Very interesting build. The FSAE team I was part of converted a bus into an "RV" in order to live in and tow the trailer for competition. Was a fun time.
Very interesting build. The FSAE team I was part of converted a bus into an "RV" in order to live in and tow the trailer for competition. Was a fun time.
Ohhh Fun!! Following along.
My apology to John In Kansas, but
In reply to Mr_Asa :
WTF? My FSAE team barely finished our car. How did you build a car *and* an RV in the same year?
The windows still leaked a bit if it rained very much, so with a brief dry spell in the cards, I doped the rest of the window seams. We'd caulked the lower edge when we reinstalled them (post roof-raise), but it seemed the side seams wicked enough water to the inside to leave wet spots on the subfloor. I hoped that doing the side seams would stop the leaks; no such luck. It did seal up most of the small leaks, but still had a big leak problem at the back edge of the last window on either side, which are conveniently covered with steel trim. I windexed the windows the best I could so I could see the seams from inside the bus, and discovered that during the roof raise, I'd flared the skin of the bus slightly outward starting at the bottom of the windows in order to make the patchwork roof panels fit. The flare I mean is even with the red clearance light.
This left a gap that progressed from almost nothing at the bottom rear corner of the last windows to almost a quarter inch at the top corner. The gap had been mostly sealed with Great Stuff applied by my wife, but any water that accumulated on the "sill" would essentially just run into the bus. Couldn't reach that area with the window down, and the trim prevented easy access with the window up, so I cut a short piece of leftover rubber fuel line to serve as an extension for the caulk gun tip.
This seems to have done the trick; we still have a few small leaks here and there, but we're almost completely weather tight now. The skylights are now the leakiest spots, and we'll explore options for this further in later epdiodes.
With the ceiling all but done (needed some more 12 foot lengths of shiplap to finish the rear passenger corner, and needed to borrow a truck to get it), I set back into the bathroom details.
Cut an piece of plywood for the floor of the toilet platform and got it screwed in. The platform really couldn't have been any smaller, as it needed to box in the right rear wheel well. The shower base footprint and the toilet platform footprint don't leave much room to step out of the shower onto the floor between the two, so we decided on a bit of a step between the two. Cut the requisite 2x4s, shims, and plywood for the tread (lots of geometry scribbling to get the angles close to right). Step is slightly sloped toward the shower, so any water that finds its way past the shower curtain should tend to run back into the shower base. It feels really strange to stand on it, but realistically, it will mostly serve as a filler in an otherwise-unusable space. We can step directly out onto the floor, or up onto the toilet platform. Once we're ready to put the shower walls up, we'll apply RedGuard or a similar waterproofing to the step to protect it from water damage, then caulk the seam between the step and the shower base and apply a textured vinyl tile or something to the tread.
In the interest of using up the construction materials stored in the back of the bus, I triple checked the bathroom wall studs were plumb in both directions before skinning a couple of the walls I won't have to run plumbing or wiring through. Having the ceiling in made it feel like a space; having these walls go in makes it feel like a space you could imagine living in.
Wife found a mini fridge she liked that was deeply discounted for Labor Day, so we pulled the trigger on that. Volume is on the small side, but we really wanted the fridge within a particular depth and height. This one will fit under the kitchen countertop and will be approximately flush with the front of the cabinet.
In reply to AngryCorvair :
Well, technically a team roughly a decade before I joined did it, but I got to enjoy the fruits of their labors. That was when they were doing Baja and not Formula, so it's possible they just got the Baja car "good enough" while they worked on the bus/RV.
I was more prepared at this point to tackle the electrical system than plumbing. The plan was four 12 volt deep-cycle batteries linked in series to maximize amp hours, with charging provided by either shore power via a charge converter or by four solar panels via a charge controller. The solar panels will get mounted to a roof rack, with provision to hinge them up at either the inside or outside edge to put them at the correct angle for maximum efficiency.
As an aside: I was talking to my old man about this plan for the solar panels, and he mentioned that he'd just been to a county planning and zoning meeting at which there had been a presentation on solar-powered water pumps. The presenter had commented that the single biggest failure mode of solar panels in rural areas is bullet holes. Apparently an erected solar panel makes a fantastic target for back-asswards country bumpkins with a bad attitude about "green power" (or simply in search of a big, flat target they can shoot at). Presenter recommended horizontal panel installation, as it dramatically reduces rate of vandalism and only costs 10 or 20% efficiency. I'll think about this and decide whether I want my panels to be hinged.
