In the Bus Again

Now that the weather has cooled down to about 75, we feel it's bearable to spend time in the bus again!


The first thing we tackeled was the ceiling. We had wanted to finish it before we had left Minnesota, but we were already so far behind schedule that we decided to leave it until Florida. It's a good thing we did because the insulation we sprayed continued to expand! Imagine if we had put the panels up before the full expansion. We would have a creaky, maybe holey, bus ceiling by now.

We are super insulating this tin can. We put a thin reflective panel in between the 5mm ply and the foam insulation. The Reflectix looks like what a cheap sunshade for your car's windshield is made of. Bubble wrap with foil on both sides.

Michael made a helper! We don't have Uncle Frankie anymore to help us with an extra pair of hands, so Micheal made a prop that could hold things in place if I were not around or if the two of us were not enough.

There were some days when Michael would go to work and I would cut the panels and make notches during my free time. Overall the labor came out to about 5 work days. Doing this exercise helped me overcome my fear of the circular saw. Now I know what you're thinking: "Who's afraid of a circular saw?" I'm here to tell you, "This gal!" This gal was, at least. I think it reminded me too much of a chainsaw, something I associate with redneck psychopaths. The shrill sound of the blade turning mixed with its ability to be moved willy nilly in the air. With a table saw, the blade is at least in one position at all times. And with a compound saw, there is only one path it will go - down and then back up again. The circular saw made me imagine bloody body parts and screaming children.

But after a sloooooooooooow introduction, I finally got the hang of it without hurting myself or my family. I'm glad I was able to cut pieces while Michael was away because I was able to go as slow as I had to. I would sometimes stare at the plywood for a good 5 minutes before making a mark or before clamping it down. Many times, I would mark it incorrectly but I wouldn't figure it out until right before I cut. It was nice to not of the pressure (nor the immediate embarrassment) of having to do it correctly the first time. It was a good learning curve done leisurely!

Speaking of curves, the ceiling of the rear of the bus curves down and we had to account for it.

It's hard to tell that there's a curve right? It was harder to figure out how to cut a piece to accommodate it so Michael attached a square piece and then used a Dremel (or oscillating saw) to relieve pressure here and there. It wasn't pretty.

You can see the jagged line in this photo of the painted panels.

After we secured the panels, we painted it with an oil-based primer/sealer/stainblocker paint in white.

The plywood is really porous and sucked up the paint like a sponge. We used a gallon on the first coat. The second coat went on more quickly, but we had timed it poorly and had to race against the sun going down to see what we were doing.

Next up, we're putting tint on the windows! We hope to have this bus ready for some fun day trips in about a month and a half! We won't be complete by then, but we will hopefully be able to retreat to it in the middle of the day wherever we are.

Air Conditioner Working

Click to Play V I D E O: Air Conditioner Working

Click to Play V I D E O: AC Updates - Outside 1

Click to Play V I D E O: AC Updates - Outisde 2

New Super Floor

The last and most important thing to be installed was the floor. There had been concerns about putting in insulation. It was a great idea to prevent heat from coming in, but we had read about others having problems with squeaking from the insulation rubbing against parts. Our remedy .... GAPS! Not just for the insulation but for the wood frame. We left about 1/4" between the plywood, lumber, insulation and bus frame.

One thing we give gaps was the paper we layed on the entire bus floor's metal frame. For that we used roofing paper and made it overlap the walls by about 2".

Here was our floor construction:

• 1st layer = 30# felt roofing paperSdf

• 2nd layer = 1/4" plywood

• 3^rd layer = 1x3 lumber framing with ¾” insulation board sandwiched inbetween

• 4^th layer = 5/8” plywood

We layed all the paper and 1/4" ply first. Sometimes we had to cut off as little as 1/2" from the plywood so that the edges would end up in the middle of the bus's metal frame below. If Michael hadn't had the foresight to mark up the frames' location along the wall panels, we would have had a hell of a time trying to guess where the pieces were. Thank goodness for his genius!

