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.

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.

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

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.