On Schedule !

Week 37

Sunday

The fitter was at the boatyard early on Sunday. He had a little job to attend to on the trip boat and then had some time to spare to spend on his own boat, before yet another trip boat duty.

The first job that the fitter got Offcut to do was to find some polystyrene that we could use to fill the areas where the spray foam had been removed from the ceiling. We only need to fill a small area and a full can of spray foam would be wasted. In addition, trying to spray upside down isn't easy. Offcut found a suitably thick piece of polystyrene and set about filling the voids.

In the meantime, the fitter decided that the magnetic catch on the bed head service duct wasn't positive enough and was leaving a gap that he considered too wide. So he removed the magnetic catch and fitted a 90° steel angle bracket. This closed the gap sufficiently, once the underside of the shelf had been trimmed a little.

The next task was to fit the pipes to the roof mounted fittings. The vent pipe is the smallest but is at the back, so we did this first. It wasn't too easy until we got one person turning the pipe of the fitting, in a screwing fashion, and the other person at the opposite end of the tube turning in sympathy - the pipes were, at this stage about 150mm too long. We still weren't having too much success, so we got some boiling water and put the end of the pipe in it. This was supposed to have made the pipe a little more flexible. It didn't appear to have had too much effect, although we did manage to get enough of the pipe on the fitting to fit a jubilee clip.

We repeated the heating treatment with the discharge pipe with even less success. Then we applied a little grease on the fitting. This eased things slightly but the pipe was still stubborn. For some reason, the fitter then turn the pipe clockwise onto the fitting and the pipe simply slid right on! Here again we fitted a jubilee clip.

Next we turned our attention to the thin plywood packing pieces that we've added to the top of the tank to compensate for the thickness of the panel that the tank supplier had fitted when they re-positioned that fittings. The fitter suddenly realised that he hadn't varnished these pieces of plywood. Whilst we hope there won't be any liquids in this area, even a slight leak from either of the tank fittings could eventually damage this plywood - the Ash veneered plywood has had several coats of varnish to protect it.

The intention had been to spread sealant over the top of the tank and use this to as an adhesive to hold the larger pieces of veneered plywood in place on top of the tank. Instead, we decided to use the varnish as an adhesive as it isn't going to be strained and is only there to stop the plywood moving about. Unfortunately, the pieces of plywood that we're using have slight bows in them and this has made fixing them down that much harder. In the end we placed weights on the plywood and also used some wedges in a couple of corners in the hope that the varnish will stick sufficiently to hold the plywood in place.

We paused briefly to allow the varnish to go tacky and had a cup of tea. We then fitted the two pipes to the tank fittings - this was a lot easier than fitting them to the roof fittings. We were just about to start fitting some of the surrounding pieces when Offcut mentioned that we'd made a mistake! We'd forgotten to fit the floor of the vanity unit in place before we connected the pipes - the floor has two holes that go over the tank fittings. We released the pipes, installed the floor and the re-fitted the pipes and their respective jubilee clips.

We still had a little time left during which we were able to effectively re-assemble the vanity unit. We did have to trim the floor slightly so that the end piece fitted flush, but we achieved this with a plane and a chisel without too much trouble. We also boxed in the pipes between tank top and the ceiling, although one piece of this is currently only held in place because of the bow in the other piece! We intend to cut the loose piece into two separate pieces. One part will be fixed so that the wash basin / top can be sealed against it. The other piece will be removable to facilitate maintenance checks on the pipes (and replacement of the pipe, if necessary).

We had to adjust one of the softwood blocks that is securing the fixed piece that covers the pipes. The block was causing a gap between the two pieces covering the pipes so, by moving the block slightly we were able to close up the gap. We have yet to decide where we intend to cut the loose part, but we intend to use screws to secure it. The screws heads will either be covered with filler or, hopefully, be covered by the splashback at the back of the wash basin.

We finished the day's work by measuring up the vanity unit and taking some pictures to pass to the Corian supplier so that he can give us an estimate for the work. With all the measurements written down and the picture taken, the fitter secured the boat and adjourned to the trip boat for the rest of the day.

Monday

The fitter is glad that he never called his boat As Intended, because Monday was one of those days when work never went as intended. We knew that the weather was supposed to be good to start with, but that it was liable to become damp later in the day. As a result, the fitter planned to spend the initial part of the morning outside, cutting plywood and blockboard now that manhandling 8x4 sheets into the boat is an almost non-starter (due to the amount of stuff inside). As you can probably imagine, things didn't go to plan, and it wasn't Offcut's fault either!

