11.05.15 - Subflooring and Insulation - Day 9.

Today felt like far more progress than we've made over the course of the last eight days simply because we closed it out with a piece of furniture inside.

Our work was delayed because the heater was still being removed from the rear head space, so once we got Stubbs back in our possession, we hit the ground running.

Our first stop after the mechanic was Lowes for some foam insulation and 1/2 inch OSB plywood for flooring. No kidding, from the time we went to Lowes in the morning to price supplies out, to the time we went back just after noon to buy it, the cost of the lumber went up 80 cents. We chatted with one of the associates about it and they informed us that it always goes up this time of year, and quite quickly at that. Thankfully we only needed five sheets!

We put the 1/2 inch foam insulation in first, foil side down. We think that foil side down should keep more heat in, so remember these two tips if you're insulating a bus:

1. Foil acts as a barrier for heat. If you want to stay warm, put the foam between you and the foil Keep the heat in. If you want to stay cool, foil between you and the foam, keeping the heat out.
2.   You're insulating a giant steel heat sink with single pane windows. None of this matters. If you want a comfortable home, buy a house.

We cut and laid the foam insulation after filling in the holes from the old seats with silicon and then moved on to cutting the plywood flooring to fit in on top of it. We cut the foam with a box cutter, no problem. The plywood we orientated to minimize cuts, as our floor layout already minimized visible seams.

It's important to keep the supervisor happy, which sometimes means breaks to play with measuring tapes.

Christian let Willie show him how to cut a straight line with a skill saw.

Flooring in and waiting to be attached via self-tapping screws!

Today was the first day we truly worked into the darkness because we had set ourselves the goal of getting all of the flooring down and the kitchen moved into place.

Once we were done attaching the flooring, we wanted to get the kitchen in, but between the two of us it was just too heavy to lug hundreds of feet from the Campbulance parked in front of the house to the back where Stubbs was. Our solution was an empty lot across the street, where we were able to back the vehicles up to one another and simply lift the kitchen into the bus and slide it in with ease. What resulted was a pretty suspiciously odd exchange in a dark abandoned lot.

If only moving all furniture was this easy!

After getting the kitchen in, we took Stubbs the bus back to its spot and sat around contemplating our layout for a while since we now had a major piece of the puzzle on hand.

When all was said and done, we decided that the layout we'd been pretty set on via graph paper was exactly what we wanted, so tomorrow we plan to start framing out around the kitchen and building up the back bed/loft area!

11.04.15 - Painting the Floor - Day 8.

Today we needed to get the floor and interior prepped to lay a new subfloor and insulation, so our first stop was Lowes to get supplies (wire brush attachment for drill, sanding supplies, Rustoleum, etc).

We got to work cleaning up the remaining small rust spots (mostly just small areas around the seat bolt holes) and treated them with some fancy rust stopping agent the welder graciously gave us. Of course I didn't take a photo of the bottle, but if you're interested, I can look at it later and give you the name. The stuff is pretty cool…it turns active rust into a black hard substance and essentially just stops it in its tracks.

Once we treated the rust, we took a break to let it cure and sanded the walls to prep for a quick coat of white primer. (We plan to cover the walls with wood panels later, but for the time being we figured at least a coat of paint would help it feel less gross.)

When the floor was ready to be painted, Christian went around with a foam brush and laid a thick layer of Rustoleum Heavy Rust Metal Primer along the edges. I followed closely behind with a roller to coat the entire floor.

We wanted to add a second coat, but it got to be pretty dark out before it was anywhere near dry. We also have an appointment with the mechanic first thing tomorrow morning to remove the remaining heater, so we didn't want to worry about them walking through tacky paint while they work.

We're SO happy about our progress today, though it doesn't feel like much given our dwindling timeline. Just having the floor ready to lay out the subfloor gives us hope that we might have some vaguely livable vehicle by the time we have to hit the road a week from tomorrow.

11.03.15 - New Floor - Day 7.

We showed up at Ace Mufflers and Welding this morning to see if the guys had started on the floor yet as we were anxious to get Stubbs back to start work again. We were excited to see someone inside welding and noticed the old rusted out flooring piled outside the bus.

The guys at Ace didn't mess around, which made us extremely happy with our decision to take Stubbs to them. They'd pulled out all of the worst parts of the floor and were busy making new reinforcement framing to weld the new panels to. They estimated it'd be done by tomorrow morning, so we left them to it and went to find something else to do with our day.

After wandering around the Habitat for Humanity Restore in Searcy to check out some paint we were mildly interested in, we noticed an RV repair shop next door that seemed to have a scrap yard out back. Intrigued, we walked over and asked if we could go picking through the old motorhomes in search of a chair to use as a passenger seat.

Most of the motorhomes were fairly gutted already and either burnt or rotted to the extent that one glance inside was enough to inform us that we wouldn't find what we were looking for. We had a few nice small finds (a woven screen folding door in an old Winnebago that I might return for later and a folding counter extender that I bought mostly for the hardware), but overall it was a bust.

