September 4th

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September 4th 2003

I'm getting to the point where I am not sure what to do next. There are quite a few things that are pushing me toward not going to the next stage of tear down. There doesn't appear to be any way for me to insulate around the windows. They are spot welded about every 2 or so inches and riveted in place as a single unit from the outside. The only way I can think of to insulate (within a reasonable amount of time) is to drill holes and use spray foam insulation to fill the cavity inside.

I would like to start work on the sub floor today. I have not seen the underside of the bus in the middle section yet, so I do not know where everything is under there. I need to know where the water, gas and battery storage bays are going to be located. From what I understand, there are no storage areas already built under this model of bus, so they will need to be constructed along with the doors to access them from the sides later.

We are almost at a milestone where we can start to play around with our various floor plans in full scale. We have cardboard pieces stored near the bus that we are planning to cut up and assemble to mock up our drawings up to this point. Until I have a good idea of where everything is located under the bus though, we will not know how much things will need to be re-arranged later to fit the space provided for storage...

We finished getting all of the remaining wood from the raised platforms and took everything out of the bus. The last of the bolts in the back were all rusted out and had to be drilled out and broken off for the most part.

The last 10 feet or so of sub floor in the back of the bus is totally rotted out. The whole thing seems to be dry rotted or something. it all feels pretty firm to the feet, but can be smashed through very easily with anything sharp. I figure that I will end up replacing all the rotted flooring.

In any project like this, you have to take a break to play a little here and there. Everyone wanted to see how the bus was going to look once everything is done, so we took some chalk and cardboard and "played house" for a little while. Everyone loved being able to see where the walls were and where everything might be located in the final design.

The girls thought that the kitchen needed cleaning, so they took turns sweeping the "stove" on the floor <grin>.

There are 2 more walls in the back that I didn't have enough cardboard to set up. In the final design, you will not be able to see the back window from anywhere in the living room/kitchen area. After browsing several dozen different designs on the used RV lots I decided that I dislike having the hallway down the middle of the RV. I also don't like having to close and open doors all of the time, so the bathroom and back bedroom are situated so that neither is visible from the living/kitchen area.