The fitter was at the boatyard just after 8.15am and had soon got the kettle on and the tea made. After a bit of friendly banter with his colleagues, he moved on to the boat to start work. He's not quite sure how the plan came to change but he found himself hunting out the rubber strip that is designed to hide the heads of the screws holding the windows in position. He probably thought that, as it was early, and Offcut hadn't arrived, this was one job that he could do alone.

He'd just found the strip when Offcut appeared. However, rather than revert to the original plan he decided to continue with fitting the strip. There had been some heavy rain on Sunday evening and this needed to be dried off from the slots in the window frames, where the strip was to go. The fitter dried the first one - while Offcut made his cup of tea - and then Offcut dried the rest. By this time the fitter was well advanced with his first window, so he cut a piece of rubber for another window and passed this to Offcut. From then on, the pair worked on the next available window.

The initial corner was mitred and the strip was cut slightly over length to allow for shrinkage, something that is reported to occur over the first few weeks of the strip being installed. We've left the strip oversize but hope that there isn't too much rain over the next few weeks as this could get behind the strip at the point where the excess is currently not closely fitted to the frame.

We tackled all the windows on the starboard side first as they are adjacent to the jetty where the boat is moored. Then we got permission to move another boat so that we could move On Schedule ! to work on the port side. As there are only three windows on the port side we were a little quicker fitting the strip.

While we had the boat somewhere where we could gain easier access to the port side, we opted to touch up the scrapes and scratches in the black paint below the gunwale. Some scratches were far worse than others and Offcut set about rubbing any rust down and quickly applying a coat of primer over the bright metal. The sun was so hot that the primer appeared to be drying almost before it left the brush so, having been left for a little while, we were then able to apply a coat of undercoat over the primer. There was no way that we could add top coat on the same day, so we returned the boat to its moorings and, conveniently, stopped for slightly late lunch.

After lunch we got involved with moving a boat around. In fact, we moved two boats around, taking one out of the covered area where On Schedule ! had spent much of the winter, and moving another one into the covered area. Both moves were carried out without the use of engines and involved moving each boat around 100 metres, which is why it took so long!

By the time that we'd finished this it still hadn't rained, even though the sun kept hiding behind some ominous looking clouds. However, when the sun was out it was very warm, too warm for the fitter to stay out in it without something on his head to keep the sun off. Consequently, we abandoned plans to touch up the paint on the starboard side and opted, instead, to revert to the original plan of cutting the blockboard and plywood out in the open, whilst it was dry enough to do so, and in an area sheltered from the direct sunlight.

We cut the blockboard panel first. The cut piece will effectively form the wardrobe door. This door will also act as the door between the bedroom and the engine room. We cut the panel crossways and then lengthways, so that we potentially had two usable pieces of blockboard left over. We took the cut piece on to the boat ready to be varnished and returned the other two pieces to the dry store.

Next we cut the sheet of 12mm plywood. This piece was cut in two along its length. Each piece will act as an end panel to the bath. We're using Ash veneered plywood here because one piece will be against the corridor partition, where the blockboard will be cut to form the other bedroom door - the bedroom will incorporate the toilet area when both bedroom doors are closed. If we didn't have a piece of plywood behind the partition, when the door was closed you'd be able to see into the shower bath (and get wet into the bargain). We don't currently have a need for the other piece of veneered plywood so we'll use that at the other end of the shower to save us having to store two half sheets - one veneered and one not.

Finally, we cut the two pieces of 9mm plywood to length. One piece is veneered and will face into the bathroom, the other piece is standard WBP plywood and will be screwed and glued to the veneered sheet to give an 18mm thickness to support the open side of the shower and to cover all the plumbing. The next task is to use the bulkhead between bathroom and kitchen as a template and mark out the rough cutting area for the two sheets of 9mm plywood. This will enable us to avoid putting screws where we need to cut and save us gluing any unwanted large areas. We will then need to roughly mark out where the bath will go so that, eventually, we can cut the plywood to the correct size.

These last two tasks weren't going to be five minute jobs so, despite the fact that it was still dry, we decided to call an end to the day's proceedings. We tidied away everything that we'd had in the open - thank heavens for the BrushMate, which has avoided the need for cleaning the black and primer and brushes - and made our ways home.

