Floored!

This past weekend, Joshua and I finished the second coat of paint on the interior of the bus. We are very pleased with how the paint turned out! We used implement paint purchased at Tractor Supply. It's a heavy duty, easy-to-apply paint, meant for outdoor farm equipment. And amazingly enough, the odor is less than the odor of the primer we used.

We used waterproof HVAC tape to cover the holes in the floor from the seats. All the rust on the floor has been treated and ready for a light layer of insulation.

On a more technical note, we were able to lay down a light layer of insulation under the floating floor without losing any noticible headroom the flooring also came with its own insulated backing. The noise level in the bus has decreased and the warmth factor increased.

Installing the floating floor tested the edges of our sanity! We spent the day chasing seams that kept reopening when the floor would slide out of square. I wasn't heavy enough to weight the floor down while Joshua hammered each panel into place, so we added several concrete blocks, the extra flooring and a small refrigerator to the top of the part of the floor we had already assembled. It didn't help. The bus walls curve into the floor causing the floating floor to slide up the walls. Let's just say that we started laying the floor at 9:30am and around 4:00pm we finally figured out how to wedge the floor in place.

It was a LONG day of work, but we love the finished result. To celebrate, we set up a test arrangement of our floor plan.

It's hard to believe that in 10 hours the bus went from an empty shell to the beginnings of a home! Joshua and I sat on the sofa for a bit, talking about how we just might have come up with the perfect solution to our dream of living debt free and have fun doing it!

 

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Why a school bus?

We're so glad you asked!

On our first wedding anniversary, Joshua and I created a vision board for what we wanted out of life in the next couple of years.

 One of the key points was to get out of debt. Our only significant debt is our mortgage, which by most standards is very low, but is still a debt. We dream of building a small home using green building methods. After exploring several different paths which all required taking out a loan, we began researching RV living and found a way to get to our goals and have fun doing it! But after a couple of weeks investigating RV's, we grew discouraged with the building quality and the lack of potential return on our investment. 

As artists, we're quick with new ideas. We created a new vision board focusing on the adventure of our housing transition. 

Natural, off-grid, less stress, wild. All words that are cueing this next phase of our housing journey. We wanted to purposely scale back our square footage to explore tiny living. Within a few days, we stumbled on a listing for a converted school bus for sale just up the road from us. We toured it one night and came away very encouraged - this is something we CAN do!! And we can do it now with the money we have in hand. We didn't purchase that first bus, but we did actively search out other buses and found our No Fuss Bus just over the mountains in Brevard, NC. 

We will be selling our home and using the profit to put into the purchase of land and to begin saving in order to build debt free. 

What the big goal in all this? It's two-fold: to live debt free and to have an adventure while we get there. 

So for today, we continue drawing, sketching, listing our hearts desires and step into the adventure of making those things come true on a school bus! 

 

Painting

Joshua and I have been itching to get back out to the bus and finish cleaning her up. 30 years as a school bus! She was pretty dirty. We lost count of how many buckets of dirty water we emptied into the ant hills in the yard.

No Fuss Steel Wool. No Fuss Scrubbing. No Fuss Washing.

We thought about leaving the "hospital" green paint because it really is in decent shape, but in the end we primed over all of it.

We sanded down the rust on the floor and primed it, too.

After a long, full day of work we figured we deserved pizza for dinner.

 

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Planning for our hobbies

As Joshua and I have talked and dreamed of smaller living spaces, one of the nonnegotiable areas has been a space for our hobbies. Joshua plays the electric bass, chapman stick and a touch of violin and keyboard. I have a sewing studio for upcycled fashion design.

After many scribbles and scratched designs for the floor plan, we found one that will house our hobbies, a full kitchen and bath as well as a queen size bed and plenty of storage.

For orientation, the front door is in the bottom left of the drawing. Climb two steps, and you are facing Joshua's music studio (a table placed over the driver's seat while the bus is stationary.) To the left, is my sewing studio with a storage cabinet and drop down table. On the right, is our leather sofa (6ft) which will have storage underneath. Continue through the kitchen, with the sink on the left, dorm size refrigerator on the right and under counter storage on both sides. We are planning on using portable propane burners and a wall mounted convection oven for cooking. Step through the pocket door and into the bathroom with a composting toilet on your left and a round shower stall on your right. Walk around the outside of the shower, down the short hallway and into our "love nest." We will have storage under the bed accessible from inside and outside the bus.

Sure, there's only 200 square feet, but we're excited to try it out! We don't mind sharing each other's space and on those rough days - there's always the park, a bookstore or the local coffee shop.

 

 

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The seats on the bus.....

The seats on the bus, they gotta go, gotta go, gotta go........we removed all 20 rows of seats yesterday. That's 7 bolts per seat. A little multiplication and you have 140 bolts! Not counting the front partitions and the screws holding the rubber floor.

The seats actually came out fairly quickly - only about two hours of wrench twisting and turning. Most of the bolts took one person working inside the bus and one underneath.

Anybody need a bus seat, or two?

One of our main reasons for turning this bus into our home is to save money. The No Fuss Bus is already helping us out. We have already pocketed $1.15 found as we removed the seats.

We had a satisfying afternoon getting the bus prepped for a good cleaning.

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Possession!

Today our new house on wheels was delivered from Brevard. We were excitedly standing on the side of the road in Gowensville as Gary drove up.

Joshua took over the wheel from there and we brought her home. She drives great! Impressive for her age - 27 years young!

We will begin taking the seats out and double checking all our measurements as we begin this journey of creating our home inside this bus.

Follow along with us here and on Facebook. "Don't make no fuss, just get on the bus!" Welcome to the No Fuss Bus!

 

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