Laying the parquet dry, test run, how much and layout that is the question...

We have bought the recommended adhesive for the parquet floor, a cold bitumen that you simply dip the tile in  and stick down, you don't have to scrape of the old bitumen, however as previously stated the Oak floor was definitely laid on a less than even floor, the old bitumen ranged from 0mm to 10mm, you don't need to be Einstein to work out it is not going to lay even hence the chimney sweep impression and alot of time scraping the old bitumen, well worth it in the end, we have laid the floor out dry to see exactly what we have, we know we are going to have to mix the Oak tiles with the Mahogany tiles.

hogany    m

Unfortunately there was not enough Oak Parquet to fill the whole of the bottom floor section, we would have had to mix Oak and Mahogany, we decided that the herringbone as nice as it is separately looked to busy set against the two floor sections above, we are now laying 

the Mahogany parquet in a brick style.

Meeting Myles the boiler washing machine and dish washer

As previously mentioned before we bought Tino there were two previous owners, Bernie from whom we bought the bought, who in reality done zero maintenance and in quite a lot of case changed perfectly good systems. Luckily Myles the original owner who lovingly converted Tino into a house boat has been in contact via this blog and has been over which was a pleasure and very informative at the same time, answered alot of questions which have helped to move things forward.

The engines have been turned manually and will fire up no problem, the two middle tanks in the engine room have been cleaned and are as good as ready to go, we have three 185 watt solar panels on the roof which are going to charge the 24v system and starter batteries, there is a small amount of diesel in the tanks, so we need to drain this filter it and put it back in the tanks charge the batteries to full and start her up, very exciting.

Internally the stud wall has been clad in the hallway, we have double plied to give us a drop to create a shower tray in the wet room, the hallway is ready for the chequer plate.

We have floated the boiler, fridge freezer, washing machine and dish washer down the side of the boat and hoisted them up onto the roof and then down the roof light in the front room, being a decommissioned fishing we had all the winches and arms in place to make this a relatively straight forward job.

Update

We have survived a winter with very minor issues no dramas a couple of leaks condensation from the port holes in the front room which are going to be cleaned up and perspex will be cut to size and stuck over the port hole and surround, a method used by others that stops it all together, we will do a seperate post.

We have been busy inside, the partition wall for the wet room is up, a new bilge hatch has been cut, we have started to double ply the hall way and we have sussed out exactly wher the stair has to be to maximise the space available.

In the bedrooms the Mahogany strip floor has been sanded and filled in parts. Now the partition wall is up we can start to fit out the rooms get the side panels on and clad the wall,