Not posted for a couple of weeks for two reasons. One there was not much to blog about and two, I have been busy decorating the dinning room and landing at home that is turning out to be a major job.
First problem we found is that there was a second door into our bedroom for some reason and that had been walled up with plasterboard but not very well as it moved and cracked the plaster so it all had to be knocked out and re done
I also had to replace another plasterboard wall on the landing leading to the upstairs room as the only thing holding that in place was the plaster's tape. What should have been a simple decorating job is turning into a major construction task. Still that's what we get for buying an old house.
With preparations for the plasterers nearly ready we decided to visit AmyJo for the weekend but as the weather forecast was for more strong winds we thought we would take the opportunity to put a few more of our own finishing touches to her.
We mentioned that Fernwoods were going to visit AmyJo to finish off putting up blinds in the galley and we found these look just right. As these were to be hung in the galley we wanted to avoid fabrics for hygiene reasons so these are lightweight aluminium so can be easily cleaned.
I wanted to protect the paint on the stern deck as after our trip to Braunston it was clear muddy foot fall was going to scratch and wear the paint quite quickly so we purchased some Flexideck matting and set to putting that down. I am pleased with the result and the grey colour of the matting fits perfectly with AmyJo's colour scheme.
Being rubberised plastic it was a simple task of clipping the tiles together then trimming them with a Stanley knife to fit. The whole lot lifts up easily for cleaning and access to the engine hatch. Hopefully this matting will avoid foot traffic scratching the paint or wearing it away.
Meanwhile inside, Chris was adding a few finishing touches of her own in the wet room that added a few more references to our sailing hobby. Personally I'm not sure if they are a bit OTT but we'll see how it goes.
She also manage to find some weighted door stops that might come in handy as ballast if needed. Seriously though they are pretty cool door stops and actually stay in place and, surprisingly, do not roll all over the place when the boat moves.
During AmyJo's build I made a decision that has created an enormous problem since AmyJo was launched that I needed to rectify as soon as was possible and now was that time. Rob, one of the fitters, asked me during AmyJo's build if I wanted a full length mirror fitted to the bathroom door and I said no. Now in my defence, your honour, being a bloke my reasoning was that as we had a large mirror behind the basin so I saw no reason why we needed another one. I hadn't reckoned on the wrath of the petticoat government that runs our family and so ...... we now have a full length mirror on the bathroom door. Oh for the observant, yes I know it is on the bedroom side of the door, Steve does not ask why, Steve just does as he is told.
I'm not hen pecked really, honest .... Chris said I could say that.
It was always our intention to fit LED lighting in AmyJo but the cost of such light fittings made the cost quite high. AmyJo has 20 lights in her saloon alone so we had to compromise to keep costs under control. Standard halogen lights were fitted and as bulbs have blown we have replaced them with LED equivalents from Bedazzled LEDs (click). The warm light version we are fitting are saving us 18watts per light fitting. Over the 20 in the saloon the savings made by these replacement bulbs make them quite cost effective on battery consumption saving alone and work out cheaper than buying a complete LED light fitting. For the techies these are protected by an Internal Voltage Spike Suppressor and fuse so handle voltage variations quite well. For us non techies, they give out a nice light too.
The last job on our list was to fit emergency nav lights in case the batteries run out and our normal ones do not work. We purchased these in Turkey some time ago and are quite bright at one candle power each.
