Month: March 2009

29th March 2009 – With the living room entering its last stage, th bathroom paneled and all doors fitted, you now perfectly see the end product, a lovely barge that is exactly as I wanted it, my style, my arrangement of the rooms, …

Three years ago, when I started I talked to a few people. One of them was already working on his barge for ten years and said I would certainly need 5 years to finish it. At that stage, I nearly laughed at him. Five years is way to much. Now, I’m thinking this man might be right, it could all end up to become 5 years…

28th March 2009 – I had to wait till most of the stuff was out (or in) to mount the last door in the living room. It divided the entrance from the living area. It is a double door in the same style as the other ones with glass panels.

It took us nearly all day to get everything in place. The doors were a few centimeters to wide to fit, so we had to redo a wall. The result of a lot of work looks good!

In the late evening I continued on the shower in the bathroom and to finish a successful day, I emptied the rest of stuff from the living room.

22nd March 2009 – Since we need a lot of space to finish the living area, all the tools and parts had to go. This is a big job that will take me several days to do.

21st March 2009 – The living room had been finished. A least phase 1, since next month we would like to put the finishing touch, the pine wood and paint it.

The entrance was finished as well, so is the little storage space underneath the stairs. The area for the boiler received the final flooring as well.

18th March 2009 – Instead of working, I just sat outside reading a book. That’s what makes living on a boat so nice.

15th March 2009 – Maybe it was the first year of the day to sit outside, but I still had a lot of work to do. I drilled a hole through the bulkhead to pass a water pipe. It took me ten minutes of drilling to get through.

14th March 2009 – The remaining cables were mounted today, and a few sockets connected. Three more fuses were needed, but the electricity is ready and working! While many people warned me for the cost of electricity, it certainly is not the major cost on a ship. Fuses and the fusebox are expensive, but there are worse things on your ship to spend money on, like central heating and metal work.

12th March 2009 – Today, a new control panel was mounted in the wheelhouse. New wiring from the engine to the wheelhouse and from the sensors to the engine were placed. The engine ran beautiful and the meters showed no problem. This gave me a good feeling, since we had always ran the engine without having any kind of indication, except for smoke and noise.

8th March 2009 – Finally finished the support and I also mounted the pump. The bilges underneath the water tank are not in an optimal condition and the chance of having water from the tanks onto them is real. So I decided to put tar in the bilges and put it quit thick as well. Since I was dirty anyway, I painted some weaker places on the hull as well. Where a tier is hanging, most of the tar was gone. Also the rivets welded received an extra coat.

In the late afternoon I repaired my old compressor that had been under water for three years till we discovered the ship in December 2005.

7th March 2009 – While I went shopping in the morning, plumbing needs a lot of tools and pieces, my mother painted the three doors in the corridor.

In the afternoon I had some visit from an English couple living on a tjalk. It is always interesting and fascinating to exchange ideas and experiences on boats. Later that day I finished the entrance to the hold. It is not yet the result I wanted, but I don’t have to much time to spend another day on this little area.

5th March 2009 – The plan was to mount the waterpump. By the end of the evening, I nearly finished the support, but I was unable to mount the pump itself. It took more time then I expected, but it is a solid construction that could easily hold my own weight.

4th March 2009 – I’m planning to put a control panel in the near future. They called me today and asked if it would suit for me to mount it next week. I had ran my engine in early January to put some anti freeze in the system. Since the hardest part of the winter is over, I ran her again to check if everything was good and so it seemed!

Since I still have an old broken panel that can’t be removed, I have to build a new box on the other side of the steering wheel. This means I have to clean up the wheelhouse, another job that needs finishing quickly.