We finished the upholstery for the bed, though I didn’t take any process pictures. It looked about the same as the port bench, except about 6 feet shorter. You get the idea. The hinges work perfectly, and draw the upholstery foam away from the wall when the bench flips up to reveal the bed.
Next up are the solar panels and other electrical stuff.
We’ve divided our interior into individual units that will together make up our living area. We’ve finished roughing out two of these.
Our dropleaf desk is on the port side immediately behind the driver seat. We haven’t completely finished it yet, since the legs that will support the leaf won’t be installed until the flooring is installed. This will also house all of our electronics including our battery bank, charge controller, and inverter.
Our bed is directly across from the desk on the starboard side of the bus. It’s about a foot or so back from the stairwell. Nishi will be upholstering the top of this so it will serve as a bench when our bed is stored away.
The front and top of the bench lift up together to reveal the space where we’ll store our bed. We’re using a futon mattress, folded in half lengthwise.
This was the best solution to the problem of a queen sized bed in this space. There seem to be two main approaches: a permanently installed mattress blocking off a substantial portion of the bus, or a transforming bed that had to be stripped of sheets to be used as seating. Neither of these were too appealing, and we had to figure out a way to keep our bed from taking up too much space, but without having to make/unmake it whenever we wanted to use it or stow it.
Both need a fair amount of work still before they can be called finished, but finishing work will have to wait until we’re done with the heavy work inside.
