boat fitout - Cluett Carpentry

How to use Bulkheads for Storage

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A bulkhead is a nautical term to describe any vertical wall that isn’t the hull/cabin top. These may be structural, or merely a way to compartmentalise internal space. As boats become more open plan, we tend to have less walls dividing the space but they are always a significant square footage of surface area. You can maximise the storage capability of your boat by making use of the bulkheads.

In this blog I will go through some good ways to use the space. A lot of this is things you can buy or make at home. You don’t need to be an expert to make the most of bulkhead walls. So, if lack of storage is driving you up the wall, then read on!

Space: Bulkheads

Size: Widely varied. Generally half or full height (900mm or 1800mm) tall. Widths from 400mm to 3000mm

Type of storage: Shallow storage. Good for pre-made items as it’s typically vertical. Shelving, hanging and racking. Nothing that sticks out too far

Suitable for: Books and trinkets, but also great for hanging kitchen items and such. Coats, bags and boots. It is also useful for ‘active’ use, like a draining rack. It’s a dry internal area, so anything that will fit

Materials: Almost anything, especially if it is off the ground. Damp shouldn’t be an issue so pretty much anything goes

Difficulty rating: Very easy. The flat vertical surface lends itself to almost anything you would do in a home so “off-shelf” items will readily fit, as well as being prime for upcycling and DIY

After the cat, I think one of our favourite things on the boat is the draining rack. My partner found it on eBay and it revolutionised our washing-up. It’s small. Only a couple of square feet. It can hold an amazing amount of crockery and cutlery though. For a fairly cheap internet purchase it has made the space in the kitchen feel so much bigger. It’s wall mounted and has a drip tray underneath so we don’t lose any worktop space. With three tiers it can hold loads. A really handy addition.

On the other side of the kitchen we have more bulkhead storage. This is simple. The idea is the same as our curtain rails. Copper pipe and Munsen clips. A touch more advanced on the DIY front, but still an easy beginner job. Hanging items is great for pans, spatulas, sieves etc. This takes a lot of clutter off the side and can be more flexible than shelving, with large items hanging vertically. If you hang some baskets off them you could put pretty much anything here. Elsewhere in the boat we have used the same idea to hang our kindling basket, hats and gloves basket, you could even have a cat basket for your feline friend.

Walls are great for hanging pre-made items to use as storage as bulkheads are mostly plumb. It is easiest when they are vertical walls unlike the sides of boats which can be almost any angle. You can get lots of interesting pieces, very cheaply, and with a few screws you’ve got extra shelves. An example of this on our boat is that we use a cute little hexagon shelving unit from my wife’s old flat to store bathroom items, we have plenty of space to stash toilet rolls and a bottle of room freshener spray. The latter is important when you live in a small shared space. Anything like this can be fitted to the wall for instant storage.

Upcycled items are cheap, fashionable and can add character to a boat. While the inside is our ‘medicine cabinet’ as it were, the top is space to hide away more bits and bobs. Spaces like this this help keep sides clear. A clear side makes a small home feel more spacious. Clutter can be oppressive. We aren’t always the best at keeping things tidy, but having a home for things helps.

If you have the space for some custom shelving then you can really go to town. Wide beams especially have big open bulkheads. The sky is the limit here. Any material, any design. You can have book shelves, display shelves, even a full home entertainment wall. Open shelving is great, but you could also have cupboards if you have the space. We have two cupboards in the front of our boat. It does take some of our lounge space, but without them we wouldn’t have any hanging space.

In a wide beam then a bulkhead of full height cabinets across the boats can make a real statement, especially in a dark colour. Like a feature wall, but more useful. Using interesting materials can make for some gorgeous pieces. I love industrial and steam punk looks, as well as drawing on the natural beauty of wood and metal. Scaffold board, as made famous by East London coffee shops (excuse the tongue in cheek joke) looks great stained and varnished. It’s a lot cheap than slices of hardwood live edge timber. With some well chosen brackets it looks great. We have also used veneered ply to good effect, finished with a hardwood lip.

There are loads of ways to DIY your bulkhead storage. I think it might be the most approachable off all the spaces in our series. It certainly has a wide spectrum of uses. Why not upcycle some shelving, or plan out an intricate Welsh dresser style steam punk creation from reclaimed timber and oversized copper piping! Make sure you make the most of this prime boat real estate and if you want something really beautiful and practical then why not get in touch, let us design something just for you.

5 Storage Drawer Ideas for Narrowboats

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5 Storage Drawer Ideas for Narrowboats

Narrowboat Storage Series

As a cabinet maker we joke that all we do is build boxes. Drawers are just a box in a box, but they can help make the most of limited storage in a boat. What you in the thickness of the drawer and runners, you can in utility as easy access makes it a breeze to use the full depth of hard-to-reach spaces. Plus, it makes organisation satisfying and pretty. If I were building my dream kitchen I would have 80% drawers, cupboards just wouldn’t cut it. They’re great for under-bed storage, beneath dinettes and anywhere you can fit them in around the home.

