Almost There!

I have made some headway this past few weeks on the bus. Deciding what to do next has been tough but I made the decision I would really like to get the outside finished up as much as possible.

We first painted the middle rib red and immediately knew it needed another stripe, so one more red stripe was put into play.

My next door neighbor Mel, who so kindly shares her driveway with me, made me some drapes. I must say that the quality of these curtains are beyond compare.  

I also found some window screens at Lowe's and Wal Mart that fit the windows. At less then $5 a piece you just can't go wrong.

We are going camping in two weeks so I have turned my attention to the bunk beds. I chose to "over build" these bunks. I am using 1/4" steel and they weigh about 150 lbs. Each one will hold just about any adult and any kid I know!

Like Titanic... only different

Made some great headway on the bus in the last couple weeks. We had the maiden voyage of the bus two weeks ago and went camping. This was a great opportunity to see how everything worked and changes we want to make before everything is finished. Unfortunately my camera skills are somewhat lacking and all the pictures I took while camping were set at a half meter focus... yeah, gonna look at that setting next time I take some pictures.

I decided that I was going to give the top of the bus two coats of roof sealant to help with heat and put a good seal on the roof. The required me on top of the bus a number of times and a rounded metal roof is just the recipe for disaster. Luckily my deft footwork surpasses my camera technique and I am happy to report no injuries.

While rolling the paint on top of the bus my oldest son was taking pictures. He yelled up at me.."Dad go to the front of the bus and do that scene from Titanic where she is on the front of the Titanic." So I go to the front of the bus and did my best Kate Winslet. As soon as he snapped the picture he said, "You're such a dork."
Well I guess I learned my lesson.

I won't lie this was a tough job but I know if I took my time and did it right I would not have to be up here again so I made the best of is and the comments that came my way.
* Looks like a prison bus.
* Is that bus from the Afghanistan conflict?
* If I had a big yellow bus I would paint it flesh color also.

Saturday was the big day to get the bus all the same color. During the week and late into Friday night we scuffed and masked the monster. It took about two hours and 1 1/2 gallons of paint to get the mono chromatic theme completed.

So this is the final base coat. Now I can work on an accent stripe and putting the front of the bus back together. We have camps planned in three weeks so I need to get the inside in a "working" order.



Ricky and Lucy's Bedroom

Finished building the rear bed platform today. The goal was to build a rear king size bed but we couldn't fit a king size mattress through the back door, so we went ala Ricky and Lucy with two twin beds.

The cabinets were finished and attached on the right side of the bus this week. I won't lie, fitting the top cabinet was a challenge but I am really happy with how it turned out. This gives us plenty of storage now.

Before I could build the rear platform I needed to finish the rear lights. Early on I knew I was going to lose the big bus lights. Using LED lights take less power, are brighter and look much better. To get them to look right I had to weld in some holes and cut and space the lights so they looked right.

You can now see the outside color for the finished project.

This next week we are going camping. It will be a good shakedown for the bus and see how everything works so far.

Hope we don't freeze....

Spring Progress

I firmly believe that I got much more done on the bus when it was 20 degrees outside. Now that spring is here that means warmer temperatures and the beginning of kids organized sports, and I use the term organized very loosely. For the past month my Saturdays have been consumed by watching pre-pubescents chase balls of differing sizes is an air of semi-organized chaos. Great for them to get the energy out and run around, but it seriously hampers production on the bus.

All that being said I have been able to steal a few hours here and there to work on the bus so I have made some headway. That coupled with some serious negotiations with the wife I have been given “sports amnesty” for the past two Saturdays. But it was at a considerable cost which will be extracted from me over a drawn out time frame, but still worth it.

I have begun to work on the interior walls and finish up some final wiring and secure the furniture.

I have set up two plugs behind the fridge one is shore power 110v and the lower will run to my 2000 watt inverter. I made the decision a couple months ago to sell the propane/elec fridge and move to a dedicated 110v fridge. Running the two Trojan 6 volt batteries coupled with the new efficiency of the smaller fridge I am hoping for the best.

The passenger side wall was more complicated with all the wiring that runs down that side I had to compensate for the wall thickness, but it turned out pretty good.



The last great step forward was installing the stereo and getting the rear view camera hooked up and working.
The stereo will play DVD's, Ipod, CD's and radio. After manuvering the behemoth a few times I knew I wanted a better view out of the rear while backing up. The voyager color camera works great.



Two Coats and a Loft

For the past few weeks we have had some seriously awful spring weather. For the last three days it has snowed every day. Today is snowed litterally all day long.

What I have been working on is getting the inside ceiling painted and building a loft for our youngest.
It is really just a bunk but in selling it to my daughter I sold it as a loft so it will now and forever be known as the loft.
What I did was use 1/8 inch 2X2 angle to build the frame then secured it with grade 8 bolts to the frame.

The frame turned out really great and I will use some 3/4 plywood to complete the loft, yes the loft.

Floods

Since my last update I have working on getting the windows finished up. Last Saturday I removed all of the windows and window skins on the right side and cleaned all the 20 year old caulking, let me tell you that stuff does not just fall off. This took a ton of time but now that it is sealed up right I won't have to deal with it ever again.
This took almost a full Saturday.

The next job was to convert the red and amber flashing lights to flood lights that can be used when parking at night or loading and unloading.
First I removed all the flashing light wiring and used two Hella switches that will match the switch for the front auxiliary lights.
Also wanted to set up the rear camera that will be run through the stereo and add the new LED marker lighting.

Gimme some skin

Today we worked on getting the windows skinned. Originally I had the idea of taking .080 aluminium in large sheets and covering the windows. As I read of other projects I found it better to skin each individual window. This last week I took two 4' by 12' sheets of aluminum to Complex Fab and had the window blanks cut out.

I prepped all the aluminium with primer and put one coat of Rustoleum Hammered Brown. The hammered look will be great for hiding some of the imperfections.

My helper today was my daughter and I could not have done all this without her. Riley helped me take the aluminum blanks and use 1/16" aluminium angle to secure each one in place of the old windows.

The last part of my day was getting the back of the bus painted so I can install the Voyager rear view camera. I am using Black Jack 10 Year White Siliconized Elastomeric Roof Coating. This is after three coats so I will definitely be using a primer when I get to the rest of the roof. You can see the corner of the back where I rolled some of the hammered brown to see how it looks. I am really pleased with the Rustoleum paint.

Something intersting we found out. Each window weighs over 15 pounds and the window skin with the brackets to secure it to the window frame weighs just under 6 pounds. By changing out the 10 windows we will be saving over 100 pounds when you consider two emergency exit windows.

Not that this big girl is watching her weight, I'm just saying...