roof/window painting

yes, that is my 4 year old wearing dress pants, an oxford shirt and sweater vest pressure washing the roof of a school bus.

we got a can of elastomeric roof coating (compliments of my sister and her $50 lowes gift card christmas present. thank you, catie!) steven painted (most of) the roof today, while i did the windows. i'm going to paint the inside of the windows too for extra heat protection. steven needs to do the second roof coat next weekend.

steven also got the heater hoses capped off. finally. :P

trains

nicholas and i went through and tossed half his train set. he had no problem getting rid of any of it. he did take back a crane though :P

he had so much that he never played with them because it was overwhelming. people (including us) didn't know what to get him that fit in the no plastic no battery criteria. so they got wooden train track pieces with plastic accessories. oi.

steven went to the bus yesterday instead of coming home for lunch. he got off the last ceiling panel. he needed to grind it off around the door.

the front box with the handle is the keep box. the box behind him is the toss box.

when we were sorting keep/toss, nicholas exclaimed "nooooo! my train set is doooooooomed!" haha it was so funny.

labor day weekend = more working (on the bus)

saturday --> steven pressure washed the engine and underside of the bus. i painted rust converter on the middle step and around the wheel wells.


sunday --> i painted and covered/siliconed the middle step with 3/4" plywood. we de-skinned the driver's side. steven started scraping some rust from underneath.


monday --> we de-skinned the door side and one panel from the ceiling.


we're going to replace all the yucky fiberglass insulation with foam board insulation.


i forgot to bring the camera this weekend so we went over to take pics after the library. their favorite time of the week!

they were read a book called "the potter" (that i can't find a link to because everything is either harry potter or peter rabbit) then we played with homemade playdough that the librarian made. fun!

almost starting!

busy weekend!

on saturday, steven started taking out the front driver's side heater. it was GROSS. filled with dead mice skeletons. ew. we took a break after a while because it was stinky. steven wanted to come back this morning by himself with a face mask.


while he was getting the heater started, i painted the doghouse with rust converter.

afterward, we went to get a drill, a pressure washer and a couple other tools.

we also went to the aquatic center in havasu and to late lunch at black bear diner for my birthday :D (steven got me a shiatsu massaging pillow and a bottle of disaronno. thank you!)


today, we dropped steven off and i took the boys to get some paint and to play at the park. when we got back, steven had finished taking the heater out and cleaned up a bit.

we started pressure washing the inside. it's made a HUGE difference. finally, an end to the filth is in sight.


i painted the doghouse blue. nicholas REALLY wanted it purple. i'm going to take that little can of red that i used to paint the wringer and dump it in for the next coat.

steven started pressure washing the underside of the bus. noah helped.

i cleaned off/organized our work bench/future kitchen.

all clean!
getting there!
steven ground down a few screws that were poking up quick before we left.

dog house

we went over to the bus this morning. first time all week. it's been SO HOT. today was overcast so we went over.

steven took off the dog house. the underside of it is a little rusty but not too bad.


we also took off the front heater behind the door. more anti-freeze. ick.



i vacuumed out underneath when he pulled it up. there were a million candy wrappers from the 70s. mmmm peppermint jellybeans :P

it was really humid so we didn't stay too long. we were just going to go home but nicholas asked to go to the splash pad.

noah's first haircut

steven got the driver's seat out with the grinder on sunday. he also ground off the rest of the conduit. i got off 4 of them with the pry bar. i wish i would have thought to use the grinder earlier!

side project: i made myself some safety goggles. i used this tute and some lenses from an old pair of glasses. steven wasn't nearly as excited about them as i am.

oh, and noah got his first haircut.

bye, bye, heater.

the big project today was to take the rear heater out. the actual removal was easy enough. steven used the prybar and popped the heater off the floor. we moved the heater to the middle of the bus so the hoses were slack.

then we went to the engine and shut off the valves.

back inside, steven cut one hose over a bucket and i lifted it so the anti-freeze would pour in. then he cut the other hose and i lifted that hose. then steven lifted the heater to the ceiling and i jiggles the hoses so all the coolant would pour in the bucket. he took the heater right out to his truck to put it in the dumpster at his work.

the other end of the hoses are clamped up so we can deal with them tomorrow.

i'm refinishing the cabinet that was in there. i'm going to put the sink and stove top in it, i think.

a little progress

today as we pulled up to steven's grandparent's house, his dad was just finishing up cutting their lawn. nicholas loves playing with his grandpa. the boys got to play with him while i worked today.

steven was just getting there to pick up trash when we got there too. he and his dad looked at the engine a little to see if they could figure out why he couldn't get it started yesterday. turns out there were a bunch of loose wires and we need a new battery. we needed to get a new battery anyhow because that one is out of steven's car so it's not a purchase we weren't expecting.

i got a little done inside. i took off the corner angle thingy along the door side floor, which came up way easier than i anticipated. i also got the conduit rail off the top door side. i also washed the floor a little.

nothing big, but still progress :)

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

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!!

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

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.

it's a good thing we haven't had a fire.

i think the fire extinguisher is somewhat overdue for a recharge. yikes.

steven was off work today so he got to work on the bus with me this morning. we got a little more rubber flooring up and more vacuuming done. he also started the bus up after having a little trouble trying to at lunch yesterday.

we got one of the bathroom walls down completely, all the plastic sheeting around the shower stall and part of the other wall. one of the copper elbows for the shower had a GAPING hole in it. i think we are going to try to reuse the shower pipes except for the piece with the hole.

we started taking the kitchen area apart too.

we took our first load of trash out. we filled up the dumpster at steven's work. oops. i'm not sure how we are going to get rid of the couch yet. i suggested taking it out to the desert but steven said no. grumble.

the front, behind where the fire extinguisher was, was disgusting. really. there was literally 1/2" of grim. gross.

the filth in this thing is unbelievable.

the people we bought it from lived in it for 2 years. i think 2007-2009. there is WAY more than 1 year of sittings worth of dirt. i don't know how someone could live in this thing for THAT LONG without even once thinking "you know, i think i'm going to clean today." granted, i'm not the best housekeeper. but really, disgusting. even for me.

rails are easy.

the camera was dead yesterday so here are pics of right after the carpet was taken out.



today, i vacuumed a LOT. holy moly. it's FILTHY in there. when i was done steven's grandma was like "uh, you're going to rinse off in the pool, right?" haha


i got up one and a half rails. they were pretty easy. i used a pry bar and the screws just popped right out. the other half rail is underneath the kitchen and couch so i need to do them later after we throw some trash away and i can move stuff around.


we got a little of the rubber flooring up. i keep hearing that getting the rubber up is the hardest part of converting. i think i got lucky because the heat melted the glue. it's just peeling right up.

i also took off the rubber flaps that covered the door edges.

the boys played with steven's little cousin makenzie in the water for a while. they were running back and forth from the yard and the bus.


at one point i had to MAKE them go play. they wanted to work but i was afraid of them getting overheated. haha