Went down to the boat today but completely forgot to take any photos. Welding is almost complete and it’s looking rather fabulous. However this means the onus is on me to get cracking on how the superstructure and overall layout will look.

Figuring this out has involved a lot of Pinterest action and, after a lot of pinning, a theme for what I like is starting to emerge…

More photos on the houseboat board on my Pinterest account.

Off to the deepest, darkest fens this weekend to check out the river boat the parentals have been transforming. It is a riverboat that needed quite a bit of modernising to become a rather fabulous floating palace of fizz…

The other bonus was there were three fine examples in the yard of what i DO NOT want Betty to end up looking like…

My eyes are still throbbing!!

Rather a fruitful trip to Ditchling this weekend as Roma (archivist extraordinaire) was able to show me two books relevant in different ways to the Beta III project.

First up was a photographic record covering the houseboats of Shoreham. This details the history and provenance of the boats and also includes the all important photos from the river view. I am yet to go, but there are meant to be around forty or so houseboats moored at Shoreham ranging considerably in both design and style.

Looking at lots and lots of pictures of houseboats is helping me firm up what I do and don’t like in terms of boat design. As show below…

I have been down to Chelsea Reach before to check out the boats moored there. They are all lined up facing our from the wharf and. To be honest, I hadn’t been bowled over by any if the designs I had seen with many of the boats looking a bit meh. Turns out I was looking at things from the wrong angle, literally.

Looking back towards shore from Battersea Bridge revealed much more exciting designs. Sail shaped awnings, some kind of bay window right at the waterline, lots of glassy bifold style doors, and some really tasty cladding.

The only problem is I couldn’t get close enough to have a really good look or to take any pictures. It’s either back to the bridge with some binoculars or working out how to commandeer a dingy to get an even closer look…

Things are cracking on this week and she is almost almost ready to go back in the water. Well, not exactly but she is certainly looking much more viable as a boat!!

In the words of the welders, this is what’s been happening:

“Just a quick up date…all the plates are now on the stern. Alex is heading down tomorrow on his own to sit and weld. We have the bottom plates still to do but I ran out of spare men to move them about. There are some smaller patches still to do but the vast majority of the hull new plates are in and soon to be welded!!”

Right hand side is before, left hand side after. Below is about a quarter of the amount removed. Totally sucked!!

Molly and Gizzi were no help at all.

Now the front section of deck has been raised, I took some better photos of the inside of that cabin. Good news is that it is ABSOLUTELY GINORMOUS. Both in terms of floor space and head height.

I have drawn a little representation of me in the picture below so you can get an idea of scale. Obviously this was using CAD software circa 1980 – I.e Paint.

Thinking is now to keep the gap at the front created by the lift and put glass there rather than reinstate any metal. The idea is that this will let light flood into the cabin as shown below…