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 |