Interior renovation of my floating home.

After about 6 months of work, we finished the downstairs interior of our floating home. The home used to be an old boat house, basically a garage for a boat. You open up the garage door and drive your boat right in. To convert this floating garage into a home we began by removing the garage door and in it's place, installed a normal wall with windows and a sliding door. But, we had a big hole filled with water in the middle of our home. This was the boat well - where the boat would stay tied-up and out of the weather. To make it a functional floor we had to add logs, then place stringers (which are heavy-duty wooden beams) on top of the logs, then floor joists, insulation (to keep us warm from the water beneath) then plywood and finally, flooring.

Here is a picture of the logs and stringers to fill-in the boat well. Next came the insulation, floor joists then plywood and hard wood flooring.

This is a picture of some workers installing the stringers. The stringers run the entire width of the house. They float them to the right location and then using ropes and muscle, they slide them across the top of the logs all the way across. Here they are about half-way and notice the guy in the forefront is actually floating on a log to attach a rope on the end of the stringer. The logs are big enough to float with a man but can't support the weight of the house. So large styrofoam blocks are placed under the logs to keep the houses afloat!

And here is the final product! Where there was once a boat well is now a living room! It's just like a normal house except we can jump off the deck to swim or get into our boat any time!