This month two active canal bloggers have been having their boats repainted. One put his boat in professional hands, while the other is keeping the job in the family.
NB Waterlily has just been repainted at Mercia Marina, around the corner from me as it happens. Waterlily's owner Nev Well has taken the easy (but costly) route by getting the job done by the team at Aqua Narrowboats.
Nev's most recent blog post was at the undercoat stage, but because the marina's just around the corner from me I was able to visit last week and see the final stages.
Compared with Nev's own record of his undercoats, I was interested to see that Aqua put up sheeting to keep the dust from settling on the final coats. I've not seen this in a paint dock before, and it sounds eminently sensible.
Aqua has been painting its own new hireboat alongside Waterlily, presumably bringing economies of scale to the process.
However, a full boat repaint is never going to be cheap and you can expect to pay around £100 per foot for a professional narrowboat paint job.
I cast my mind back to Granny Buttons' own repaint, eight years ago. It was before I started blogging, and long before 'going digital', so I didn't have a record of the repaint.
But Streethay Wharf did a lovely job for me, and charged about £70/foot, which 8 years on represents an understandable 40% increase, so I guess that's a typical charge for a full repaint.
Above: Justin of Aqua checks over the topcoats on Waterlily.
Below: Extractor fans stop the painters from getting too high.
At Aqua it looks like a job well done, quickly and without fuss, although Nev has yet to report.
For a contrast, check out the DIY approach of Neil Corbett from NB Herbie.
Neil calls it the Herbie Paintfest, and it's
an interesting a really fascinating read, particularly for those who are planning their own repaint, or at least wondering if they should DIY or get a professional to do it.
By roping in his friends to help with much of the work the impression you get is of a workshop party, of the boatyard equivalent of an Amish barn-raising.
Indeed, the Herbie Painfest feels more like photojournalism than a blog - you get a genuine sense of one family's industry and accomplishment.
Neil's been talking for weeks on his blog about his various options, from rubbing down and prep to final topcoat, and even discusses how he'll tackle the lettering for the signwriting.
I've never seen a boat job prepared more meticulously online, and Neil really lays bare the potential difficulties and how he'll tackle them.
He's under no illusions. For example, see his post Shaky hands, ('ten days to go to the beginning of the Herbie paintfest'), where in the middle of a post about the difficulties of signwriting he drily observes:
'I must be mad to take this on with all the other things we have to do'.
So far things are going more or less to plan, but Neil remains cautious. For example, he says:
To test out the top coat I painted the front doors, which spend most of their life in the gloom of the cratch so I reckoned that any mistakes would be less visible.
I've not noticed if Neil said how much he's saving by doing it all himself. He's been writing about it for some while and I might have missed it.
But after the dust settles (both literally and metaphorically) it'll be interesting to see the final reckoning.
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