We started at the front of the bus, which is the hardest, most intricate part. In addition to cutting around the wheel wells, we had little notches for frame pieces to consider. We actually had to redo this first piece because it just wasn't fitting well and fitting straight. We hated to waste material, but we were getting frustrated jiggling and wiggling the thing in. I'm glad we saved our sanity at the cost of another sheet of ply.

After those first 2 layers were complete from the front to to the end of the bus, came in with the laborious 3rd layer and 4th layers that required a lot of measuring and cutting.

Once we had a section cut and tested, we glued it onto the 1/4" ply with construction adhesive. There were two types, one for the wood and one for the insulation. Who knew they needed their own glue!

Simone liked to supervise periodically.  "You missed a spot, Daddy!"

Immediately after the 3rd layer was glued down, we put more glue on top of the pieces and laid a (precut and pre-tested) layer of 5/8" ply on top. The rain barrels (recycled 5 gallon buckets) Uncle Frankie had left out for the chickens came in handy as they were placed on top the entire sandwich of wood and insulation so that the adhesive would dry with the pieces in the correct place. Don't worry PETA, we left some barrels of water out for the chickens to stay hydrated.

Click to play V I D E O: New Floor - Layout

You might notice that Michael and were not talking at all in this video. We were T I R E D! And it was hot at this point. Minnesota had reached record temperatures at this point. Day after day of 90 degrees that were only exacerbated with the humidity, thus giving a feel of 100 degree days. I remember one day getting into the car and the temperature gauge reading 105!

Right after we put the buckets down, Michael set out to really fasten the floor to the bus's frame. He used 2" and 2 1/2" Tek Screws that self-tapped. 

Click to Play V I D E O: Fastening to Frame

The floor took about 2-1/2 days. At this point we were ready to pack up and leave! I had gotten a little ambitious though and wondered if we should install the ceiling. Michael predicted it would take 3 days to complete. I promptly said to nevermind. "Let's get on the road!"

Walled Up

We were now ready to put the metal wall panels back onto the bus. Since we had leftover Bus-Kote from the roof's painting, we applied the same primer and reflective paint onto the inner side of the panels. This is the side that would be facing the Foam It Green insulation. Our hopes are that this combination will help keep the bus cooler - or at least not as hot as it would have been without the components.

Click to play V I D E O: Bus Walls - Extra Insulation

We were now ready to put the metal wall panels back onto the bus. Since we had leftover Bus-Kote from the roof's painting, we applied the same primer and reflective paint onto the inner side of the panels. This is the side that would be facing the Foam It Green insulation. Our hopes are that this combination will help keep the bus cooler - or at least not as hot as it would have been without the components.

Click to Display V I D E O: Bus Walls - Field Rivets

Click to play V I D E O: Bus Walls - Edge Rivets

This task ended up taking HALF a day rather than the entire day. This was the first and only time we were ahead of schedule.

More Holes

We surely know how to pick 'em. The summer we decide to work on a bus is when the US reaches historic highs in their temperatures!

Click to play V I D E O: Air Conditioner - Rear A

and

Click to play V I D E O: Air Conditioner - Rear B

Michael hopes to built a more slick facade for the air conditioner. With our time constraints, however, extra wide aluminum foil and some painter's masking tape works beautifully!

Once the air conditioner was plugged in, we found ourselves retreating to the bus much more often. Especially with daily highs reaching mid to upper 90 degrees!

Welding Projects

Before we could insulate the bus, we needed to finish several tasks. Michael ran conduit, we ran extra wires in anticipation of future lights, and Michael welded some metal support that we will need when we build the kids' bunk beds and the bathroom walls. Here's Michael explaining the top brackets that were welded to the bus.

