Posts tagged "houseboating"

Make Your Floating Home Dream Come True With DIY Houseboat Plans

Did you ever spend a week or two on board a houseboat? Perhaps gone accompanied by friends or family for a bit of relaxation on a live-aboard vessel floating along a lazy river?

If you said yes, then you already know how fun and exciting it can be to live on the water. With a set of good DIY houseboat plans, you could make this a regular or even permanent lifestyle!

Believe it or not, you — yes, you — have the capability to put together your own houseboat. Plenty of other folks have accomplished it. One of the marvelous features of this type of boat is that, due to its rather square shape, you will likely find it much simpler to construct than other types of craft with their many curving lines.

This isn’t saying that your houseboat cannot be lovely to look at. Indeed, using a good houseboat floor plan as your starting point, you can customize your home-on-the-water to reflect your personality and aesthetic sense as well as your practical needs.

There are folks who enjoy designing their houseboat to resemble, as much as possible, an actual house that just happens to be anchored on a lake. Others prefer to play up the nautical aspect. A boat really must look like a boat, these people seem to be saying. It’s entirely up to you which way you want to go with your own waterborne dwelling.

You might be skeptical that this is something you can undertake successfully, especially if you have little or no previous building experience. I urge you to have more faith in yourself.

I recently met some folks who were living on a lovely, crystal-clear lake and enjoying every moment, catching fish right off their deck or scrambling down the swim ladder whenever the impulse struck to go for a splash. The man had built their houseboat by himself, even though he had never undertaken anything remotely like this before!

Since he was working from a set of clear and detailed houseboat plans, and made sure he completely understood each building step before proceeding, he was able to complete the project barely a hitch. As for the cost of materials, he said it also turned out to be much less expensive than he thought it would be.

A housboat — your floating palace — is within your reach. If this — building a houseboat — is something that appeals to you, here are a few suggestions.

1. Read your boatbuilding plans all the way through before you proceed, then re-read them.

2. Make sure you have all the tools you will need to do the best possible job of building your vessel.

3. Take your list of material to the lumber yard and the hardware store and get prices on every item on it. You don’t need to buy everything at once, but you will want to have a general idea of what your total project cost will be.

4. What are waiting for?. The sooner you start, the sooner that you and your family will be enjoying the fun of a lifetime, in a home afloat that you build yourself.