Week #10

Spring Break Week

Great progress last week! It was spring break for all the girl’s activities, so the days were clear to work. We notified our HOA and kept the bus in the driveway for the week.

Half the day was spent SCRUBBING the bus. It takes about 2-3 hours to scrub just a 4-5 ft section a day. The process was slow with the multiple trips to refresh the bucket of cleaning water. There was also gum/adhesive residue where all the tracks for wheelchairs had been. That had to first be removed with Goo Gone, then washed off with soap.

We used red Rustoleum paint to cover the bus floor and sides. We had a few folks lifting their eyebrows on our color choice. But since you won’t be able to see it once the floor and walls are in, we chose this color because it stands out better than the available grey or black and shows the imperfections we need to fix. Once the floor had a coat of paint on it, we needed to fill the hundreds of holes that were caused by seats, wheelchair lift and tracks and the old plywood nails.

The small holes were filled with small rivets. We used 225 of those! The medium size holes were filled with large rivets. However, these were just not large enough and could still be moved. So, we pulled each one of those that were loose out, filled the hole with caulk and put the rivet back in. 175 of those. The bus floor looked like it had black measles, so we painted the rivets as well for esthetics.

Now what to do with the largest holes…

We don’t have many of them, just 8, but the rivets won’t work for them and they are too large to just fill with caulk. So I asked the girls to raid the small-change-jar and get some pennies. I put the caulk around the edge of the hole and R put the penny on top. Problem solved. N wanted to know how much money we were spending, but I explained that the penny was actually cheaper then going to the store and buy rivets since those cost 12 cents each.

We had one larger hole where the wheelchair hydraulic hose had gone through. We filled that one by cutting a small plate out of some of the steel we had removed and riveted it over that hole. The same process was used for the holes left by the stop signs on the side of the bus. Now that it is all sealed, one more coat of paint and all is done.

Making the turn from demo to rebuild

Once the floor had been scrubbed, painted, and sealed, we proceeded to cover the floor with ½” foam board. It is expensive but easy to use material. It should help reduce cold or hot air from the bottom of the bus, but mostly we hope it will considerably reduce the road noise. We cut the foam board with an Exacto knife. R wanted to help put the glue down (on our freshly cleaned and painted floor!) and we put the board on top. It is slow drying glue, so I asked the girls to lay on top of the foam to press it down. They basically worked while reading books. Can’t have it better than that!

And the next layer….

On Thursday, we went to our favorite lumber company, Lodge Lumber in Houston, to pick up 7 sheets of ½” plywood. While there, we caught up with our friends and talked about the bus conversion project. We are thankful for their assistance since the prices at the large hardware chains severely tighten the budget of a conversion project. We spent the weekend cutting the plywood to size and installing it on the bus.

Maritime Traditions

Before we closed the last section of floor up, we had our initiation ceremony. After all, we are a maritime family, so we do things the maritime way. We placed a gold coin, heads up, onto the bus floor to make it part of our foundation. In addition to the pennies in the floor, the bus now should at least have a trade in value of one dollar and 8 cents….

In addition to all this, window cleaning continued. The week ended with only three more windows to wash. We hope to finish it in the coming week, in addition to screwing down the plywood. When the bus was brought back to storage, a huge difference in road noise was noted! Looks like the insulation is doing what it’s supposed to do!