Click to play V I D E O: Welding Top Brackets

The corresponding bottom brackets are shown below:

Michael had tried using the stick welder that Uncle Frankie had, but didn't find it to be much more of an advantage so he went back to using his Mig / Flux welder so that he could weld in and onto the bus! I think Michael caught a welding bug because he kept thinking of more things he could weld. For example, he realized that now would be a good time to put in supports for our future overhead cabinets.

Click to play V I D E O: Welding Cabinet Brackets

I was fearful to try the welding, but overcame it one morning and asked Michael if I could try. It turns out he was fearful for me to try welding too. At least on projects that were going to be on the bus. He responded, "Sure, but maybe on some scrap metal ... later ... not now." Michael didn't feel he had time to show me a tutorial because we were feeling the crunch at this time. We still had so much to do and our deadline of June 30 was fast approaching. It looked as if we would have to leave by July 4th.

Remodeling the Roof, Part 2 - Entertainment

Before Michael painted the roof, he attached the base of what is to be our future observation deck. Yes, we are going to use ALL of this bus for traveling. No, we won't be on the roof while it's traveling, but when it's parked and secure, we'll have the option of going up top and viewing air shows, stars, whatever.

We didn't have time to construct the deck, but before we painted the roof we had to put on the brackets that would hold the deck. With 4" metal sheets, Michael constructed these brackets all by himself!

The only things he didn't construct were the stainless steel nuts, bolts, and washers. The picture above shows them spray painted with the same gray primer Michael used on the sides of the bus.

We located these brackets along the bus's existing frame. Michael grounded out the rivet heads and popped out the stems. Then we laid the bracket plate over the roof's holes to get the location of where we needed to drill new holds. As Michael was up on the roof holding the bracket in place, I was underneath with a sharpie placing a dot in the middle of the hole. Once we had marked the metal, we drilled the appropriately sized holes. Then we tested all 16 pieces.

Again we didn't put any sealant until all pieces dry-tested well. This time, we didn't use the black tar-like sealant/adhesive. Instead it was a WHITE goop that was only slightly less sticky than the bath fan's adhesive. But we were prepared with wet and dry towels and ruined just small portions of my shorts. When I wash Michael's socks, I still find hardened goop holding on for dear life. Well at least we know the brackets will stay up there!

Another project we did on the roof was to reverse the swing of the escape hatch. To get onto our observation deck, we will go through the emergency exit located in the master bedroom. It originally opened so that you would exit onto the rear of the bus. After switching it over, we will now exit closer to the middle and right onto the metal deck!

Michael wasn't the only one that got to do metal work! The following pictures are the new brackets we had to make for the altered escape hatch door. Uncle Frankie helped me out so much on this project. We sorted through his pile of scrap metal pieces and he showed me how to use the drill press & bench grinder! 

An open letter to my dad. "Dear Dad, Yes, the deck will have railing all around so that we will all be safe. This railing however will collapse when not in use so as to maintain our incognito stealth look."

After all the prep work was done, we were finally able to paint the roof. Well .... More like Michael was able to paint the roof. We used this fancy stuff called BusKote. It's similar to the paint used on roads to deliniate lanes. Within the paint are crystals. When the paint dries, the crystals surface and increase the reflectivity of the paint. This will help insulate the interior of the bus from attracting more heat! But this fancy paint has 3 parts to it. The Primer, the Reflective Paint, and the Clear Coat. And Michael did several layers of every one of those parts!

The roof, sanded and primed to be primered!

2 coats of Bus Kote

1 coat of Flexi-Clear sealer

We had a lot of excess paints and gave them to Dick. Michael totally overestimated how much we needed that we had a whole gallon of BusKote! But it was worth because it gets hot in that bus with the sun beating down on it.

Paint, Part 1 - The Sides

The first step to painting the bus was to sand the existing paint. Before I could get to that, however, I had to peel off the letters that said the bus used to belong to the Hutterites. Michael first tested the process and declared that I should use a heat gun. When it came time for me to go through with it, Michael revealed he had broken his uncle's heat gun. It was pretty old. But I was pretty impatient so I used the resources on my person. Literally. I used my fingernails to peel off the vinyl letters. And it was a much faster process!

