September 12th

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September 12th 2003

Today we made some decisions about the direction that we want to head. Neither of us have any clue how to go about skinning the outside of the bus at the moment, so we have opted to go the less expensive route and leave all of the outside windows in place.

That being said, we decided that we couldn't stand to wait any longer and started putting the wall structure up...

It took a bit of time to figure out how to secure the studs for the walls that ran between the metal L brackets. I want the walls to be very sturdy, so my solution was to use heavy duty anchor bolts that could straddle the space between the L brackets and pull the wood tight against the ceiling.

We decided to make the frame of the walls out of 2x2's. They are easy to work with and pretty cheap compared to anything else that looked like it would do the job.

Anywhere I could hit a metal brace, I pre-drilled and secured the 2x2 with 2.5 inch sheet metal screws and washers. The result is a very sturdy wall that will be even stronger once we sheet it with whatever wall board we decide to use.

It was fun to put the fridge in it's "home" and let the girls play house for a few minutes. I am not all that clear on how I need to vent the fridge. I didn't think about it when I put the wall in at a 2 foot depth, so that may end up being a bit of a problem. The shower wall is on the other side of the wall, so I may have to extend the fridge from the wall a bit more to make a good vent. I will start looking on line for information about the fridge venting requirements.

I think that Becky and I were beginning to feel like this project would never end, but seeing the walls in a more permanent fashion brought us both a bit more energy to see this project through.

It may not have been the logical next step to work on the walls, but I think it was important for both of us to see something happening... I may regret putting them together ahead of schedule, but at least for the moment I can't think of any harm in going ahead.

The hallway turned out perfectly. I was concerned about the narrow 2.5 foot hallway, so during our last mock up we decided to widen the hallway and add a 6 inch deep cabinet below the windows along that side. The extra elbow room will be nice and the bottom of the cabinet will serve to route my wiring to anywhere in the bus.