- Leveled the driveway. I initially thought I could do this with a wheelbarrow and shovel. In the end it took 15 tons of fill dirt, 8 tons crush-n-run gravel, and a tractor
- Installed the 15k BTU air conditioner
- Ran several miles copper propane lines
- Installed a 10k BTU blue flame monitor heater
- Uninstalled the aforementioned heater and replaced it with a 20k BTU vented unit. The propane man was kind enough to point out that a vented unit is required for sleeping. Who needs research when you can just do it right the second time?
- Hung shower curtain bamboo blind over the closet
- Moved the office stuff in. Still looking for the right desk.
Once we discovered we were expecting, our arbitrary timeline suddenly became a mandate. We live in a small, two bedroom home, and I've been using one of those rooms as a home office for the past 2 years. Clearly I had to go. And so, the last few months have been dizzying as we've raced to finish the bus before our daughter makes her debut. When Courtney had her baby shower a few weeks ago, there was apparently a sense of horror that we haven't gotten the nursery ready yet. Well, fear not. Over the last week I was able to move into my new office, and our baby girl has her very own room in the big house. Before we know it we'll be stashing the office stuff and taking her out for a family camping adventure. Here's a look at what we've done: There's still plenty to do. Courtney is working on sewing curtains. We'll do something with the cab and throw on another coat of paint or two. I have the feeling that our priorities are about to change though.
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Over the last few months, our relationship with our bus has gone through some changes. I put in 15 hour weekends throughout March and April, pushing toward an arbitrary completion deadline of early June - in time for a concert we were going to. At some point, our fun project became anything but. Pesky nuisances gave way to more serious challenges, and I found myself in attack mode. After a 10 hour stretch of unsuccesfully chasing down an electrical issue, complete with the removal of the dash board, I was feeling defeated (I figured out much later that I had cut the wrong wire). It was around that time that we had a family conference, and it was kindly pointed out that the bus had overtaken us. Sometimes you just have to walk away. The state inspection was due, and we had a loud clunking noise coming from the right front wheel well, so we took it to our neighborhood bus repair shop for what turned out to be a 2 month stay. Turns out the flux capacitor was shot. We finally got it back last week.
So here's the highlights of what we've done since March. It's a short list but a lot of work.
Our ideas for how we're going to use the bus have taken a bit of a turn. During our respite, we found out that we're expecting a little one in January. Soon, we'll be decked out with a "baby on board" sticker. There was talk about making it an in-law suite, but the in-laws (mine and hers) seemed to scoff. So, my current office will become the baby's room, and I will be moving from a home office to a bus office. But don't worry, we're pretty much road-ready, should we need to get away. Now check out the pictures. With the insulation in place, it was finally time to put up the walls. We'd been looking forward to this step for a while, knowing that it would give us a sense of "things really coming together." We went with a white composite bead board. After painstakingly cutting a few panels to length, we realized that Lowes could make much more accurate cuts in a fraction of the time. Smarter not harder, right? The panels went up with ease, and our plan is to finish it with some molding around the borders and a window sill running along the top. Once the walls were up, we added some arm rests to the sofa that will double as storage space.
As the project progresses our ideas about how might use the bus continue to change. We want it to be travel-worthy, and capable of "dry-docking" (living off the grid) for a few days at a time. However, we're also thinking more and more that we might actually want to live in it, at least for a short time. Perhaps use it as a temporary home while we build something small, but not quite "tiny." With that in mind, we decided to ditch our freezer/cooler idea and buy a proper refrigerator. We opted not to go with a propane/ d/c model because we figure we can just use a Yeti cooler if we go camping for a few days, and more often than not we'll be plugged in when we need a refrigerator. So Courtney did a whole bunch of research and opted for a Haier 10.1 cu ft. refrigerator, which we purchased from Lowes. It's big enough that it can store a gallon of milk and a week's worth of groceries, but small enough that it works in our space. When we started looking into insulation, we found blog entries of people who'd spent thousands of dollars blowing in foam insulation. In addition to being expensive, that approach eats up inches of valuable real estate. Instead, we opted for the R13 rolls of cheap pink insulation As we put up the first few bats, we realized that the insulation was too thick for the studs, causing the walls to bow. In the end, we had to peel a few away a few layers of insulation, probably reducing the R13 to R4, but I suppose it's better than nothing. We double-checked the guidelines for vapor barriers, then used plastic sheeting to hold the insulation in place. It was during this phase that we realized we'd installed off-white outlets while our walls-to-be are white. I was informed that this was not going to work. The upshot was Courtney learned how to install an outlet, and we're officially color-coordinated now.
