Houseboat Living: The Return of the Brandy Bar
(Page 4 of 5)
May/June 1989
By Richard Trachi
If you have a yen to live on water but have always figured it was impractical, give houseboat living a closer look. Visit a marina that welcomes live-aboard residents, and strike up a few conversations. If my experience is typical, you'll meet some of the friendliest, most interesting, most ingenious people around. Here at my marina community on the Columbia, for example, we've got everything from custom boats like Brandy Bar to commercial aluminum houseboats to a residentially converted WW II steel lifeboat. It's not your ordinary neighborhood, and we like it that way.
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Editor's Note: For those of you interested in more detail on building Brandy Bar, we've arranged with Rich and his father, Al, to offer a study booklet showing floor plans, profiles and sections. The package will be available June 1, and can be ordered by sending $25 to Houseboat Plans, Mother Earth News, P.O. Box 70, Hendersonville, NC 28793.
BUILDING THE BRANDY BAR
BRANDY BAR REPRESENTS BUT ONE application of my father's versatile houseboat design. She has performed well, but there are certainly other good approaches to her construction. Therefore, while I tell you how I built Brandy Bar, I'll include options in parentheses along with my methods. Brandy Bar's hull consists of 3/4" Simpson marine plywood over pressure-treated fir framing on 2' centers. Her structure is so simple she could be built with nothing more than a circular saw, a framing square and basic hand tools. The side and bottom frame members are fastened together with stainless steel (hot-dipped galvanized) bolts, and the plywood planking is attached at the chines and seam battens using No. 12 X 2" stainless steel (hot-dipped galvanized) bolts. Galvanized common nails are sufficient for nailing the plywood to the framing. All seams and joints are thickly coated with 3M 5200 (Sikaflex) one-part polysulfide adhesive sealant. Fiberglass cloth and resin laminated onto the hull ensure a long life. The decks are 1/8" Simpson Skidguard plywood. The sides of the house are a sandwich of 3/4" extruded-polystyrene insulation between two sheets of 1/2" plywood. On top of this, I sided the house with 1/4" tongue-and groove red cedar. All the hull rub rails are purpleheart. As I mentioned, I made my own windows from Alaskan cedar, but aluminum marine or recreational vehicle windows would save some time and effort. The house roof is 1/2" plywood with 10-ounce canvas set in adhesive. Both the roof and the deck are slightly arched from beam to beam to permit the surfaces to drain properly. I hand-built all the interior cabinets from a variety of durable, attractive woods, including mahogany, Alaskan cedar and pine. All of the cabinets, as well as the interior partitions for the head and the fore closet, were installed before the floor went in, to allow full access to the boat's bilge for maintenance. The floor is assembled from imbuia in sections that can be easily lifted to get below. My galley counter is tiled, as are the floor and walls of the head. The berth slides open and closed-serving as a couch when closed and a double bed when open. (Double-duty furniture is standard fare on a boat.) I'll admit that I approached building my houseboat, and particularly its interior, as an exercise in woodworking. But your finish work can be as elegant or as simple as your skills and interests dictate. just use sound construction methods as you go, and you'll end up with a fine houseboat.
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