Luci Bus

 Bus update: Today Randy cut out the rotten plywood by the flappy doors using his new oscillating multi tool. (I knew this project would lead to tool acquisition.🙄😂) He cleaned up the metal and put some rust protection on it. Then he cut out the rot by the fuel tank filling cap. And cut a big hole all the way through my bus!! How is it that I can stand near the edge of a miles-deep canyon and not be afraid. But open a hole in the bus floor and I am certain I’m gonna fall through! 😱 I got to use the new tool while taking down the wall plywood near the floor. 😊 This has been a great learning experience for me. And Randy has been great about sharing his tools and showing me how to use them. Plus we make a good team. 💖 Marking the straight line in the plywood to be removed. Ugh. Rust. The rust extended down the face by the stairs. But now it’s cleaned up. We still don’t know where the moisture is coming from. But we’ll figure it out soon. 🤞🏻 ...

Bus update: We have a floor!! Well. We have cut the insulation and plywood pieces to size. Now we have to router the insulation to accommodate the unistrut that runs the length of the floor. And paint all the edges of the plywood. Then we glue it and screw it and we have a floor!!! 🚌 The width is 97.75 inches. So a standard piece of 8’ plywood is 1.75 inches shy of covering the width of the floor. 🙄 We didn’t want the seams of the insulation and plywood to line up in case of leaks. So we did a little puzzle work. 🧩 Me jigging the saw. I keep giving Randy a hard time for not getting any action shots of me using tools. Because I’m definitely using the tools, both power and manual. And hauling plywood and taking measurements and all the other stuff. I am woman. Hear me ROOOAAARRRRRRR!! 🦁

Bus update, a few days after the fact: We glued it and screwed it and the floor is done. 🎉 Well, until after we complete the build and put the final flooring down in the open areas. That took a LOT more time than we expected. But it feels solid and makes the ride a bit quieter. Now Randy is designing the bed frame, which will go over the water tank and the water heater. Plus there will be lots of under-bed storage and possibly a pull-out table that extends out the back door for cooking on. Mattresses arrive today. I say we chuck the camping stuff in and head out!! “Go in damnit!! Even though we had a good idea where the uni-strut was, we forgot to measure where the subfloor screws were. 🤦🏻‍♀️ Randy hit a fair amount of metal and threw away a fair amount of screws. 😔 We were supposed to work two drills at once. But I chickened out cause I know there are limits to my patience. 😉 We forgot to get the weights ready so we scrambled and grabbed anything and everythi...

 Bus update: We’ve been working on it all weekend. We got the floor up and only found four spots that need to be replaced and a couple others that need some attention. The smooth rubber floor on each side came up fairly easily. The aisle floor took both of us working together, with a crowbar, a scraper, a heat gun, and a lot of strength and determination! The last 12” or so was the worst of it. There may have been swearing. 😉  After seeing pics of other shuttle floors, we are both pleased with how little rot we found. Then we went to the big box stores for insulation and plywood. So. Much. Plywood. Hopefully by the end of next weekend we will have the floor ready to begin building stuff on. Which is good because with how much we spent today we may be living in this thing before long. #itaddsupquickly 😳 💸 This is the front corner on the passenger side near the flappy doors. The opposite corner behind the driver has some rot, too. We’ll have to figure out where the moisture i...

 Sooooo we bought a thing. 🚌 It’s been Randy’s dream to convert an old school bus to an RV. But an opportunity to buy a used shuttle bus kinda fell in our path. So we did that. Looking forward to this HUGE project we’re going to do together. The learning curve will be steep!! 🤪😊💖