Follow Our Progress
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October 20th
2003
We took the weekend off to relax and play a little. We
delivered invitations to our Halloween party and played around a little
with some of my past Halloween toys. Somehow I blew up my talking
skeleton's electronics. It may have had something to do with
shorting out one of the resistors to make it more responsive to sounds
<grin>. Anyway, no big deal - I have 2 more circuit boards
put together, so I can fix it next weekend.
Becky and I had been talking a little about the bus this
weekend. We were both feeling a little overwhelmed and not very
motivated to get back to work. It's so much to think about all at
once. There are so many systems now that seem to need to be
considered when making decisions... While driving around
delivering invitations to our Halloween party, we had time to talk about
it all. Our problems basically come down to lack of money to buy
supplies. Everything seems to be so interrelated, so it's hard to
skip a step and go on to something else that we can afford to do
now... Long story short, we decided to play it by ear a lot
more. We'll do what we can and try to make it easy to finish up
the rest later.
With that in mind, we took on the majority of the electrical work
today...
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Up to today, all of the electrical had been along the left
side wall. We needed a nice way to get several runs of
wire to the other side of the bus.
We decided to make use of the empty space under the floor to
run our wires. After a brief inspection to make sure that
there was nothing that would be drilled into, I went ahead and
drilled 2 holes on either side of the bus floor in a location
that I thought we might be able to leave the switch box.
After gluing together the main pieces that we could above the
floor, I spent some time under the bus while Becky cut and glued
the remaining pieces from above.
The result was a run of conduit from the fuse box to the
other side of the bus next to the refrigerator. With very
little effort we got 2 circuits worth of
wiring through the conduit. We had labeled the two sets of
wires before running them through the pipe, so wiring was a
piece of cake for the rest of the bus.
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With the electrical now run to the opposite side, we finished up
the plugs and switches for the kitchen area.
We temporarily put up lights in the kitchen and bathroom.
Once the kitchen cabinets go in and I can install the under
cabinet lighting, I will move the big light to
it's real home on the ceiling over the living area.
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The bathroom light switch will be on the face of a large floor
to ceiling cabinet. For now, I tacked the switch to the side of a
scrap piece of 2x2. That should make it safe enough for
the kids to use and keep the wires out of the way for now.
I mounted the bathroom light like the kitchen light. Until the cabinets in the bathroom
are in place, I don't know exactly where the best location for
the bathroom light will be.
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To finish off the day, I worked on sheeting the end of the
hallway with a piece of plywood.
I don't know why, but it took me about 6 trips back and forth
from the saw to get all of the cuts right. It was a bit
tricky with the new wiring, heating system pipes, etc.
The piece of plywood at the end of the hall was important to
me for some reason. Now all of the interior has sheeting
on at least one side. That's as far as I can go with the
sheeting until we insulate the interior walls.
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Erika and Emily took a break from watching a movie in the
bedroom to check out the new closet that is now easy to see.
I noticed that the extra wall has blocked a lot of the sound
that used to come up the hallway directly from the
bedroom... I may actually get some sleep in the bus after
all <grin>.
The girls are dying to have the bed frames sheeted over so
they can try them out. We just don't have the cash right
now to buy the plywood, so unfortunately they're going to have
to live with the temporary bench I made for them until more
money becomes available.
Speaking of money, the initial estimate for the Jeep clutch
repairs is between $650.00-$800.00 depending on which particular
clutch assembly was put in ours... If it turns out that
the clutch has plenty of life left in it, the bearing
replacement alone was estimated at $586.00. I should
become a mechanic instead of a database/web application
developer. They're asking too much money if you ask
me... I may need a 3rd opinion on this one.
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Becky spent part of the day with her addiction. She can't
stop peeling the black striping off the bus. I have a hard
time getting her to pay attention to me once she gets started on
it. Luckily there was a particularly nasty stretch with
lots of rivets that made her give up for the day.
<laughing>
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All in all, we had a good day. I think everyone feels good
about the progress that is being made again. If it didn't seem
like so many things were dependent on each other I think we'd be a lot
happier, but at least we're making progress regardless of the money
situation at the moment. If we can scrounge up the cash, we'll pick up
enough insulation to do the wall between the bathroom and kitchen.
Once that is insulated, I can finish sheeting it and start work on the
cabinets and plumbing. |
