ON A BOAT
Life on the River!

Interiors

Fun things we do inside the boat to make it look nice.

the table and the dishwasher.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about the table in the kitchen area. What colour it should be, what shape and style. How it should sit amongst the other kitchen things. Eventually we opted for a very nice e-bay find. A 70’s table, round, which extends and you can get a lot of people around it. It was rather tatty and brown (well, wooden), and I decided it needed to be white. So I painted it, and now it looks bright and MODERN. But with a retro twist. Twisty. This is good because that whole area of the boat was beginning to feel like a sauna/chalet and whilst I have the utmost regard for Swedish lifestyles, I do not need to be in one all the time.
Also, we were very kindly, nicely, wonderfully given a dishwasher as a boat-warming present from Pat’s mum, Clare, and it’s amazing. I know it’s not in keeping with the rustic style, but frankly, I don’t care. Its like a big magic cupboard to put dirty things in and it’s good because they come out clean. Ping! What a treat. I’ve never had a dishwasher before. Not in my own life.

fire

We have it.  In two places. One big, one small.  I now remember how very important stoves on boats are.  It’s probably one of the top reasons to live on a boat.  Maybe the combination of flames next to water.  Something about the elements, and the reflections, and the fact that they kind of cycle around each other.

Currently we are most in love with Louis, which is the small stove made by a lovely burner-maker in devon called ‘Windy Smithy’.  Louis sits next to the bath and he is so wonderful, with much character and a wide hat.  I know where I am with Louis, because he is modest, and simple.  The big burner, double sided and all jazz hands in the front room, I am still a bit suspicious of.  I think I will grow to love him when he is less shiny and new. In fact he’s already a bit better since getting grubby on the inside windows.

At the moment I am very busy with work, so I feel far from the boat world.  It’s making it hard to write anything sensible, because I’m all space-less…. And the whole point is that boats give space.  So maybe I’m a bit grumpy about that. (It’s my own fault!)

Sorry about the pics- they are awful, but I’m just in the process of loading proper software onto my computer so I can upload so NICE photos taken on a NICE camera.

shelvish start

So, we’ve nearly done the kitchen, the woodburner has arrived and basically, our list of things to do has thoroughly decreased.  It’s a strange sort of feeling really.  However.  There are still installations to be done.  The pipes for the burners need to be bought and this is proving difficult and expensive- because our big woodburner is so big it needs a 7inch diameter flue, and quite a long one.  Pat is dealing with this.  That’s the burner above.  It’s good, I think, and not as big as it appears to look in that picture.  It’s going be really great once it’s actually burning something. Until then it’s sort of hard to know.

The most exciting thing is that we have been doing arts and crafts.  It all started with the shelves.  Pat made them out of old oak which we had acquired and I had a vision about the brackets.  “RED!” I said, out loud.  Not just any red though- it was to be a very specific red so that it would not clash with the turquoise wall behind.  So I mixed a red, which to the naked eye maybe just looks like red, but I know it’s not just any red.  And BINGO BONGO- we made the best shelves I have ever had.  They may not be much to anyone else, but all things considered, they may well be one of the best things I have ever contributed to. (Which says a lot about the rest of my out-put.)  The shelves have since been ‘styled’ with our newly acquired Orangina glasses (Chiswick car-boot sale £5) and mum’s lovely bowls and plates. (Also featured in the ‘breakfast’ photo above) (Where are my invitations to Guardian LIFESTYLE supplement??? Like HELLO??)

So, after the shelves, one thing led to another and before I knew it I was all over our old ikea slatted chairs that everyone in the western hemisphere owns, or has owned, at some stage.  They have been painted in stripes- and I am quite pleased with the result. (See above).  Pat then made a spectacular bathroom shelf out of a piece of drift wood which he dragged out of the river at low-tide the other day. It looks a bit like the flintstones.  We have decided to leave the wood in its rustic state, although this means there are one or two animals living in it.  Perhaps not such a bad thing, considering we now have a mini-fly infestation, and maybe the creatures living in the stonehenge shelf will eat the flies.  (I say infestation, but it’s not that bad really).  I thought they were fruit-flies but boat-fitter Tom believes they may be coming from the plughole, out from the river and into our home. Which is both rude and irritating- because they especially like wine, so they have baths in ours.