Space: Drawers

Size: From around 200-300mm wide and 400mm deep, to giant drawers over a metre wide, breakfast bars a metre deep and up to 600-700mm tall

Type of storage: Very varied, though typically not over about 1-1.2 metres in the largest dimensions and often much smaller. Generally shallow, though not always

Suitable for: Anything that isn’t too long and large. Everything for the kitchen, from crockery to cutlery to pantry items. Clothes, shoes, linen. Toys, books, DVDs

Materials: Varied, though Birch ply, clear lacquer and a soft-close undermount runner for preference

Difficulty rating: Medium to hard. Not for amateur DIYers, but very effective done properly

1) Breakfast Bar

My favourite drawer, though it might be a stretch to call it that, is a breakfast bar we did. It’s 900mm long and marble. The body is birch ply and the runners are heavy duty locking runners, designed for fire trucks and similar. They can take an even load of 250kg! We were able to fit such a deep bar as it is a Dutch Barge and there was a lot of space under the gunwale, behind the kitchen. It gives a big additional kitchen surface and an elegant table for breakfasting with a loved one.

2) Coffee Station

Here we have my coffee station. My partner arranged this and I love it. It is a good example of how a drawer can help organise and beautify. Everything is together; one drawer for mugs, the next for coffee, filters and other supplies. It is very ergonomic and feels great to use.

3) Pull out bin

Drawers are nothing if not versatile. On the other side of the kitchen we have a pull out bin. It is not glamorous. It is very useful though. With two sections to keep general waste and recycling apart it is clean and green. It’s nice to be able to hide the rubbish away and this gives you plenty of space when you are between refuse points, keeping you going as long as possible.

Photograph of pull out bin in a narrowboat

Photograph of a unfinished pull out breakfast bar

Photograph of Coffee station with pull out drawers

4) Plinth drawers

A relatively new type of drawer, plinth drawers have been growing in popularity. We fit these in pretty much every kitchen we do now. The plinth (the area beneath the units) is dead space and is normally unused. A plinth drawer gives you a space you never knew you had. It is ideal for odds and sods. It also makes an adorable pull out for pet food and water bowls. They can be fitted with most kitchen units and add a good amount of additional storage.

5) Chopping board

Another fun kitchen addition is a pull-out chopping board. It provides extra working space in a tight galley kitchen. It feels good to use and can help you keep things clean and clear while you cook. I’ve seen some with a hole to put a bin beneath for easy clearing of peelings and scraps, something to try on a future project.

All things considered, drawers are a really great way to access deep spaces, keep things organised and make the best use of the space you have. They can be integrated into most pieces of furniture and modern drawers runners are reliable, look great (undermount are effectively invisible) work brilliantly and will last and last. All sorts of spaces, shapes and sizes can be made and with heavy duty ratings on some runners the uses are almost endless. If you want some help getting the most out of the space in your home, then give us a call and let us design and build a gorgeous piece of furniture for you.

A Modern Narrowboat

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This project was a commission for a client who needed a London base for when life and work brought them to the capital. They wanted a comfortable and modern feel, relaxing and low maintenance. It helps that it is on a mooring, so electrics and plumbing are simplified by having utilities and facilities close at hand

White wall hung vanity unit with LED mirror and travertine splashback

The boat had sunk under the stewardship of the previous owner and while the hull and engine were still sound, there was water damage to the floor and fit out so the whole thing needed starting from scratch. We did a sizeable amount of remedial work to get to a point of having a blank canvas. This included, but was not limited to, removing the flooring from half the boat, drying and sorting the bilges, removing several bulkheads and removing the black water tank. If you want tips on removing a black water tank, then you can read more in my Dan’s DIY tips section ‘It’s a S**t job’

The brief was to make a contemporary and easy to care for space, as much like a modern flat as possible. This was to be a home from home while in London, not a CC’er or a holiday boat. The chosen finishes are all very modern, the colour pallet neutral and soothing.

Light grey galley style kitchen with oak butchers block worktop and stainless steel sink in a narrowboat

We fitted a Benchmarx kitchen, I’ll try do tips post on kitchen fitting sometime soon. This was given oak butchers block worktops, from worktop express. The oak tops are excellent value for money, though you do need to take a little care to look after wooden tops, but on the plus side they can be refinished where a laminate cannot.

