Rob and Sarah Burch, from Essex, took on a major transformation of a doomed house boat. They are now enjoying the property and use it as a holiday home after completing the huge project
A hardworking couple splashed out £150,000 to transform one of Grand Designs biggest disasters – and their work is finally done.
Rob and Sarah Burch, from Essex, decided to embark on the difficult task after the notorious Medway Eco-Barge was found washed up ashore. The property had previously featured on the Channel 4 show in 2007 and was dubbed a “floating scrapheap challenge”.
In the episode, the former owners, Chris Miller and his wife Sze Liu La, shared their plans to build a two-storey houseboat with three bedrooms. They told designer, Kevin McCloud that they only wanted to use eco-friendly and second-hand materials. But the couple, who lived in Kent, soon were met with hesitation and said that one construction worker said “it looks s***”.
Mr Miller previously revealed that there wasn’t a full design plan. “You can not design this project – before we got here, we didn’t even know what the [super]structure was going to be made of,” he said. Eventually, they gave up on the project after the costs spiked to £80,000 – which was 60 per cent over their initial £50,000 budget.
In 2011, it was found abandoned on a beach in Essex and had been used by squatters. Mr and Mrs Burch jumped at the opportunity and purchased it for £70,000 at a boating yard in Southend in 2020.
Mrs Burch earlier revealed how much work needed doing and said the previous owners had a tight budget, reports Kent Live. She commented: “Much of it has been done on a tight budget, and with a lack of knowledge on how renovations on boats will have very different methods to that of on a terra firma building. Plumbing and electrics are non-working and/or unsafe, and a leak from water tanks in the hull caused extensive damage to the bow end of the vessel. Electrics mixing with water, especially salt water, is never going to be great.”
In a new interview, Mr Burch said that the outside looked “reasonable” but explained the interior was in a “terrible” state. He told MailOnline: “They were doing a conversion and everything they had done looked okay on the outside, but it was terrible when we started to look at it. So it ended up being a complete refit.
“The idea initially was to recycle the materials back onto the boat, but because we delved so far into it, it literally became about taking it out and replacing it.” He said the boat was sturdy and had been through a lot. “We’re three miles from the North Sea, and we have had a few storms. The boat has had a baptism of fire regarding what it is capable of,” he added.
The couple completed the renovation in 2022 and said they have had “positive” feedback from onlookers. Mrs Burch, 47, said: “It’s a nice little pad to go and spend time in when we’re not at home. We live in St Lawrence but it’s very quiet, and we wanted to move closer to Burnham-on-Crouch. Everybody’s been very, very positive. I think everybody’s quite excited about houseboats and boats.” Mrs Burch previously said her husband was “boat mad” and said that she was less excited than him to start with.
She said after the initial purchase: “He’s boat mad – he’s much more keen on the idea of living on a boat than me. I was actually away when my husband saw the boat advertised, and didn’t even realise it was the ecobarge until speaking to the agent. He was pretty excited, me not so much.”
