It was building up to being One of Those Days, you know the ones where nothing quite goes according to plan? We were expecting delivery of the kitchen from B&Q and it was to be an easy job. All we had to do was fill our newly acquired storage unit with the delivery and have the rest of the day to spend dreaming of our new home.
The delivery arrived on time.
But it turned out that there was a little too much stuff to fit into our unit.
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| Someone might have miscalculated the amount of space required. |
But that was okay, because we could just rent a slightly larger unit. So, the start of the afternoon was filled with carrying everything (including an already stored bathroom) into our new locker. Then someone had the bright idea to check whether our newly delivered 3m long kitchen worktops would actually fit into this new locker space.
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| Bugger. |
But that was okay, because we own a big van. We could transfer the worktops to my mum and dad's garage 10 miles away in Oxford.
Well, we could have. The van died the day before and was awaiting a new clutch. The owners of the storage facility said we had until the end of the day to find a new home for the worktops.Cue an emergency phone call to mum with instructions to drive to Halfords, buy a roof rack and drive to us in the next town over so we could borrow their car and transfer the items to their house.
Excellent plan.
The roof rack in Halfords was out of stock and have you seen the price of them???
New plan. Steal car from parents. Leave them at the side of the road. Load car with STUPIDLY HEAVY worktops and secure as best as we can. Too perilous to drive all the way to Oxford so Rob was to drive the "fecking, bloody stupid things" (I was getting a bit mardy by now) back to our boat (and due to lack of space in the car, I was to cycle) where we would convince a friend who isn't using their boat at the moment that they wanted to lend it to us as a shed. Lug STUPIDLY HEAVY worktops along pontoons and deposit in said friend's boat without damaging said friend's boat or falling into the water... Or dropping worktops into the water... Or tripping over the cat who was very interested in what was going on and falling into the water complete with worktops and cat.
I was all for setting fire to the worktops by this point but after 5 hours, and aside from dropping one of the worktops on my foot (and some extra swearing on my part), all was safe and secure and my parents were collected from the side of the road and treated to tea in the pub.
Whose idea was it to build a boat again?
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Meanwhile, in a workshop in Nottingham Martin has been doing a sterling job with the partial fit out of The Gabble Ratchet.
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| Batons. (Photo copyright: Sherwood Boats) |
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| Spray foam insulation and wiring. Have we gone a bit excessive with the number of light sockets? (Photo copyright: Sherwood Boats) |
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| Starting to line out. We chose oak faced ply as we have that on The Green Man and rather like it. (Photo copyright: Sherwood Boats) |
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| Yep, that is a lot of connections for lights... But look! We have a ceiling! (Photo copyright: Sherwood Boats) |
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| And some of the wall. (Photo copyright: Sherwood Boats) |
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| And ballast. 3000 bricks to be precise, weighing in at 8.25 tonnes, and all laid by one man: Super Martin! (Photo copyright: Sherwood Boats). |
So, as you can see, it's a good job we're not yet in charge of what's happening on our boat otherwise we'd still be figuring out which way up the bricks sit. Yep, we are that clueless and yep, we're building a boat. Again. How hard can it be? Bagsy not to be the first one to end up in hospital after delivery of the boat this time around...