When I was researching the plumbing, I watched a youtube video highlighting the indestructible qualities of Pex tubing. A guy filled a few lengths of Pex with water, capped the ends, froze them, and proceeded to bash them with a hammer. The Pex was unfazed. Further research indicated that this is the industry standard in Alaska. Good enough for Alaska, good enough for NC, I figured. So I wasn't at all concerned about draining the plumbing system when the temperature started to plunge. What I failed to take into account, however, was that the Pex connected in several places to unforgiving brass and hard plastic fixtures. I casually went out one 50 degree day after a few days of solid freeze and turned on the pump. It hummed to life, the unmistakable hiss and patter of water followed shortly afterward, and I noticed we suddenly had a sprinkler system in the back of the bus. I inventoried the damage: we lost the shower faucet, the main valve assembly to the water heater, and the condenser. Pex held up beautifully. $150 worth of repairs later and we were back in business. Now we'll have to figure how how to make the system viable in the winter. Challenge accepted.
We took advantage of the long stretch of warm weather in December to finish the shower. We went with corrugated metal for the interior walls because it's cheap, water proof, and flashy. Courtney measured the curve of the roof (no simple matter), and I did the cutting and cussing. Nothing more neighborly than the early morning shrill of a circular saw shredding through metal. Took us the better part of the day to wrestle the walls into place. Once they were up we ran a thick bead of caulk around the bottom to seal it. Voila.
Next, we installed the faucet. Clearly, this faucet wasn't designed to be installed in a corrugated metal wall, so we made a few modifications. We used a flexible shower attachment because, let's face it, this is going to be a crouching shower for me. Courtney should fit just fine though, and she's the more frequently-showered one in the family. For the countertop, we wanted something attractive that didn't cost a fortune. We checked the local Habitat ReStore a few times but couldn't find anything to meet our needs. Found some great deals on Ikea, but the shipping turned out to be three times the cost of the actual piece. In the end, we decided to make our own. Courtney bought a 24 x 72 inch glued Aspen board for $50. She also found us a sink, faucet and stove, and set to work designing the countertop space. After lots of careful measuring (her specialty, not mine), we cut the holes for the stove and sink, and Courtney applied 3 coats of polyurathane.
Over the past month or two, I've been trying to figure out the plumbing. Until recently my plumbing knowledge has been limited to hooking up the garden hose and the occasional battle with a plunger. After a fair amount of head-scratching and youtube watching, we're finally making some progress. Cutting the hole for the drain the shower turned out to be a 6-jigsaw blade challenge, but finally got that taken care of. We're using a 40 gallon fresh water tank, 3.5 gpm pump, 1/2" Pex tubing for the fresh water side of things, and a Ecotemp L10 on-demand hot water heater. I'll spare you the technical details; just check out the pictures. I hooked up a sink in the back yard just to test out the system. The landlord loves us. Next, we'll work on finishing the shower and sink.
There are few ways to better to test the bonds of friendship than to say "Hey, you want to help me paint?" So ask we did, and small militia of our friends and family showed up. Of course, to invite friends over to paint your bus is also to invite a certain amount ridicule; but hey, it's a package deal.
Our friend Randal, who is actually a professional painter in his day job, led the project (and kindly overlooked our amateurness). Also helping were my father, Ken; Gary and Linda; Mathew and his son Nathan; and John. We used rollers and brushes to apply Industrial Enamel paint from Sherwin Williams over the body, and we used a layer of Bus-Kote (super fancy space-age insulating paint) for the roof. It took us a while to get the groove, but we found that it actually looked pretty good when we were done. Using rollers instead of brushes as much as possible definitely helps. Took a full day to apply the first coat, but we were really pleased with the results, and we made plans to apply the second coat the next day.... ... And then we woke up to rain the following morning. Two days of "Should we have built an ark instead of a bus?" rain. Well, when the paint suggests at least 12 hours to dry, it means 12 hours. When the Bus Kote says 4 hours between coats, it means 4 hours. The sides held up pretty good, and will only need a few touch-ups before applying the second coat, but the roof took on a Teflon tape consistency and shriveled and bubbled before finally drying out properly with the appearance of paper måché... ...Which means that this spring, when it's nice and the pollen has all fallen, we'll be calling up our friends and saying, "Hey, want to help us paint?" Apparently when this bus was only hauling children, folks weren't too concerned about someone trying to break in, and thus there was no way to lock it. Now that we're putting all this fancy new stuff inside, we figured we'd better add something that at least passes as security at first glance. After trying a few methods that didn't work, we finally came up with this simple solution. We'll have to weld them into place at some point, but this will do for now.
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November 2016
AuthorsBen and Courtney MacDonald - We married in September 2014 and just do our best to live life in gratitude every day. As Ram Dass writes, "We're all just walking each other home." We enjoy figuring out where home is. Categories |