Spring clean and painting.

When I opened the back cabin doors this morning to take Paddy for his walk, not only was a greeted by a pea souper, over night we had been joined by a fisherman. As Paddy and I walked past the fisherman's tent, he was snoozing on his camp bed completely dead to the world, in fact so dead to the world he was snoring, which must have been scaring the fish away, because none of his four rods showed any sign of having a catch on the end of the line.

After some breakfast, it was time to get on with the list of jobs I had gathered in my head. The sun was beginning to burn through and we could see down to the River Weaver.

1st job was to help Keith change a plumbing joint under the back cabin floor, which is part of the engine cooling system, with that job it was on to the next job.

2nd job was to rub down the red on the bow to prepare it for some undercoat and then to apply the pink undercoat. Whilst I was doing that Keith was sawing in half a piece of board he found whilst collecting rubbish yesterday, which will be ideal for advertising our coasters and placemats.

3rd job was to undercoat the board that Keith had successfully saw in half with white paint, they were then allowed to dry in the very warm sunshine.

4th job was to add the first coat of red gloss to the bow as the undercoat had dried in double quick time. With the paintwork now in drying mode, it was time to think about my 5th job which would take the longest.

5th job was to strip the back cabin down to begin the Spring Clean. Yes it is the first day of the British Summer tomorrow and so I have done a Spring clean in the back cabin. I took down the plates, washed and dried them all. I rubbed down stoves chimney pipe and painted it in black gloss, so it looks nice and smart for the Summer, I then took down the Winter curtains and replaced them with the Summer curtains, once I had found them. I always put things in a place where I can find them and then yep you guess it, I forget where they are arghhh. After 15 minutes of searching I finally found the curtains in one of our plastic boxes, the curtains were ironed and hung. All the cabin lace was washed, bleached, dried and some of it re-hung. Most of the back cabin is now done, I just have some lace to hang tomorrow once it is dry and the remainder of the plates. Whilst doing the back cabin, I did stop for lunch whilst the Malaysian F1 GP was on, I was then back into Spring cleaning mode. I finally stopped cleaning for the day at 4.30pm, because I felt like I had done a good days work.

The fisherman packed up and is now on his way home after catching nothing at all and I am now about to feed mog and dog, before cooking us something for dinner.

There is something very rewarding about getting a list of jobs completed, tomorrow I will start on the saloon.

Chat soon x