Tuesday

The weekly trip to London stopped work on the boat on Tuesday.

Wednesday

The fitter went to the boatyard via the doctors, where he had a medical and a blood test. Even though the appointment was at 8.20am, arrival at the boatyard wasn't until almost 9.30am.

Apart from making a cup of tea - the queue soon formed - the first job was to get the trip boat ready as this would leave us about 2½ hours afterwards to work on On Schedule ! before lunch and the trip boat duty. It was 10.30am by the time we got on to our boat and discovered that although we'd disconnected the mains lead when we moved the boat on Monday, we'd forgotten to turn the battery master switch off when we went home. As a result, the batteries had been left switched on for a day and a half. Fortunately no harm seems to have been done. Our greatest fear when leaving the batteries switched on is that a leak may develop and the water pump could fill the boat with the content of the tank.

The fitter had some kind of idea of what he planned to do and that involved further work around the toilet tank. However, the piece of plywood that is to cover the portion of the tank where the toilet will be positioned, is bowed and won't lie flat on the tank. Consequently, we delayed work on this, preferring to try to remove some of the bow by turning the plywood over and placing a weight on it - the toilet pan!

While we were in this area we remembered that we needed to lay in the wiring for the tank's content gauge. This was a late addition to our plans and, as such, has no dedicated supply. Instead, we plan to connect it to the shower pump circuit, so we ran a couple of pieces of wire between the side of the shower and the fitting on the tank but can't connect anything up until we've sorted the plywood out.

We then turned our attention to the piece of blockboard for the wardrobe door. We'd rough cut this quite generously and needed to trim it to size. Here our past life came to haunt us because we hadn't put up the two bulkheads square to the floor, so we had to have several attempts at trimming the ends of the blockboard until we got a decent fit. We called it a day by then - some of the trimming was carried out after we'd returned from the trip boat duty. We still have to make some further changes, which will include fitting trim around parts of the door piece as well as on the edge of one of the bulkheads.

We packed up just before 5pm and headed for home. After eating the fitter took Mrs. Fitter to B & Q to use her discount card. We bought some hinges for the wardrobe and bathroom corridor doors and some catches for the panel over the toilet tank pipes in the bathroom - the upper portion of the panel is to be removable. We also bought a thin piece of plywood that we can use to make a template for the wardrobe door. At least if we make a mess of the plywood another piece will only cost about £5. If we mess up the blockboard another sheet is in excess of £60. Also, the plywood is a lot lighter than the blockboard. We also bought some rough sawn timber that the fitter intends to cut and plane to size as a favour for the grease monkey, who wants some woodwork done in his caravan. This will help repay all the work the grease monkey has done for us.

Thursday

Dare we say it, but we had scheduled Thursday to be a full day on our boat - at least the fitter had, as both Offcut and Mrs. Fitter were involved elsewhere. It never turned out that way.

The fitter spent a while before leaving home preparing some wood for the grease monkey and hopes to at least fit some of that wood on Sunday morning, before a trip boat duty. He arrived at the boatyard just after 9.30am on Thursday and, having opened up his boat, got involved with some trip boat related tasks that lasted until lunch time - so much for a technical day off! After lunch he managed to get onto his own boat, but even that was interrupted by lending a helping hand around the boatyard for part of the time.

He'd intended to work on the wardrobe door but was having a bit of a problem on the enthusiasm front, so he decided to tackle the installation of the rubber trim around the front door windows. These are rectangular in shape, with squared corners - the side windows have rounded corners at the bottom. Consequently, the front windows each need four pieces of rubber with mitres at each end. As these windows are a lot smaller than the side windows the fitter decided to risk that the rubber won't shrink too much, and cut the strips to finished size.

Ever since we had the welds increased on the weather shield on the front doors we've had a problem with being able to secure the doors on the inside because the heat generated by the welding distorted the steel that the weather shield is made of. This distortion caused the steel to buckle with the result that the door with the strip fitted doesn't close as fully as it did originally. As we'd drilled the holes and cut out the recesses for the lock strike plates before the extra welding was carried out, the slide bolts no longer locate into the strike plate holes. We've managed to adjust the hole sizes on three out of the four strike plates and could operate the respective bolts, but the fourth refused to be co-operative and the bolt has had to be left unlocked. The fitter removed this strike plate, enlarged the recess for the strike plate, plugged the original screw holes and then refitted the strike plate. The bolt will now lock, although it still takes a bit of persuasion to do so.