I had two orbital sanders to choose from. One attached to regular electricity and the other attached to the air compressor. I have to say I liked the regular one. But it's for a wimpy reason - it's lighter and more manageable. In this task, I learned it's best to take breaks more than I would like to. At the end of one day of just sanding, I did a pretty lame job towards the back. I had said to myself that I would get back to doing a rougher job later. But that time didn't come because I just plain forgot. I didn't remember until ... I was putting on primer! But it was too late to put the roller down, plug the sander, and finish it off. 

Luckily the little roughness I had put in there was enough to grab the primer.

UNluckily, I did a terrible job of rolling on the primer. I had never really done it on my own and I had slathered too much on. Michael had been in the middle of doing the primer on the bus and had to come down and help me out.

"Hey, Mikey, am I doing this right?"

Michael looks down from the top of the bus. Pause. "What are you doing?!? I thought you were going to do the edges first!?" 

"I was supposed to do that FIRST? I thought we just decided which tool to use. Not which order to use them!"

Michael grunts and sighs. "Ok. Do you have the roller charged yet?"

"Charged? What does that mean?"

"I'm coming down."

He ended up doing the starboard side while I held the tray and "learned." I put learn in parantheses because I'm hoping I remember it the next time I ever paint the outside of a vehicle, which may be decades from now." The primer ended up being so splotchy and textured that Michael congratulated me that I would be doing more work than had been anticipated. I had to sand that side down to be smooth enough for the finish coat.

I left that night pretty bummed that I had delayed our schedule. The next morning I was determined to do it right, but Michael had pre-emptively spray painted a primer on the port side. 

Dick had tried to warn us nicely about rolling on the primer. He said that spraying is the best, but rolling could be done. He said that after we did it we could wet sand it later here and there. It didn't make sense to me until I was spending an entire day sanding. I also remembered talking to my friend Kerry about being concerned about the environment and spray painting. As I was attaching my 6th 120 grit sandpaper onto the orbital, I cursed rollon and brush painting. Spraying is the way to go man!

See how smooth and pretty that gray primer went on?!?!? SMOOVE! No sanding needed.

Actually the spray-painted primer on the port side did need sanding because it was going to be at eye level and very visible. But it didn't need as much as the starboard side. 

We toiled over what color to paint the bus. I brought back a bunch of samples in grays. I had some in gray blues and Michael was actually drawn to it! I was so excited that we might have a more interesting bus. But we ultimately decided on Massey Fergusen Gray because of the nostalgic value it had with Michael. It had been his favorite color for tractors when he was a kid.

 One cool thing about Michael is that he will try on skills even if he's never done them before. The cool thing for him is that I'm always game to try it too. Or at least to let him try it. This allowed us to solve the problem of spraying the bus for efficiency without hurting the environment nor the live beings around us. Michael bought a spray painter to attach to the compressor! He enlisted the advice of Dick and Jeff and they suggested we also get a valve regulator to attach between the compressor and painter.

With one gallon of paint we put on 2 coats of paint on the side of the bus and an extra strip above the windows! The original stripe of blue that had been above the windows was about 2" high. We wanted it to be higher! We were happy with the final product because it gave the illusion that the bus was taller.

Click to play V I D E O: Final Paint Job

Avoiding Future "Oops" Moments

Michael is full of great ideas. One of them was to document the bus's inner workings before we put back the old walls, new ceiling and new floor. Brilliant, right? Well I set out not only to taking photos of the general layout, but also taking pictures of framework with a measuring tape in the photo. Then Michael one-upped himself and suggested we VIDEO tape our measuring the bus. Here's a sample of what we were doing:

Click to play V I D E O: Sample Measurements

Roof Remodeling Part 1: Functionality

Michael has never been a fan of all the junk that RVers and BusNuts put on their vehicles. He likes the "sleek" look, as he puts it, and wants as little (if nothing) up on the roof so he can avoid letting the world know that we are recreational vehicularists as seen below.

