almost doner!

i thought we were going to get to wash the bus out today but we didn't get quite that far.

we did get a lot done though.

we got the old electrical conduit off, the casing for the rear heater hoses, more rubber flooring, sorted reusable stuff and garbage, vacuumed more, and cleaned up all the little this and thats that were all over the floor.

i found a scorpion shell. i'd never seen one before so that was cool.



noah got FILTHY. haha

registration pt. 2

so today while we were taking apart the kitchen, i saw a piece of paper laying on the floor after a pulled up a board. i picked it up and

IT WAS THE TITLE!!

so random! so exciting!

now we don't have to try to find the owner before the guy who sold it to us. woot!

we still have to get the official bill of sale form filled out but that's not a big deal.

almost done with the deconstruction phase!

woohoo! we got a TON done today.

we took the couch to the dump finally (and had to pay $10 for them to take it. grr). on the way back, as we were going around a curve a huge piece of steel flew off the bottom step. it looked like it was cut to fit over the rusty step. the rust on the bottom step is so bad you cant even step on it. i had to drive back in the van to get the piece that flew off. it was stinking heavy!

we also got the rest of the kitchen taken apart, the shower up, the toilet out, the box over the wheel well up, and more rubber flooring up. we have very little left to do inside. i'm hoping to get to spray it out with a hose soon.

i put a bucket of water up near the drivers seat and the boys played in it the whole time. tomorrow i'm going to bring a big tub. they really liked it.

steven show nicholas how to turn the air breaks on and off. he was excited about getting to pull the lever.

afterward, we went to the (fixed!) splash pad. we got them a couple supersoakers and they LOVED them. we had to go back to the store and get another set because steven and i liked them too :P

while steven ran in to get the 2nd set of supersoakers, i drove around the building with the boys. in the back, they had a bunch of pallets laying out and had an idea. i'm thinking about asking our neighbor (the front end manager at walmart) if they reuse the pallets. if they don't i'm going to see what i can do about reusing them as flooring in the bus. i THINK i saw someone else do that with old pallets. we'll just need to find someone with a planer that we can use. (MAYBE steven's grandpa has one. he does a lot of woodworking.) i'm hoping it works out.

it's been a great day!!

laundry score!

i've been thinking about laundry.

i saw a picture somewhere of someone that had a james washer on a drawer on the side of their rv. genius!

but $650? no, thanks.

so i decided that i want to build a james-style washer. i've seen ones that other people have built, no reason i can't too.

but i can't build a wringer. $190? still more that i want to spend on the whole project. i could go the bucket wringer route for $35 but that seems like way more effort than i want to put into laundry.

so i checked craigslist and found one for $25! woot! i called the guy right away and picked it up this afternoon. there is a little rust on the handle but nothing i can't fix. the rollers are somewhat discolored but in good condition.

team work!

taking off until saturday.

we went over for a little while yesterday.

i got the cabinet across from the kitchen taken off and some of the rubber flooring from under the couch.

i also tried to take off 2 of the conduit rails along the roof. some of the screws were too rust for me to get off but i was able to see behind them. i think i'm going to take them off entirely and use actual conduit for the wires that we still need. a lot of them are for the small recessed lights that i'm going to take out anyway.

it's soooo hot this week. over 112 everyday. saturday is supposed to be 108 so we will go back then. saturday will also be good because steven can go with us. steven's grandma can't handle the boys even for a few minutes. haha

tools!

we didn't work on the bus yesterday but we did buy some new tools.

we got some wrenches, replacement ratchet pieces from the set we already have, hammer, googles, a screwdriver, sander, gloves, a bucket w/ toolbag thingy, a sander, extra sander pads and a grinder.
the grand total was $206. not too bad.

the grinder was 50% off because it was the display for last year's model. $50 instead of $100. awesome!
the sander is this guy. it should be good for all the grooves and bumps on the outside of the bus.
(remind me to buy tools on amazon from now on. the sander was half the price!)

broken splashpad :(

didn't get much done today.

nicholas and noah looooove the splash pad and daddy doesn't get to take them often so he was going to take them over while i got to work uninterrupted for a while. the splash pad was broken though so they played at the park until they ran out of drinks. they were only gone for about a half hour so today's progress was minimal.

i got the kitchen counter and some of it's support beams off, vacuumed more, and popped almost all of the second rail off.

i started on the steps too. they are in rough shape. i needed a ratchet to get the rusted screws out. under the rubber is BAD. the middle step had a huge rusted out hole in it. we are going to have to redo the steps entirely.

depending on what the underside of the floor looks like, we might just have to re-panel the whole floor.

we were talking to steven's brother this afternoon and he was telling us about this stuff. apparently, you just paint it on and it turns the rust into magnetite. i'm not sure what magnetite is, but it's not rust and that's okay with me.