Quadrant shower on a narrowboat with travertine mosiac tiles and shortened glass (1700) glass enclosure

The bathroom is tiled in a Travertine mosaic, with an ‘off shelf’ vanity and a quadrant shower cubicle from Wesley Marine Windows Ltd. Wesley Marine are one of the few producers of ‘short’ shower units. They do a range of them in 1600-1800 which lets you fit in a proper feeling shower enclosure within the restricted height of a narrowboat. You could have a shower enclosure made bespoke, but this would cost a lot more.

In the bathroom a bench style Thetford cassette toilet was chosen. It is very easy to use with its wheel along cassettes. This mooring has an elsan point on site, so a cassette toilet is a good choice. Read more about toilets in our toilet blog post! Essential boater reading matter.

Bespoke matt white cupboard with drawers bebeath, an oak top with brushed steel socket set in to it and a dark grey door and frame to the side. Narrowboat bedroom

For the bedroom we made a fully bespoke suite, with drawers beneath the bed for storage and a more drawers at the end with a hanging space above. This little area also serves as a dresser with an offcut of worktop making up a dressing table, with a power socket set into it for easy use of a hair dryer or other items. The boat itself was chosen by the client to be wired up largely as a 240V boat, running off the shoreline, though it does also have 12V sockets and lights so it can be used away from the home mooring.

Narrowboat salon, showing fold up table wth stools and sofa. Light grey beneath the gunwale and qhit above. Multi fuel stove in the corner next to storage steps

The colour scheme is a gentle grey and white, very popular at the moment and I think it is calming as well as elegant. Everything was painted by us, in an acrylic water-based paint. This is a good durable paint. It can be wiped clean of light stains and marks and has a certain degree of resistance to water and humidity. A satin finish water-based paint will not be as durable as a high gloss, but it feels a bit more modern and is easy to work with and apply.

In conclusion then, this is a delightful little boat that should hopefully serve the owner well for many years to come. It shows a narrowboat can be comfortable and modern, I hope this is a relaxing and pleasant space for the client and they enjoy it whenever they stay there.

Country Kitchen, Narrowboat edition

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Narrowboat bilge half filled with pea shinle. White wall in top left corner with a shovel leaning against it

This was an almost complete re-fit that we did for a narrowboat in East London. We’ll largely keep to the pretty bits here, but there was some serious foundation work to do. The bilges had been ballasted with pea shingle, most of which was still in the bilge, and it all had to be removed. Once the floor was up and it was out the bilges had to be cleaned, treated, painted, re-ballasted and the new subfloor laid. See my Dan’s DIY Tips for more on cleaning and painting bilges

Engineered oak floor in narrowboat salon with exterior ply clad walls wither side, trimmed in pine mouldings

We also had the walls down to deal with sub-standard insulation and lining, so by the time all this was finished the innards of the boat were basically brand new! New ballast and subfloor, new insulation and new lining and trims, a lovely blank canvas.

To this empty shell, we added a lovely oak engineered floor throughout, to match the existing flooring in the bedroom. This had previously been re-fitted the year before by another contractor and we had built a wardrobe.

Narrowboat galley style kitchen. White shaker cabinets with oak butchers block worktop and shelves. Glass fronted cabinet on wall above. Multi fuel stove in the fore-ground

The crowning glory of the boat is probably the kitchen, as it is with many boats and homs that have a nice kitchen. This one is a Howdens Tewkesbury kitchen that we have customised in places to fit the space. An off shelf kitchen can work very well in a boat, I am hoping to add some thoughts and tips on Kitchens in our blog posts. The worktops are oak butcher’s block which we simply added a bevel to the edge of the tops. The took a corner off the end of the long side for ergonomic reasons and the offcuts provided from the other side some neat additional shelving which we gave a matching detail.

Narrowboat kitchen showing ceramic sink in butchers block top with window behind and blue glazed tiles

The electrics were completely rewired by Katy Bartlett of Down to Earth Sparks. The workings of the electrics are hidden away in the corner behind a custom cupboard built with a combination of solid oak and oak veneer to match in with the tops. Katy regularly works alongside us on projects and did a beautiful job rewiring and upgrading the electrical system throughout

The stern steps we replaced with a solid oak set of open tread steps. The original plan was to build to a form to allow acces to the washing machine, but ultimately it was decided to just make a them light weight and easy to remove so full access was easily gained without compromising on the struture of the steps.

There are myriad little details and alterations I could list out from the works. We also did some upgrades to the bathroom and the bedroom, the wardobe having gone in the previous year. We ripped out the bath and replaced the floor beneath. The bath went back in and we re-tiled the area and added some custom cabinetry and a screen to the bath tub. If you would like to know more about options and possibilities for kitchens and bathrooms then why not get in touch. Or also check out my blog(s) on home/boat improvements in Dan’s Random Ramblings