March

The month has flown by and progress on Misterton is being made. Keith the plumber has been working on installing the heating and water systems. There have been a few problems with suppliers and delivery dates, but its starting to come together.

The bathroom is still in kit form, but at least we have all the main pieces now.

I've been doing more wiring and installed the control panel for the boiler, next to the electrical panel.

We've both tidied things up so there is a bit more space now.  A local joiner is making a built in wardrobe for our bedroom, so a moving in date of sometime in April looks likely still.

After a brief spring-like break, the rain and cold has returned, but we got this nice picture of the church opposite on saturday.

On sunday I heard a boat outside and went to have a look. I don't know what type of boat it is, but its one of the nicest I've seen. It looked and sounded amazing, like some kind of hot rod waterborne vintage Bentley. Looked pretty maneuverable too.

 I hope to see this one again and maybe find out more about it.

Sunday

Not much boat work happening this weeked, as I'm in the airport waiting to go back to Norway. Thanks Amex for not booking the flight I wanted :)

Got some stuff done yesterday, installed the Victron control panel, so I can now see the state of the batteries and how much mains power has been used. I was able to monitor how much power Mary needed to run her hair straighteners and query as to the necessity of using this. I can see her getting tired of this new source of information before I do.

Dave Hill (son of Les Hill, the last commercial owner of Misterton) has sent us some old registration documents, and a friend of his, Mike Brown, has some old photos he's scanning in for the website. Thats one of the nice things about having an old barge (as opposed to a new one) is the history and connections it has. Here is the first picture he sent.

More progress next weekend I hope.

Guest #2

In the category of first guest (male) we have - Johnny Wyer! Johnny came for a visit on saturday and stayed overnight. Brian popped across on saturday evening and we all went to the Swan for dinner.

John managed to sleep in through the church bells which start at 9:00am on a sunday......

 ......but managed to wake up when food appeared.

We had more visitors on sunday, Piran and Loretta dropped by, then Mary's brother Steve and girlfriend Lisa came over for afternoon tea, at once again, the Swan - which is essentially our extended kitchen at the moment.

Over the last few weeks I've been doing some inside jobs, such as boxing in the waste tank.

Also the electrics are coming along. The conduit has been run for the mains sockets and the wiring put in place.

Mary was quite excited to be able to use her hair straighteners from a wall socket instead of an extention lead. All good progress.

Guest

Last weekend we had our first ever overnight guest on Misterton, our niece Carolyn. Mary had lured her into London with the promise of a shopping trip, we'd asked if she'd like to stay over on Misterton, despite the current lack of facilities and to our pleasure she said yes.

While Mary and Carolyn went off shopping in London, I spent the afternoon running conduit and wires to the workshop area. This resulted in the lights no longer being run from the small standby battery out of my car, but from the main battery bank for the first time. When the ladies returned it was time for a quick fashion show to display their purchases, and then off to the local pub, The Swan for dinner. We rounded out the evening by introducing Carolyn to the 'Family Guy' - I played this down the next day to my sister in law Fi...

Here is Carolyn's bed for the night, in the second bedroom.

And proof that she survived the night. Hopefully she'll come to stay again.

Time

I've been plodding on with the wiring and researching heating systems, but there is only so much you can write about these.

I was looking the other day at pictures from last year, February 2009. The engine room was looking a little different then....

Contrast this to the view with the new railings below.

A general shot of the inside shows how far we've come.

At least Mary doesn't have to sit quite so close to the stove now (although she still does sometimes....)