Freakishly Happy

I am happy to report that we were able to get out and work
on the bus today. We did a bit of poking
around behind the metal on the walls to see if there was any major water
damage, and found that everything looked to be in good shape. We stood around a bit and hemmed and hawed
about whether or not we should take up the metal paneling. On the on one hand
it would be easier and faster to just insulate and wall over the existing
paneling, which would allow us to get on the road and start enjoying our bus
earlier. On the other hand, if water leakage is a problem in the future, we’ll
have invested a lot more time, effort and money when we have to take everything
that we’ve built out because we didn’t do it right the first time. In the end we decided to do it right and we
began to remove the screws for the paneling.

We have also been kicking around the idea of doing a partial raise of our roof.
Many of the buses that we have fallen in
love with on housetrucks.org have lovely lofted areas, which really makes the
dwellings look more like homes and less like RVs (which is the look we’re going for :) Again, the negatives of this endeavor are the
time and expense it would take, not to mention the extra thought it’s going to
take to engineer it. The positives are
creating a unique and lovely living-space, and a having a little bit extra
space so that we don’t have to sweat our layout. Plus it seems a lot more
romantic and idealistic. We went back and forth with the same old
arguments that we’ve been using for weeks, before we decided that we both
really want it. Rationality and common
sense be damned! We removed the back two
panels of ceiling in order to sort of seal the decision.

We had a lot of fun today.
We both had a great time singing and being silly. Using power tools was good, too.

We’re still working on layout, and trying to figure out exactly what appliances
we want to put in the bus. Right now we’re
trying to decide on which toilet and woodstove we’d like. we’ve been looking at a Sun-Mar composting toilet http://www.sun-mar.com/index.html,
in the Excel model. I’ve done a lot of research, and although it’s
expensive, it seems to be the most eco-friendly and responsible way of dealing
with our waste. It’ll allow us to not
have a black-water tank, which would allow us independence from blackwater
sucking stations, as well as alleviate the worry of having to winterize a tank
full of poo. It also beats the
suggestion to just use a bucket and dump it in a trash can. I guess I’m willing to fork over some cash in
order that someone else is not responsible for my waste.
I think we may have also narrowed down our choice of wood stove. We really like the Swedish brand Jotul. We’ve been looking at their smaller stoves,
but secretly we both really like the idea of having a viewing screen. A closed iron black box just isn’t as
romantic. So again I think we'll throw caution to the wind, and buy a bigger stove. Although it may be more BTUs than we need, I think it's really what we want. Besides, we'll essentially be living in a tin can with windows, so we can probably use all the heat we can get :) This is the model that we're lookng at:  http://www.jotul.com/en-us/wwwjotulus/Main-menu/Products/Wood/Wood-stoves/Jotul-F-3-CB/

Our philosophy seems to be that even though some of the things we’re putting in
our bus may cost us some money up front, we’ll be able to take almost
everything with us in a few years when we settle down and buy a house. It makes
sense financially and environmentally to buy a quality item now, rather than
buy one sub-quality item now and then be forced to chuck it in the land fill
and replace it in the near future.

I’m also researching the best way to refurbish our claw-foot
tub. The one that we bought is in fairly good condition, but it does have a
spot where the porcelain has rubbed off, right where one’s bottom goes. Any suggestions?

As always, we’d love for anyone reading this to
comment or make suggestions! Thanks!

This week we've been moving a little slowly on our bus conversion.  John's finishing up on the very end of his contract, and the weather has been a little cold for working out side.

Today I did get a little bit of cleaning up done.  I spent some time trying to sort out all of the metal bits (nuts, bolts, metal stripping that was around the wheel wells) so that we can take it to be recycled as scrap from the wood and the rubber. It has been rainy the last few days, and the plywood that we took up over the weekend was wet and soggy.  

I still have a little bit more cleaning to do, but hopefully we can start weather/water-proofing and insulating soon.  Last night we found a really inspiring site: 
                                               http://www.housetrucks.com/
It has a lot of house buses  and trucks from the 1960s and 70s as well as some modern ones from New Zealand. They have some really imaginative designs with great windows and skylights.  We got a lot of really good design ideas from it.  Now that the seats are out of the bus I'm really starting to get a good picture of what it might look like.  It's going to be exciting to see it all come together.

Tonight we're expecting 3-6 inches of sleet and ice, with a possibility of up to 18 inches of snow.  I doubt we'll be able to  work on the bus much tomorrow, as it's probably going to be a skating rink out side and I forgot my ice skates :)