26th April

First payment made.

25th April

The signed contract has arrived!
Time to spend some of Uncle Marks money!
Hooray!!!!!!

24th April

Today we got the list of extras emailed to us from Richard. How much to put a cat flap in?!! Houdini will have to choose a cheap one to be fitted at that price.
We've also had an invoice for the first payment so that they can order the steel for the hull. Gosh this is exciting! But no signed contract back from them as yet. We've been promised it in tomorrows post.
Now we need to sit down and really consider the extras and layout, window positions need to be decided upon soon.

On another front, we are now one step closer to renting the house out. We are now mortgage free, thanks to our parents leaving us money. This means we can do what we want with the house and when we want to do it. We had a glass of Crabbies to celebrate, oh, and followed by the bottle of wine later!

The beginning

So after months of wondering when we would see our narrowboat Oleanna built we may now have  an idea. The chaps who are building her have a bit of a reputation for being late, so our build slot of July, meaning a launch October to November, we'd been thinking might be more like early December.
But yesterday 23rd April 2013 Mick had a phone call from Kevin. They are trying to get a bit ahead of themselves and therefore would like to lay the base plate at the end of May beginning of June! Gosh, we hadn't factored in having a boat sooner!!!

There is lots still to work out, we know our basic layout and what we'd like onboard (extras), but it has all seemed quite a long way off until now. Serious boat conference needed in the next week.

Of course they may start it in May, but Kevin is due a heart operation at some point, any point, so that may well hold things up. We'll see.