Storage

When I bought the boat there was a serious shortage of storage space. And this seems to be true of most of the narrowboat designs. Of course leaving out essential storage gives a great sense of space for show purposes. I was lucky to get a couple of "as new" Argos type book shelves very cheaply at the Daventry recycling centre and I bought some cheap Argos bedroom drawer units. The reduced kitchen has also freed up a unit for storage in the saloon area, and most usefully it provides a much needed shelf top in the saloon - somewhere to leave down a book or a laptop.

I have a major criticism of the normal kitchen units as sold by B&Q, Homebase etc. The under-counter cupboard units are a very inefficient use of space. They come with one internal shelf that is much shorter than the depth of the unit. So unless you have some very tall items the space at the front of the unit is useless. Also if you do fill as much of the space as you can it is very difficult to reach things at the back.

Drawers solve the access problem very nicely by bringing the items out where you can see them. But the standard drawer layout has one shallow drawer and two deep drawers in each unit. And unless you seek out very expensive drawer units the actual sides of the drawer itself are shallow so you cannot fill them with small items to the full height of the drawer front, The solution seemed to be to buy some extra drawers and convert the two deep drawers to three shallower, but more useful drawers. Life is never so simple however. B&Q sells the drawers individually but the drawer fronts only come in packs of 3 - one small and two large.

So I have decided that I will make my own drawer fronts and matching cabinet doors for the few that must remain as cupboards.

At this stage I have built B&Q drawers under my bed to provide storage for my tools and related bits and pieces. I have used the exercise to learn about making drawer fronts. And the drawers are such an improvement over the plastic boxes that they replaced.