We’ve only had the keys for a day but boy did we make the most of that day, we were painting away as quickly as this baby sloth will melt your hearts. We’ll update you with the progress in a later blog. We wanted to start by talking through the layout changes we plan.

You true Living Narrow fans will be crying out … ‘What you said you wanted to buy a boat that needed no work’ … But when, like mature adults you fall in love with and decide to buy a boat, that isn’t always possible.

There is nothing major we are looking to change and as we have mentioned most of it is cosmetic changes to suit our taste, rather than our boat requiring a massive overhaul. I’m a sucker for diagrams so let’s begin:

CURRENT LAYOUT

As the title suggests, this is the boat as we brought it. In honesty the layout work’s just fine for us, there are only a few small changes we are looking to make.

NEW LAYOUT

Handily highlighted in yellow are the changes we are looking to make. We ideally wanted to section off the whole space more, so as you had a more defined living room area, dining area and kitchen. The bedroom and bathroom are thankfully already defined! So as you can see, the majority of these changes will be made through the use of furniture, rather than any grand DIY job.

Great I here you all exclaim, but hold on a minute … what in all that’s narrowboaty are you doing at the back! Well my friends this is the biggest project we are taking on in the redecoration of the boat. We are looking to up the wardrobe storage space. It’s a bit hard to envisage from the overhead plan, so I got all arty for you and have done a beautiful technical sketch:

This is our vision, we keep the wardrobe to the side, but then build a full unit across the back, with a half height drawer unit which can be used as a step through to the engine room at the back. We would keep the door way through and just cover the hole which will be popper-ed in to help with insulation. With the hanging rail running the whole way across the back clothes can easily be pushed to each side and the cover removed to allow a walk way through.

It’s the simplest way we could think of to increase our wardrobe storage, and make the most of the space that was there, but of course we were conscious that this is hardly a traditional choice. That’s why we have tried to keep the materials and the design as fluid as possible, allowing the original functionality and walk through to remain when required.

Otherwise its just paint and furniture galore!

James & Kirsty