A large vessel just went past and now there seems to be a lot of watery bubble noise under the boat- this happens a lot, but I’m suddenly feeling a bit worried that maybe some went in the holes where the sink water goes out (like the flies do). I don’t know if that’s possible… It probably isn’t is it? No.

Crafts.  Yes- I have also painted some ‘roses and castles’ style roses onto some cheapy spice racks to jazz them up a bit.  That was a Saturday afternoon well spent. And Pat baked a giant stuffed marrow for dinner that night, which isn’t quite arts and crafts but was still quite impressive.

itchin in the kitchin

dear boat blog (and anyone else reading),

I hope you are well and that you have been keeping busy over these past few weeks.  I felt I should write to update on a number of things that have happened and continue to happen during this time.  First of all, the stove dilema was solved and we ordered a very nice, double sided, 6kw stove from ‘Natural Fires’ in ‘Byfleet’. (is this a nice place?).  The Natural Fire company have a very friendly logo of a cheery looking tree on their letterhead.  I don’t know how cheery I’d be if I was a tree advertising wood burning stoves. printed on paper.  Still- I guess it pays to be optimistic.  WHICH I am being- very. About the stove, because, let’s face it, it could still possibly be completely wrong or rather too large.

The exciting thing that’s happened is that the long-awaited kitchen units finally arrived over the weekend.  And they are everso rustic!  Oh yip! How rustic a kitchen it will be, complete with brazilian tiles and some pans we bought for £5 at a car boot sale last weekend.  £5 for 4 pans that actually work on our very specific induction hob.  They look like something you’d find in a kitchen from the past, and maybe aren’t so nice.  But they’re magnetic and therefore we love them because they saved us loads of money.  We have to install it properly, in the meantime we just arranged it roughly in the right order and then Pat went inside the big corner cupboard to see how much we’d fit in it.  And basically, it fits a whole lot. Which is excellent.  Next we’ll put up shelves and get all our colourful crazy stuff all over it and it will immediately look old and like it’s been there for a very long time.

Finally, we acquired a very exciting desk also from the car boot sale! See below!  It is a bit like Noddy’s Desk, in Noddy’s house. If I remember correctly.

I think that’s all for now, yours sincerely, etc etc.

8 legs good

So!  Some more pictures above.  Have I mentioned the spiders?  I don’t believe I have.  Pictures above of 3 of them (although possibly it’s just 2 of them, with one taken from 2 angles.  They all look so different with their hairy spindly bodies and matching legs).  There are probably around 27 spiders currently ‘sharing the space’ with us.  One kindly builds his web over Pat’s nearest porthole every night (it’s definitely the same one)- he protects us at night from bugs and mosquitoes.  Spiders, you see, are our friends.  Although sometimes they’re just downright rude and build their webs in the most inconvenient places.  Yesterday I found one who had made it’s home in the toilet.  Actually IN the toilet.  Often they block whole doors with their elaborate wispy ways.

Tonight it is raining so today we ordered our stove so that it arrives in time for winter.  We booked flights to Brazil so that we arrive in time for the winter… er herm.  And we also ordered our kitchen which is being made by a very nice man called Gary who lives in Nottinghamshire.  He makes reclaimed pine kitchen units with belfast sinks in them, which look like a country cottage.  He’s not able to come here and measure up so Dad and I have spent a long time drawing up diagrams and measuring, so no doubt they’ll arrive and be completely wrong and too big.  I do hope not.

What else? We’ve been having visitors and are planning a ‘nautical’ themed boat warming party.  Perhaps- ‘Sea Creatures of the Deep’.  I’m just worried that if this is the theme then people will come wearing clothing that restricts the movement in the lower part of their legs- mermaids, eels, prawns, oysters etc- they don’t really have much manoeuvreability in their legs. In fact, they don’t have legs.  And at a party on a boat this could be disastrous.

BTW (as they say) just saw Cheep’s family and it was down to 3.  Mother duck (still alive- but has lost half her body weight due to post-birth activity) and 2 ducklings remain.  I guess that’s why they have 9 to begin with.  Still, I’m decided not to become emotionally attached to the whole duck-family thing.  It’s more than I can cope with, I have my own family to worry about.