After the RV graveyard, we decided it was time to hunker down with some graph paper and finalize our layout plans. We knew once we got Stubbs back, we'd need to really push to get as much done as possible before we have to leave (tentative shove-off date is November 12th…eek!), so we didn't want to dilly dally simply because we were unprepared with our layout.

Part of our design woes involved not knowing dimensions for our planned kitchen space. We'd happened upon a kitchen section with drawers and cabinets in tact yesterday at one of the Restores in Little Rock, so we started experimenting to see if it would fit into our space.

Amazingly enough, the kitchen looked like it would fit perfectly, so after a few more shuffles of graph paper cutouts, we decided to pull the trigger and go back to Little Rock for the kitchen.

We weren't 100% sure it would fit in the Campbulance for the ride home, but once you've paid for an item they'll hold it for three days, so we figured we could come back with the bus later.

It doesn't look like much, but for $100 and the time it will save us not having to build one, we are pretty pleased with the find. I plan to sand and paint it before we install it as well, so hopefully with some effort it'll look as good as new…or better!

Amazingly, it fit into the Campbulance with about a 1/2 inch of clearance on either side. We were pumped to not have to make another trip down for it later and I figured if the floor took longer than expected, at least we had a new project to work on until it was ready.

On our way back, we got a phone call from Ace Mufflers informing us that they'd finished the floor and Stubbs was ready to pick up. This is the second time a service for Stubbs has been completed ahead of schedule! Who has ever heard of that? Not us. 

The new floor was expensive, but sturdy, and Stubbs needed it. We can't help but think how lucky we are to have pulled all the subfloor out. Now we can really start building. Tomorrow we will scrub the floor, sand the rust away, fill the gaps in the floor with silicon, and lay down a coat of Rustoleum paint.

11.02.15 - Pickin and Pullin - Day 6.

While Stubbs sat in the shop at Ace Muffler and Welding in Searcy for some floor repair, we ventured out for some shopping for the conversion project. We NEED another seat, a passenger/copilot/navigator seat for the bus, and we'd really like it to spin and be usable as a dining room seat, so we visited not one but three Pick-N-Pull junkyards today to look for a rotating captains chair. New ones go for upwards of $600, but we're hoping to get done with this part of the project for under a $100.

For those of you not familiar with a Pick-N-Pull, or any other choose-your-own-adventure junkyard, let me explain how they work. You show up with your own tools (and a whole-new-world grin) and scour rows upon rows of totaled vehicles looking for the part you want. Anything from door handles to engine blocks are available, and you're responsible for pulling the part from the vehicle. Then you drag the part up to the checkout window, pay the nice folks who own the junkyard, and haul the goods away.

We found two rotating plates that once attached captains' chairs to the body of an early '90's Chevy Astro EXT. Hopefully, some light fabrication and welding will help us create a passenger's seat that will rotate 180 degrees to function as a dining room seat for when Stubbs is parked. We'll see.

We haven't found a seat to attach to the rotating plate yet, but there was one that interested us at the 1st junkyard we visited, and we may return for it soon. This is not it, but rather its runner-up. No merlot velour for us today.

In between the junkyards we visited two Habitat for Humanity Restore... stores. If you've never been, go. They are totally helpful and fun, and offer all sorts of home goods at super low prices, like a Goodwill/thrift-shop for remodel supplies.

Chelsea nearly had to be dragged away from this wingback chair. She was convinced we could make it work as a copilot's chair. (I think she just really liked how nap friendly it was.)

We also had some ideas about using abandoned filing cabinets as storage. Maybe some fancy painter's tape work and some spray paint will give us the look we want? Stay tuned!

10.31.15 - Floor Removal - Day 4

(Quick apology before we dive into today's post: I accidentally deactivated our MailChimp subscription newsletter yesterday while trying to edit it. I'm not sure that it will send out yesterday's blog post, so here's a quick link for those interested that might have missed it: Stubbs' Conversion Day 3)

Now, on with the show!

...

What's the scariest thing at Traveling Tuttle's this Halloween? Widespread, cancerous rust eating through Stubb's floor and body, that's what.

We tore up the 1/2 plywood underlayment today, which sat on top of the metal body/floor of the bus. It was held to the metal floor with 1 inch Torx headed self tapping screws, most of which didn't want to spin. We ended up using a combination of hammers, a splitting wedge, and a 5 foot pry bar to coerce the floor up. The wood itself was in decent condition for a twenty year old vehicle, but the floor beneath it is in disrepair, to the point of us needing an expert opinion to see if its even fixable.

In addition to the floor demolition, we also scrubbed the ceilings and walls, removing a decent amount of residue from tape and labels that had formerly graced the walls. When all was said and done, the walls and ceilings looked pretty good. At least we've got that going for us…

We're definitely not discouraged by the floor. It just gives us a lot of relief that we ended up going through the trouble of pulling up the plywood to check underneath before building up a home on top of it. We'll get Stubbs to a body shop next week and go from there!