It’s been a hard few days, but we finally got the wood and rubber floors out of the bus. The floors at the back were soaked through with veggie, and were really just terrible to work with. But we’re past that! Nearly all of the veggie work is behind us, and we’re on to bigger and better things. Like angle grinding. Nishi has really taken to the angle grinder, and has been making serious advances in the War On Rivets. You can actually see a bit of the back wall panel coming off in the photo above. They’re stubborn as all hell, but the grinder really does its job. Next, we’ll need to treat some of the rust spots on the floor, and caulk up old seat-bolt-holes.

Many thanks to Peter and Ali, who were able to lend a hand. Sometimes one more person really makes all the difference.

Today, we finished taking apart the interior of the bus. The benches, bunk bed, and countertop are all in pieces, and waiting to be moved and stored until they can be re-used. The veggie system is still firmly in place, as are the two captain’s chairs in the front of the bus. That will have to go next, so we can start tearing up the flooring.

The floor of a bus has a few layers (this varies a little model to model): rubber on the top, ~1/2″ plywood under that, and lastly, the metal subfloor. We’re pulling up both the rubber and plywood, and starting from bare metal. This way, we can insulate the floor, and install a high quality floor on top, while not eating into headroom. I’m 6’1″, and the bus is 6’2″ at it’s tallest point right now. I don’t want to go any lower.

When we finished, it was too dark to take any photos, but when we work again on Wednesday, I’ll have a photo showcasing the carnage. The weather this fall has been a bit cooler than I was expecting, and a few dreary rainy days have kept us from getting quite as much work done as I was hoping for. As a result, I’m tweaking my goals, and re-evaluating my expectations. It seems likely that we will finish gutting the interior, and changing the veggie system, but nothing else until the snow starts to thaw.

That is still quite a lot of work in not all that much time. Over the winter I’ll fill out the rest of this website for any aspiring bus-owners. While the resources out there are fantastic, there were still a lot of things I had to figure out the hard way, and I’m going to do my best to address that.