2. Workshop

The Bus

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Here's the final completion of the roof deck, with posts on each corner that will mount our rope railing, and faces on the sides to wrap up the clean looks. All done here!
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Here's the final completion of the roof deck, with posts on each corner that will mount our rope railing, and faces on the sides to wrap up the clean looks. All done here!

  • Tracy livened up Luna's room with a mountain landscape painted in her chosen colors.
  • My dad gets in on the fun, building a battery box that will contain our house batteries, when we get them.
  • The roof deck has been a gradual progression, because I can only hold ten or fifteen boards on my roof rack and the closest hardware stores don't even have them, but it is coming along and looking beautiful. We located a couple leaks as soon as we put up some ceiling wood, so I went over the whole roof and slapped some tar on every rivet and bolt. Hopefully that solves that.
  • My dad has been a big part of the electrical install, building most of this stuff while I was out of town. I've got a case for two lithium batteries rigged in a 24v system to charge straight off the rig generator, and a pretty nice inverter to run the house stuff, with a transformer to run a couple 12v items as well. It's gone through a couple designs so far, but it's getting locked in in this corner of the kitchen, so we know that much at least.
  • The main cabinetry in the kitchen came together pretty well given the circumstances. Nothing in this bus is straight or perpendicular, so it was tricky to figure out exactly what to pull measurements off of. We basically wound up squaring everything up to the window frame, since that seems to be the most concrete element of the bus, measurement-wise. The various elements we've designed into this counter all get placed in relation to the edge of the battery compartment, so once we got the vertical supports cut we placed them one at a time. I also cut the flooring back to fit the actual dimensions we wound up with for depth. Everything is dynamic!
  • After unpacking the countertop and chopping off a couple inches of it, I ran the router around the edges to soften them of. I'll also hit it with some sandpaper before finishing, but it's starting to look pretty!
  • Cutting into my beautiful new countertop was a bit nerve wracking, but it went okay. The first item to go in was the sink, which is an Apron-front ceramic one from Ikea.
  • I finished the countertop with Osmo Polyx, which is my favorite finish I've encountered to date. This particular one is tinted with white pigment, so it works well finishing super light woods like this maple without darkening it down visually. That was a big goal of Tracy's for this project.
  • With the countertop carefully cut for the appliances, I made the visible face of it a bit prettier with some cedar paneling. Our fridge is a top-opening freezer unit so we've configured it to slide in and out of its slot. The goal there is to keep the cold inside for efficiency. It runs off the inverter on regular household 110.
  • One side of our closets is all shelf, which I again built using the birch flooring. We elected to leave our closet walls at one layer of paneling to give ourselves more space, save some cash, and leave the aromatic cedar nice and smelly.
  • To face out the fronts of my closet shelves I wanted something that would provide a lip on the top so things don't slide out easily, would be solid enough to use as a ladder getting in and out of our bed, and would be beautiful. We chose to use maple here again, so I slotted the back side of a nice thick chunk and placed that across the front of each shelf.
  • I finished these shelf trims with Osmo Polyx as well, and put them in place. As a bonus feature these shelves provide a climbable ladder and now Luna can get in and out of our bed all by herself.
  • The roof deck has been a gradual progression, but is nearing completion. I framed in the roof hatch over our bedroom and at this point only have one board left to place on top and then the railing supports and frames around the sides and it'll be completely finished.
  • Here's the final completion of the roof deck, with posts on each corner that will mount our rope railing, and faces on the sides to wrap up the clean looks. All done here!
  • My Chinese diesel heater fit neatly into the stepwell of our rear door. It's still accessible for maintenance, and the ducting fits neatly into our plan for litter box storage as well, as you'll see in the next photo.
  • I framed in a shelf over the diesel heater that will hold our litter box, and ducted the hot air over to where we can hit our feet with it, and then boxed everything in with plywood.
  • The completed cupboard around the stairwell now houses the cat litter box in an out-of-sight location that can be emptied from the outside of the bus without scattering litter indoors. Sketch, the cat, can scrub her feet on the custom-fit welcome mat before squeezing through a small gap near the floor indoors, so the litter box can't even be seen from the living space. The shelf above is neatly sized for the outdoor gear we used most often, and the door can currently be latched tight on the inside behind the fireplace.
  • Wiring my LED light strips has been an adventure in paying double because I keep frying components, but after many hours of soldering and learning I at least have a grid of lights on my ceiling. We haven't locked in yet, I think I still have another chunk or two to add, but we're growing closer to committing and being able to install the rest of the ceiling boards.
  • I'm building my own drawers for the kitchen, with dovetailed corners and a plywood floor. Nothing much to them, but they're sure fun to build.
  • My drawers are mounted on some slides with soft closures. I'm optimistic about these, but the last ones I used in my workbench on the right here have mostly broken over a fairly short time, leaving my doors uneven. I'm hoping this model works better than that.
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