Life is busy, but we are making slow progress. That said, our timetable has been adjusted once more. Slow and steady wins the race. What we have done in the past weeks:
October
We added a shelf and electrical cables to each of the girls’ cubbies. They will all have USB chargers, string lights, and a fan in the front of their cubbies and light and USB in the back of their cubbies. With the electrical work completed, we closed the cubbies off by putting the plywood on top, which will become our bed.
Plywood for bed
Installing the plywood for our bed into the bus required some navigation since the bathroom walls were already in place. We cut some holes and made little access hatches so we could still access the electrical wires later. Once all the plywood was in place, we had to figure out in which orientation we were going to sleep so we knew where to place our storage bins.
Next, we finished the trim around the windows. We had to special fit these so we can take the windows out when needed. Meanwhile, we painted the bathroom doors. We bought folding doors, removed the folding hinges, and will use them as regular doors instead to reduce the space required to open them. They don’t sell doors that size separately, so converting a folding door was a good solution.
Next, we built storage bins on the plywood bed for the parents’ clothes, creating quite a bit of storage space. We also added lights and USB chargers. Since there was not much we could do with that space, we covered the wheel wells and turned them into steps. We filled them with insulation to reduce the road noise.
Extra door
Then we moved to the side door. We kept this door in our bus to quickly access large items and ventilation when parked. It took a bit of thinking to re-design the door so it can be opened from the inside but not from the outside. Until now, we used a ratchet strap to keep this door closed. While working on the door, we discovered it did not close and seal properly, so we had to cut and reweld it again to make it fit better. Then, I added plywood over it, followed by the wall covering.
November
We added the flooring so we knew how much height to consider for the bathroom doors. We finished the bedroom and bathroom walls and added the bathroom light and fan switches. Then the trim and the doors (I hope they will not warp) hung. Finally, we added the handles, locks, hinges, and AC vent closures. That finally completed the bedroom. Now we must figure out how to get a king-size mattress into the bus with already built bathroom walls….
Bathroom
The bathroom is next on our list, starting with a shower pan. It took a while to determine whether we should go with a full stall or a shower curtain. We chose the latter to have more space when the shower is unused. This meant we had to cut a hole in the drain. Fortunately, in the beginning, when we put the subfloor in place, we had already marked the location of the frames under the bus, so we managed to put the drain where there was no framing underneath. But of course, there was an outside storage bin that we had to remove. Which was too large to get from underneath the bus, so we had to cut up our precious storage box. Once the cut was made, the girls ensured the hole was big enough. Then, we glued the shower pan in place and added some weight on top until the glue dried.
Next, we installed the bathroom ceiling and light before adding the shower wall. We used Polysterene backer board for the shower. It is easy to cut and pretty light. We used Palisade tiles over the backer board. Next time we visit the bus, we will see how that holds.
The beginning of December is busy with family life as usual, but now that our dining room is full of materials after Black Friday, we will have to take some days off to finish the bathroom.