do something about it. After taking advice from Phantastic Phil, our mechanic neighbour, we bought a new exhaust and the necessary clamps, got down under the car, got the old exhaust off and fitted a new one, it was really easy!



You can see how knackered the old exhaust was, it's so great to have a shiny new one, and not have to worry about it falling off on the motorway


and to have done it ourselves, for half the price it would have cost to get someone to do it for us, makes it all the sweeter!

Balancing acquisitions

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, so when we went to the Thames Traditonal Boat Rally



and picked up some cheap tools

and a couple of jerry cans

at the boat jumble, AND travelled down to Wales where Lorna's uncle helped us procure some fibreglass roofing materials to make the roof watertight


AND got a load of great Celotex out of a skip on the way home one day

i had to balance out these new acquisitions by getting rid of a load of wood that had been sat cluttering up the deck, by making a planter for lorna


and chopping up the rest for firewood.

S'all about balance see?...