It was now time to get on with the wardrobe door. First the piece of 4mm plywood that we'd bought on Wednesday was cut to the same size as the blockboard - the door is longer than the plywood and had to be propped up whilst we were trying it for size. We then offered it up in the position that the open door will be - we had cut the blockboard to the right size to enclose the wardrobe - and measured off where we needed to cut. Things were complicated slightly because the floor is not level at this point and the plywood kept tilting sideways. Once the fitter was happy with the measurements he cut the plywood to the marks and offered it up again.

The cut piece of plywood fitted well enough to enable it to be further marked to show where the adjustments would be needed when the blockboard was cut. He then laid the plywood over the blockboard and drew round it before cutting to the lines using a jigsaw.

The cutting was interrupted briefly to enable the fitter to collect Mrs. Fitter from the local station - it is Thursday and that means Quiz Night and, when working on the boat on Thursday's that means pub grub first. We managed to remain as a single quiz team and came fourth out of a staggering ten teams. The winners were some boat friends who came for a meal and stayed for the quiz! They beat our team by three points. Anyway, back to the wardrobe door.

The cut blockboard was a reasonably good fit but highlighted the fact that the adjacent wall panel needed an additional securing screw to stop it sagging away from the cabin side. The cabin side curves inward towards the rear and this is why this panel sags slightly. Having installed this screw the door was a much better fit.

The leading edge of the door will be edged with Ash trim, and the relevant edges of the offcuts, which will be fixed to the wardrobe, will also be trimmed with Ash. The fitter took the offcuts home to trim on the bandsaw, where he hopes he will achieve a straighter cut than with a jigsaw - one of the offcuts is too small to trim safely using a jigsaw. The door itself will be trimmed using the router and a straight edge.

It was 6.30pm by the time the door and offcuts had been marked for cutting and too late to start anything else so the fitter and Mrs. Fitter secured the boat, got changed and headed for the pub.

Friday

As per normal for a Friday, the fitter had to play catch up with his mail, after being out until late on Thursday night. Consequently, he didn't get in to the garage until around 10am, where he trimmed the couple of pieces of blockboard on the bandsaw. He then made his way to the boatyard, where he arrived just before 11am, as tea was being made! He'd already warned Offcut that it would be a late start, but it ended up being about an hour later than planned.

We'd soon drunk our tea and moved onto the boat. The plan was to carry on working on the wardrobe door, hopefully fitting it into position by the end of the day. Did things go to plan? Not quite!

We needed to fit a piece of trim to the edge of the blockboard panel that forms the right hand side of the wardrobe, but first we had to find that piece of trim. The fitter knew that we didn't have too much left, but didn't realise just how little of 18mm wide, 6mm thick trim we didn't have. There was enough to embellish the fixed pieces of blockboard but almost none to fit to the door itself.

We fitted the top piece of blockboard in place using a combination of screws through the edge and into the blockboard walls. These two screw heads will be covered by trim - the first time that we've covered screw heads with something other than filler. However, we don't think that we'll have a need to remove the piece of blockboard (fingers crossed!).

It seems unbelievable that the two of us were on the boat for about 4 hours, excluding lunch and stops for tea, and that apart from filling the recesses left by the pins in the trim, the above is all that we did. No wonder it has taken us to Week 37 to get this far.

The fitter hasn't been sleeping too well of late, partly due to sciatica, and has been gradually feeling more and more tired as the days have passed. He had intended to depart for home around 4pm but it was nearer to 5pm by the time he locked the boat and got in the car.

The fitter spent part of the evening web searching for a nail gun. He thinks this will make fitting trim a lot easier and quieter. It should also assist when he's working in the grease monkey's caravan. He has found a gun that appears to take small enough nails and plans to call in at the local Screwfix trade counter on Saturday to buy one although he won't get to use it until Sunday because he's committed to a trip boat duty for most of Saturday..

Saturday

Saturday was a trip boat duty day, so no work was possible. However, on route to the boat the fitter called at a Screwfix trade counter and purchased a Tacwise Nail Gun for use when fitting trim. It is liable to see its first use either when the fitter does the work on the grease monkey's caravan, or when he fits the trim to the wardrobe door.

The fitter showed the the gun to one of his colleagues and then put it on the boat, which was the only thing that there was time to do.

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