The kitchen refurb has started early due to being stuck at the bottom of the Deepcut flight on the Basingstoke canal. We were moored at Calcut on the Grand Union, the reason for moving to the Basingstoke canal was so the boat would be nearer home as we needed to make alterations to it to enable us to get it ready to live on. We have been stuck just below lock 15 since Easter due to a collpsed bywash, it should be repaired by October. We only live 5 minutes from where Megan is moored at present, so we took this opportunity to start work on the kitchen. Once the old kitchen was removed we laid a solid oak floor. The floor was laid on a self adhesive membrane, no glue or other fixings were required so the whole floor is able to move. A 10mm gap was left around the floor to alow for expansion this was covered by a solid oak scotia molding.

Me removing the old kitchen.

This shows the membrane laid in preperation for the new floor.

The lounge and kitchen flooring nearing completion.

Once the floor was down we decided to tile the bulkhead at the end of the kitchen because when part of the old kitchen was removed some of the veneer got damaged.The problem with working on boats is you cannot use a spirit level to create a level line to work from so everything has to be measured from the floor or from a convenient datam point, the tilling was successful and looked level.

The next job was to start building the kitchen. After many hours debating what type of kitchen to fit,whether to have oak doors/laminate work tops/solid wood work tops/granite work tops the list goes on. In the end we decided on cream framed doors on standard size base units with laminate work tops.The washer-dryer gave me a lot of head aches, how to get into the boat the doors were only 555 mm wide all washer dryers are 600mm wide and over 555mm deep but I managed to find one which was 554mm deep so it just fitted.

The first phase. The washer-dryer will have a door fitted to it.