Follow Our Progress
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November 6th
2003
It's been an interesting day for sure...
I was hoping to get a good start on the wood burning stove, but the
prep work ended up eating up the entire day, so we didn't make as much
progress as I had thought we might.
We started off the day with a stop at the home improvement store for
what we hoped would be all of the remaining supplies that we might need
to install the wood burning stove. We picked up some insulated
pipe, cap for the roof, various adhesives and sealant for the outside
flashing, some primer and heat resistant black paint, and the materials
to build the box that the stove will sit on. We have quite a bit
of prep work to do before we can install the wood burning stove.
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One of the first tasks is to sheet over the window where we will
be installing heat resistant backer board and eventually tile.
We thought a bit about leaving the window in place, but with
the plastic sheet tinting and tile that we would like to run up
the wall higher than the bottom of the window, we decided that
we just needed to take a step backward and re-do that wall.
First step was to peel off the window tinting. It's
nice and dark, but you can see the reflective insulation board
when the sun is out. I decided to take off the window
tinting and paint it black like we did with the other's that are
already covered over.
The tinting came off easy enough, but it left the glue
behind... That took about 45 minutes with a scraper and
Formula 409 to clean up so that I could paint.
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I put the first coat of spray paint on the window, but it
wouldn't dry... It was too cold outside. I solved
the problem in short order by running a vent hose from the newly
installed heater. It worked like a charm, 5 minutes and
the whole window was ready for another coat of paint.
You have to improvise sometimes...
A few coats later and we had the window blacked out
completely and ready to be insulated.
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Here's where things got a little more entertaining...
We want to cover over the small "D" shaped window
too, but we noticed that it has been leaking, so I wanted to fix
the leak before we covered it over and wouldn't be able to get
to the inside.
Well, the outside rubber molding for the window was falling
apart and had been patched by a few people over the years, so I
tried to fix it...
Next thing I knew, the whole window popped out and almost
fell inside the bus. Apparently the rubber molding on the
outside had completely torn away from the rest, so there was
nothing left to do but remove the window the rest of the way and
figure out a way to fix it.
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We took the window and molding to a local auto glass shop.
They didn't have anything like the original molding and
recommended that we use what was left of the molding and glue
the whole assembly back in place. That meant a serious
cleaning to get the rubber and metal prepped for gluing.
As you can see from the picture on the left, the rubber
molding was hiding a nice chunk of rust, 3-4 layers of someone
else's attempt at a patch and quite a bit of that wonderful
Washington moss and actual mud. Not a pretty
sight.
I don't understand the way the windows were installed.
It almost seems backwards. It's not easy to explain, but I
can see why the window is leaking - it's almost as if the
windows were installed backwards. The inside of the bus
could have had a pretty good storm without any problems...
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I went to work with a scraper, two sets of metal brushes and
some acetone. The rust is all gone and only shiny metal is
left.
In order to glue the window in place so it will look right
and not leak, I need to flip it around... Unfortunately,
the window is "D" shaped, so I couldn't flip it and
fit it into the same place.
The only answer was to remove the other side of the bus and
switch the two windows...
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I pulled the window from the other side and guess what I
found...
Yep, even worse rust hidden under the rubber seal. I'm
totally convinced that the original seal on the windows was a
horrible design. The windows would have lasted a lot
longer if they had been installed on the opposite sides.
What you see in the picture is what I found after chipping
away the paint a bit. It was hiding a nice patch of rust underneath.
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I cleaned it up and removed all of the rust in the same manner
as the other side.
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Becky worked on cleaning up the remaining rubber on the
windows. We need both the window opening and the rubber
seal to be as clean as possible before we glue them in place.
Notice that she's hanging out right in front of the heater...
It got dark real fast it seemed, so we had to put up some
tarps, haul in all of the supplies and call it a day.
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Not much has changed in the interior of the bus, but we got a lot
done I think. If gluing the windows in place works out, I might
take the same route with some of the other windows that need some TLC. Tomorrow
we'll keep moving on the "D" windows. We'll probably
glue them in place and then finish paneling the wall. Once the paneling
is done, we can start working on the platform that the wood burning
stove will sit on. We'll see how the weather cooperates... |
