Week #12
Have no fear if you think you missed the update from week #12. We sacrificed a weekend of work on the bus for camping with our American Heritage Girls troop. God gave us gorgeous weather and we had lots of laughs. But that’s about it. No progress on the renovation.
Week #13
Rear Bench Work
We brought the bus home Saturday afternoon after soccer. First, we cut off the bolts that used to hold the rear seat and seat belts in place.
After that, we spent a few hours with Goo Gone to clean the never-ending amount of glue residue that remained on the rear bench. The bench was then covered with the same sound barrier that had been placed on the wheel wells. https://sixwheelsofadventure.com/week-11/
What happens when Ivo goes shopping alone…
Of course, as Darwin dictates, we were just short of plywood and rigid foam board to cover it. So, we went to the store to pick up supplies. Looking at the still exorbitant plywood prices, we only bought the pink rigid board and longer wood-to-sheet-metal-screws. So much fun trying to get that super light 4′ x 8′ sheet of rigid foam from the doors of the Home Depot to the car; just put your feet on the cart and the wind will make you sail though parking lot with a speed that could rival with most sailing regattas. Trying to stop before hitting anything or breaking the rigid foam sheet was a whole new challenge.
Unfortunately, once we dropped anchor near the car, we had to cut the board in half. Otherwise it would not fit in Cindy’s vehicle with the seats up. Might have been smarter and a whole less windy hassle to cut it inside the store BEFORE trying to maneuver it through the windy parking lot…
Plywood solution
As mentioned, plywood is just too expensive right now. In view of this, we sacrificed one sheet of plywood from our hurricane window cover stash. Let’s hope we won’t have to replace it later this year… We put the rigid foam over the sound barrier for added insulation. Otherwise, we anticipate that our future bedroom would be very noisy and hot without it. Downside of putting ½” plywood over the sound barrier and rigid foam is that the wood now looks a little bit like a washboard. We just hope that won’t affect the final top layer too much. Time will tell.
All in all, the finished product looks nice. Next up we still need to fix the lights (see last week’s blog) and add a lot of caulk.
Next step…
We are now in discussion whether to raise our skoolie roof completely, partially, or raise the roof just in our shower area. Currently, it will not be possible to stand underneath a shower head in our shower room due to the small overall interior height. Something needs to be done. The advantage of raising the entire roof is that we then also have more space above the beds in our bedroom.
Major downside it that we envision it will add at least two months to our conversion, with the bus being open to the elements in the Texas humidity for that entire period. In addition, there are a lot of pictures of roof raises gone wrong. We don’t have a warehouse so we could do it over several days in perfect conditions. Raising a small section of roof in our shower could be completed in one day in our driveway.
Something to ponder in the coming week.