Boat DIY Thursday

We've been attempting to get some kind of balance between work-work and boat-work (and everything else). One solution to this that we are having a go at is 'Boat DIY Thursday'. So one day per week we spend a full day keeping things going with the renovation.

Today, our first, was great, and although we nearly canceled due the it being VERY VERY COLD, it turned out to be a great way to get the blood flowing.

So, the main job we are concentrating on over the next few weeks is renovating the Galley in the Captain's Cabin. Eventually this will have a little tea and coffee making station, a bog planchest for my artwork, and floor to ceiling shelving for all
our creative-industry related books.

The first step was to clear some space, rub down the hull, paint any rusty bits with Vactan, insulate, then spray foam the edges to create a nice airtight seal.





As well as this we fixed a few other bits and bobs around the place which we've been putting off doing. Even though they are only small things, it's surprising how satisfying it is to have them done.

It doesn't seem much, but at least it has started the momentum of progress.

Corridor

Last winter, most of the heat kicked out by our stove seemed to disappear in the icy icy corridor. So, again getting ready for winter, we covered up the bare hull with insulation.

This involved welding brackets onto the hull for the battens.


Packing neatly with celotex.


Spray foaming the gaps to create an air tight barrier.


And then cutting ply to size to screw on top.


We also put ply in to create the other walls of the corridor. We're looking forward to painting these too- and putting in a suspended ceiling so that it has less of a 'fun house' feel when you are walking down it.

Wheelhouse Studio

I (Lorna) went away to as Vegas in the summer, and Steve was very busy turning the wheelhouse into my new painting studio.

Step 1 was insulating. We pulled up the old floor, packed it with celetex, then relayed the floor on top. There was just one tricky bit where there was a hatch down to the engine room that we had to leave accessible.

We also insulated the ceiling ready for winter, but need to get some thinner ply to finish it all off.



Steve pulled out the old tongue and groove woodwork, I welded on brackets for new battening and cut some sanded scaffolding planks to size for my perfect desk and then vanished for a week. Steve put insulation between the battens and carefully cut ply to size.







He then filled in the screw holes, primed the plywood and neatly cut sections of the reclaimed flooring to size to make window sills and edges.



He gave it all a lick of paint and it looks so neat and tidy. He then laid the floor, leaving a removable section to keep access to the engine room. This used up almost all of our remaining reclaimed flooring (which we used in the corridor). Being solid wood it is going to withstand greater wear that the wheelhouse will have so was a good choice.







He built a fancy support for my homemade desk, utilising some more of the scrap wood that had been pulled out. The raised section at the bottom is there to give more headroom for the galley below. As my feet will be kicking around on it a lot, it was worth putting flooring down on the horizontal surface of this too.




As soon as I returned from America, I could make it really feel like home and put all my art stuff in place.


And my carnivorous plant collection too.

The Roof: Episode III

So with the physical structure of the roof in place it was time to get fibreglassing.

We'd got all the matting and resin and everything ages ago but due to a series of events, including moving the boat to central london and then having a major rethink of how we were going to do the roof, we had never actually started the fibreglassing process. This was actually great as it meant that we hadn't fibreglassed the roof and then wished we had insulated it first.

So we got outour matting etc.

and started laying it on the panels, a laborious and time consuming process. On the first day we got two panels done and then gel coated (which protects them from UV light and provides the final finish that we wanted),


and while Lorna was out (it's a two man job) i also finished insulating inside the central walkway.


But then, after days and days of sunshine, the weather broke, the clouds gathered, the sky went dark and the rains fell




It was frustrating to not be able to continue making everything watertight, after so much planning and preparation, but we had sealed all the joins in the roof with flashing tape, the OSB coped really really well with the water and didn't swell or fall apart, and with a couple of long sessions whenever there WAS a break in the weather long enough for the roof to dry out, including a night time work session until midnight lit by one of my photography lights,


we continued to make progress and get more and more panels fibreglassed and then gel coated.


It's finally coming together...

The Roof: Episode II

The next stage for the roof, now the insulation was in, was to face it with 8X4 OSB sheets. This was a pretty similar job to the insulation really, except we had to cut them with the plunge saw rather than a knife, and although it took longer than the insulating it wasn't long before all the panels were covered.

I then cut thin strips and fixed them down the sides of all the panels, to cover the edges visually and provide a run off for water once they were fibreglassed. It was while screwing these in that the screwdriver went overboard.

Once all the panels were on, we reallised that we had underestimated the amount by which the central walkway needed to be raised up, and so we had to take it up again and raise it some more.


We also took this opportunity to seal up the points inside the walkway where the windows meet the beam in the middle of the roof. The gaps in the roof that the windows sit in gto right up inside the walkway to the middle point of the roof and we were finding that every time we worked on the roof we would get little snowfalls of sawdust drifting down though the gaps.

Finaly, while the walkway was off, we used the excess insulation from the roof to insulate inside the walkway, before putting the lid back on.

DeWaterlogged

Or 'Why You Should Buy DeWalt Tools'

While screwing panels of OSB on the roof (see next post) a heavy swell caused me to lose my balance and i dropped the DeWalt electric screwdriver into the river, which was at that point about 3m deep. Resigning myself to the fact that it must be dead, i thought i'd at least go down and get it when the tide went out, just in case anything was usable.

When the tide went out the screwdriver was revealed, lying in the mud

so i climbed down and got it.

I pressed the trigger as i picked it up out of the mud, and directly from being completely submerged in 3m of water it worked perfectly! Not wanting to push my luck i let it dry out for an hour or two, and it's been fine ever since.