2. Workshop

The Bus

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I wanted to be able to lock my house with a regular house key, and I also needed to attach something on the edge of my door to be able to pull it snug from the outside, so I devised a method of attaching a regular house knob to the bus. It involved some three days of hacking and modifying, and it's got some weakness inherent in the parts of the doorknob that are not made for what I'm using them for, but it works!
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I wanted to be able to lock my house with a regular house key, and I also needed to attach something on the edge of my door to be able to pull it snug from the outside, so I devised a method of attaching a regular house knob to the bus. It involved some three days of hacking and modifying, and it's got some weakness inherent in the parts of the doorknob that are not made for what I'm using them for, but it works!

  • Here's another angle of the framing for the port closet. There will be a slide-out pantry just in front of this, and then the kitchen starting with a fridge.
  • The back wall of Luna's room went up smoothly. I'm not sure yet if I'll be paneling over this plywood or not, so I dressed it up all pretty.
  • I floored the closets with some birch flooring I originally picked up to do the bus floor. I changed my mind there, but this stuff is 3/4in thick and will make great shelves and closets, especially here where I intend to have a washer/dryer at some point.
  • I picked up the shallowest boxes I could find for the electrical, and threw a few of them on the walls until I ran out of wires. More to come, probably tomorrow!
  • I put up some romex wires for my electrical. These are just screwed to the sheet metal, and I'll insulate around them once they're all run.
  • Here's both closets with their finished floors. I didn't have any proper fasteners, so I slapped these down with liquid nails and we'll see how that goes!
  • Today I permanently blocked off and sealed half the rear door and started framing up the bathroom in prep for putting in the toilet, which is one of the checkoffs for registration. I used liquid nails and regular nails to stick a layer of cedar over the insulation on the wall up to the windowsill, which I will finish out later.
  • Once I started adding in the cedar panels I went all the way up on the rear wall of the bathroom, mostly because it's beautiful and I wanted something beautiful out of the week's work. 🤣 When I get around to finishing stuff, I'll trim out the windowsill and the back of the closet, and everything of course.
  • I framed up the shelf for the wood stove pretty basic. I picked an arbitrary height based on comfort, but it turns out the stove needs to be higher so I'll be changing that a bit here soon. The walls are coming together nicely though!
  • This is our Cubic Mini Grizzly wood stove on its first firing. I ran this thing all day long while working, and while it doesn't get things hot enough to cook me out of here (Still no insulation on most of this thing) it does raise the temperature quite nicely. It takes a six inch log, and I went through quite a few of them today.
  • I threw in the laminate flooring for the bathroom in order to properly install the toilet. There will be some changes made to this as I install the door, but the toilet anchors to the floor so I needed to get this section down before I can finish that up. This floor is a floating floor, so I shimmed the toilet brackets with plywood the same thickness and then dropped it in around the brackets.
  • I also needed a vent for my toilet, so I carved a hole through the wall and stuck the toilet's vent hose into it, which turned out to be nice and solid by itself so I think I'll be leaving it just like that. I also put gobs of silicone around where this hose butts against the outside metal so it'll be a straight shot from the toilet to outdoors with no air leaks. Then I hid the power cord for the toilet fan behind the vent hose, and ran the wires up behind the wall panels to connect them.
  • For the outside of the toilet vent I picked up a louvered vent cap, made the back side flat, and slapped it in place with a little piece of insect screen and some more silicone.
  • Here's the toilet all installed and mostly walled in. This is a Nature's Head toilet, which is a favorite among van and bus dwellers, from what we can tell. I've never used one before, so we'll see how it goes!
  • This countertop is probably going to be temporary, so I'm hacking it together and learning a bit about the contours of my bus as I go. The outside of the floor is definitely higher than the middle, but not consistently, so if I want to get this countertop actually flat I'll probably find a laser level I can borrow. Until then, though, we'll work with some 2x4s and plywood!
  • I was able to find these welding tabs at Fire and Fasteners, and they fit neatly into the wall track to hold the legs of the counter snugly in place, so now I don't have to spend twenty minutes on the grinder shaping each bolt head.
  • An inordinate portion of my day was spent learning about wiring by doing things wrong, but eventually I got my wall plug properly wired in, so I can plug right in to the side of the bus now instead of running cords through windows. On the inside I've just put an extension cord end on this wire's run as a temporary plug until I get the main wiring center all finished up.
  • There were five things on the State of Alaska checkoff for conversion to an RV and I needed to do at least four of them. I did all five, but this water jug setup didn't qualify as a sink with plumbing for the inspection, so I barely scraped by and got the bus registered as a motorhome. Still though, for twelve bucks that little cap pumps water right out of the jug, which is kind of neat. Our stove for the time being is the three-burner camp stove sitting below the jug.
  • I wanted to be able to lock my house with a regular house key, and I also needed to attach something on the edge of my door to be able to pull it snug from the outside, so I devised a method of attaching a regular house knob to the bus. It involved some three days of hacking and modifying, and it's got some weakness inherent in the parts of the doorknob that are not made for what I'm using them for, but it works!
  • On the inside of my doorknob I hacked off all the posts, countersunk some bolts into the frame of the knob going the wrong way, and then mounted that all to a pretty-ized chunk of wood using a modified doorknob hole cover. The post coming out nests into a drop bar that notches into a catch on both sides of the door, and the lock still functions, so I can position my drop bar and lock the door with a key, and nobody is getting in that way.
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