Older boats are like older houses. You start one job and another 6 make an appearance. They also demand because of their dimensions that doing work anywhere affects another area because everything has to move to produce working space.
This week is a major milestone aboard Preaux, a week when we are making another massive change to how we will live (and work) aboard. We have ripped out the kitchen which the Skipper installed to keep us going. It consisted of shelves with 3 doors across and an open shelf unit.
Having moved our battery to LiFePO4, it’s given us more capacity, and that means a chance to move away from using gas for cooking. That was forward planning needed to make a change of hob. The hob for the past 5+ years has been our only consumer of gas, and it has meant we’ve been carrying 2 gas bottles. The bottles are situated at the back of the boat in two storage lockers. This week (thanks to a CRT volunteer heading to Sawley) we sent our smeg gas hob and two gas bottles to boating charity Vets Afloat.
And the hob wasn’t the only thing to go from the kitchen this week. The sink and tap, the worktop, the cupboards, and shelves have also gone. Basically, there is no kitchen left!
This gives us a chance to retrofit insulation behind where our new kitchen will be, and to explore yet more strange wiring which has appeared as we’ve pulled out elements which might have been in the boat for the past 30 odd years.
It’s also been necessary to rebalance things. Under the old floor were kerbstones being used as ballast. Replacing the kitchen is going to create more weight, so 4 of those have had to move. That’s around 160kgs taken from one side of the boat, so as I write this, she is listing by approximately 4 degrees. That doesn’t sound much, but it feels like a lot more.
So we’ve now got a blank canvas.
There’s so much choice and decision-making in making any replacement with an older boat or older home. Should one go for a traditional look, or a modern contemporary style, or replace with what the boat would have had in 1989 when she first went in the water?
Buying off the shelf kitchen units is possible, but they then need to be cut down. That is necessary to maximise the available space, slotting under the gunwhales and making wall cupboards hang well, taking into account the tumblehome, which results in a slanting narrowing as the boat rises from the gunwhales to the roof. Effectively, each kitchen needs to be bespoke.
Narrowboat interiors are as diverse as boat owners, and we have been in negotiations for months with a skilled carpenter and friend, whose work on his own boat we have long admired.
So what would you go for? Original, bespoke or contemporary?
We will be hard at work this weekend, so by next week, I hope to be able to show you an internal transformation, and you’ll be able to see for yourself.
Pickingupducks 