Too Much Stuff!

But we did have to desecrate our bus's roof by installing a bathroom vent on the roof. It will help eliminate odors and circulate any hot air out of the bus.


Step one was to cut a hole. Thank goodness our tall friend Jeff was there to assist. Standing at 6'4", he ripped through the roof. Ok, he also had the help of Michael's new Sawzall, a Father's Day present from Max and Simone. 

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But we did have to desecrate our bus's roof by installing a bathroom vent on the roof. It will help eliminate odors and circulate any hot air out of the bus.

Step one was to cut a hole. Thank goodness our tall friend Jeff was there to assist. Standing at 6'4", he ripped through the roof. Ok, he also had the help of Michael's new Sawzall, a Father's Day present from Max and Simone. 

Well thank goodness for weather sealant and adhesive! And no thanks to the Fleet Farm employees (at least in this one instant). Michael sent me to the store to get some sort of goop that would simultaneously adhere the fin to the roof and be waterproof. Who wants a flooded bathroom, right? I had no idea what to get so I asked. Unfortunately, the advisors at the store were just guessing themselves because they had never had to do something like this. I got the feeling that I should have gone to Home Depot and not to a place where 9 to 5ers go on the weekend to fulfill their man tendencies by buying as much gear and tools as they can to look as if they do fun shit. I still haven't pinpointed what Fleet Farm is. The most accurate and least creative way to put it is, "It's a Big 5 mixed with part Walmart and a splash of Home Depot and a pinch of Petco." Anyway, I got the wrong thing. It was an adhesive and water-resistant, but in tiny print it warned that it should not be under constant exposure to water. One of the criteria I gave the 2 employees!

Luckily Michael went in and found the right thing - a sticky globby substance that was a bitch to work with. We're not professionals so we erred on the side of more instead of less goop. 

Our Vent Drowning in Weatherproof Sealant!

Michael would slather the sealant onto the bus, then drop the vent and then push the bolts through, which also oozed the sealant through to the interior of the bus. I was inside under those bolts frantically trying to put 2 washers (one flat and one lock) and a nut through the bolt's threads. Why was I frantic? Because this miracle gunk dried in 30 minutes and we had to tighten it into place within that time frame. 

Michael had to fabricate 2 metal frame pieces onto which the 2 sides of bolts would latch. It took quite a while to test, but it was a good thing we did it before we applied the sealant. It definintely took about 2+ hours to test and widen holes where the bolts weren't fitting in properly.

Rust-Be-Gone!!!

Working on this bus has given me a clearer picture on how to combat rust. When I was first grinding it off the walls, I was trying to take it off completely. WRONG! My goal was to just expose a layer by roughing it up. Chemicals sold at our nearby Fleet Farm were going to stop the deterioration once we brushed a coat of it on the scruffed-up rust.

Wherever the rust and this "rust coverter" met a black paint emerged a day later.

Now the second step was to cover the converted rust with paint. Uncle Frankie had the best solution - his shelf of salvaged spray paint! He likes to go to the local dump yard and get cans that people are trying to get rid of. Based on the graphics of what we found, these cans might have dated back to the 60s! And so many of them were full. 

Why did people not want these? They were probably done with them after they used a smidgen for a project. Some had broken nozzles and their previous owner didn't know the miracles of paint thinners. Who cares I thought. It saved us so much money to use them because we ended up spraying painting every part of the bus frame - even parts that didn't have rust! We used about 25 cans of spray paint and it was all free!

For a while, our bus looked as if a bunch of hippies had vandalized it in the middle of the night, but it was ok. It was going to be covered up with our new floor anyway.