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.