The Pink Flamingo in Arizona

It doesn’t seam like we have made much progress since the first weekend when it all came together so fast.  But then again I did meet the love of my life Tammy and I’ll blame it on her.  Or maybe thank her for the progress that we did make because she wasn’t going to stay on it until it had a working bathroom so much of that is done at least.  Plus we only get a few good months of boating in Illinois and who really wants to spend all of that time working on the boat.

Thanks to a dear friend Dave Bishop who has since passed away we scored a great deal on some nice cabinets for it.  During his weekly visit to the Habitat For Humanity ReStore for his house remodeling he saw an entire semi full of nice cabinets they had.  At the time I was still trying to figure out the complete design for the inside.  I knew we needed a bar up by the driver so when I was the DD I could still join in the conversation.  We also needed a kitchen area now that I had a great women in my life.  And a computer desk so I could work from the houseboat as I had for the last 8 or so summers.

So off to the ReStore I went with a million ideas in my head but no official plan.  The cabinets were going fast at $35-$50 per cabinet for brand new cabinets so I picked out a bunch of different ones that I figured might work for what we needed.  We took them back to the marina and started placing them on board and playing with a few combinations and finally decided on the layout I have.  And even more a miracle than actually coming up with the final design was the fact that I had just the right number and sizes for it to work out nicely.  I think I ended up with 2 shorter cabinets that we didn’t use and we had to have a friend custom make a tall cabinet then for besides the fridge.

So at this point we had most of the cabinets and countertops in, a working bathroom and shower, windows, and part of the ceiling.  The swim platform is on as well as the ladder to the top deck, railings on the top deck, and the hatch and stairs to get to the top deck from inside the front of the boat.  Of coarse all of that was accomplished because we needed it to be done in order to have the band play on top for the yearly sandbar party.  But still no back door or finishing touches on it yet so there is plenty to do still.  Here’s the few pictures I could find from then.