More progress, at last!

Managed to get a couple of week of work so I tore into the boat interior.

It’s been a a bit of a nightmare this past year, living in a floating building site, dust and timber all around. It’s very hard to live on a narrowboat and refurbish it it the same time, you spend most of your time moving stuff from one end to another to work, then move it back so you can live.

During this little stint I’ve ,managed to get the ceiling and walls (above gunwale) painted, no small feat as it needed 5 coats of paint to cover the aged, antique pine stained tongue and groove cladding.

I also managed to get a fridge installed! This is quite exciting for me as I’ve not had a fridge for the last four years. This little fella runs on gas so is no drain on my electrical system and it runs on what is essentially a pilot light, so is quite frugal on the LPG.

A few other odd and sods done as well, which is nice, nicer still is that the bulk of the really dusty work is done, so the remaining work can be done in the evenings and weekends.

Aquanomad

Harefield, Grinders and Cats

I’d been in Harefield a matter of moments when this beautiful cat appeared. She’s some sort of Persian with lovely blue eyes, and struts around like she owns the place, I’d like a cat. Sigh.

Something else I spotted was this amazing boat, no idea what it is, or who owns it, but it looks like some piece of military kit with fold down wheels!

Here are some various pics of the hull, after grinding,treating and re- blacking. This was hard and dirty work, especially as I did it on my own(!).

I also killed 3 grinders in the process. First up was a Ryobi grinder, £34 from B&Q (reduced from £40), I like Ryobi, have a drill from them that has been brilliant, also a chainsaw that is also very good, their grinder on the other hand, lasted 3 days, not good. Next up was a cheapie from Argos, a £23 Challenge Extreme. I normally don’t buy tools at the lowest end of the quality scale if I can avoid it, but my friend has a grinder from this brand that has been great. Four hours later the Argos grinder had given up, I really wasn’t ready for the challenge, as the name had implied.

So I bit the bullet and bought a Makita, it has worse specs than the others, lower wattage, less rpm etc., But WOW!, it just works, it finished the last three quarters of the hull off without skipping a beat.

Makita, the king of grinders!

More floor

The work on Jasmine continues with finishing off the bilges.

First step, rip it all out! Then liberal use of a grinder with a wire brush to removes the surface rust, it wasn’t too bed but I feel mush happier knowing what’s under the floor now!

This is the Jenolite drying. Jenolite is a rust converter/preventor

And this is the paint drying (fan assisted).

After the the floor goes in I’m off to Harefield Marina to have her taken out of the water so I can paint her hull.

I don;t think I’ll ever get clean again!

Aquanomad

Testing my google nexus 4

Well I'm totally googled now!