It’s a familiar scene: the family reunion where relatives enquire after the milestones you have yet to reach. When are you getting married? Any baby news? Have you bought a house yet?
It was one such event that got 27-year-old Amelia Gill thinking about alternative ways to get her own home.
After a relative asked when she was buying a house, she laughed – even though she was living with her parents and had a job in marketing, she could not imagine owning property as a prospect in the near-future. But when she got home that night it was still on her mind.
“I thought, as a laugh, it’d be funny to see what you can buy in London for under £50,000.”
Anyone who has tried a similar experiment in a major city will know exactly what comes up: parking spaces, empty patches of land, and narrowboats.
Seeing the boats, says Amelia, “it just clicked”. She decided she was going to get one.
Doing the research
“I didn’t know anything about boats,” admits Amelia. Her first task was to start working out what she wanted. After some time spent looking at different options, she had a vague idea in mind.
“The main criteria really was an inside that didn’t need complete renovation. Sometimes you have the engine in the middle of the boat. Sometimes they have a walk-through bathroom. The criteria was the correct layout to begin with, I didn’t want to tear anything up, I wanted the skeleton of it to be right.”
Eventually she found just what she was looking for – 150 miles away. Up in Staffordshire, the Frodsham Castle caught her eye. Its layout allows you to walk smoothly through the living space, kitchen, and on to two sleeping areas.
She spent £32,000 on the boat, and £6,000 on work to make it canal-worthy. She then had it transported to London and decorated it herself.
After a thorough clean, the boat was ready for an interiors update. Amelia wanted to both keep costs low and repurpose old materials where possible, so she came up with a number of innovative ways to approach the project.
“A few months ago, a building next to my old office was being demolished and one morning I spoke to the manager onsite. He was apologising for the noise and I asked him what they had inside because the whole building was coming down. He said there was heaps of beige carpet and wooden flooring, so I hired a van and picked it all up.”
Budget re-decoration
I first came across Amelia’s boat a few weeks ago on her Instagram profile @water_millie and it was this detail that caught my attention. It was amazing to me that a boring beige carpet stripped out of a condemned office building could be put to use in this very cute, camera-friendly narrowboat.
But it works. The light-coloured carpet goes halfway up the walls, replacing an electric blue carpet and immediately brightening up the space. The wooden flooring also came from the office building, and by using it in both the kitchen and living area, the space looks bigger than it did with a mix of lino and carpet.
She also brightened up the kitchen units, painting them a delicate pink, and tracked down matching second-hand items. Overall, including paint, furnishings and knick-knacks, she estimates it cost her less than £1,000 for everything involved in the decoration.
“I have always been a lover of charity shops. If I have a lunch break, I go into a charity shop and see what’s around. I love reusing items – you don’t always need to buy something new.”
Add in some more lucky finds, such as a brand-new yellow sofa from eBay, and the boat was ready to start welcoming guests.
Staycation boom
Initially, Amelia had planned to live in the boat herself most of the time, and rent it out a couple of weekends a month to help with the costs. Then the pandemic hit, and with international trips cancelled, many Brits started looking for something interesting to do without travelling too far. They came across the boat’s listing on Airbnb and it’s been back-to-back bookings ever since.
“I’ve only spent a couple of nights on it, because it’s been so busy,” says Amelia, who is staying with her parents for the time being.
The income from that more than covers the running costs, which include mooring costs, pump-out for the plumbing, fuel and insurance.
She plans to keep letting out the boat as a holiday rental, but having been bitten by the boat bug, she now also has hopes of living on the water herself. “I would love to get myself one. That’s the plan now. I’ve fallen in love with the canals and the boat life.”
With house prices rising, I ask her whether she thinks this could become a more common lifestyle choice among aspiring buyers.
“Absolutely. I’ve met quite a lot of young people on boats, so I think it is a great option.”