A sine-wave inverter will convert 12 volt from the batteries to 120 volt for six standard wall outlets for use almost exculsively for the items we can't source in 12 volt. Lights and water pump will all be hardwired to 12 volt; 120 volt outlets will service the fridge, water heater ignition, laptop, phone chargers, crock pot, blender and the like. Batteries, converter, inverter, and controller will live in a 36x18x18 inch under-body box from Tractor Supply, lined with foam insulation, and mounted under the floor behind the bus battery on the driver's side. A pair of supply wires, one for 12 volt and one for 120v, will run across the bus before passing up through the floor under the kitchen cabinet. The breaker box and fuse panel will be under the sink. There will be an outlet in the front third of the bus, two in the back third of the bus (one on either side), and three in the kitchen (two under the counter, one above the counter). Lights will be 16 foot LED strips, with three around the perimeter of the front half of the bus, one in the bathroom, and two around the perimeter of the back half of the bus. All wiring will run behind the baseboards, except wiring for the lights, which will run through the bathroom walls or behind the trim ove the windows.
Wiring is boring. Please feel free to skip ahead.
The batteries and components really needed a home, as we were tired of tripping over them in the bus (the solar panels need to be permanently located too, for the same reason, but I haven't decided how to affix a roof rack to the bus yet). I decided on an underbody box for use on flatbed trucks, and found one on sale from Tractor Supply.
The box measures 18 inches square by 48 inches long, making it slightly taller than the skirting between the floor and the lower edge of the skin of the bus. I either needed to notch the floor supports to recess the box farther up into the cavity under the floor, or just let the box hang down a little lower. It was going to extend below the bottom edge of the skin either way, so I decided it wasn't worth the headache to notch the floor supports. For the purposes of power transmission, it needed to live as close as possible to the breaker box and fuse panel in the kitchen. Eventually, I'd like to get set up to charge the "house" batteries with the alternator, and in the meantime I'd like to be able to plug both sets of batteries into shore power, so I wanted the house batteries close to the bus batteries. Also had to make sure I wasn't filling up a space I wanted to reserve for the to-be-installed water tanks. The spot that served these constraints best was immediately behind the bus battery box on the driver's side.
I marked the silhouette of the new battery box door onto the exterior of the bus, and carefully cut out that section of sheet metal. I riveted the box to the floor supports above it and to the skin of the bus with steel pop rivets. I salvaged the section of trim from the discarded section of skin, shortened to fit the door, and reattached it with rivets. A couple coats of paint (white, black, blue) finished the installation. This is the first blue trim on the bus; we've talked about accenting since we shot the white paint, but it really hasn't been a priority. This was a nice short piece that was already removed and needed paint, so we decided to see how the blue looked. I'll be painting the rest of the trim to match, probably once I get settled in the new location.
I used some scraps of 1.5 inh foam insulation that were leftover from filling the walls (yeah, I saved scraps of insulation from before we moved, I may have a problem) and cut it to fit the interior surfaces of the new battery box. Neither the batteries nor the components really want to be cold, but the batteries need to be well ventilated and the other components want to be kept at a similar temperature to the batteries. I whipped together a quick battery tie-down bracket system and welded it to the box before wedging the insulation in. I sourced a couple of rubber grommets in the appropriate sizes to accommodate the power supply and ground wires, and drilled holes for the wires to pass through both the battery box and the kitchen floor.
Built the battery harness and the connections to the converter and inverter before passing the supply wires out through the grommeted holes and over/under/around/through the frame rails and up through the floor into the kitchen cabinet. All wires are supported by rubber-lined p-clamps at a 2 foot interval to protect from pulling/sagging/vibration. Mounted and wired the 120 volt breaker box and ran wires out to the outlets. Mounted and wired the 12 volt fuse panel and ran wires for the wire pump and the lights via toggle switches. With everything double/triple checked for correct connection, I hooked up the batteries and started final testing circuits.
At this juncture, I discovered an error in my calculations; demand in watts is consistent whether you get it from 120v or 12v, so the 1500w space heater may only be drawing 12 amps from the 120 outlet, but that means the inverter needs 120 amps from the batteries. I may have melted some insulation on one of the battery cables, but fortunately I caught it early and was able to get everything disconnected before any real damage was done. Ordered some 4/0 cable to replace the 6 gauge I had sized for the job per my erroneous calculations. The new cables ought to leave me plenty of leeway to run at full demand without damage.
The other epiphany I arrived at was regarding the inverter; I purchased a 2500w inverter, and it got pretty warm trying to keep up with the space heater and a small work light. I may look at upgrading my batteries and inverter for greater capacity at a later date, but I stand by my original decision to go smaller and cheaper. I think I paid about $500 for the four batteries and the inverter; doubling the capacity of each would cost me four times that. For now, onwards.
The only remaining task is to integrate the solar panels; once I decide how to attach the roof rack to the bus, I'll move ahead with that project. The charge controller is installed and wired to the batteries, I will just need to connect the wires from the solar panels and we should be fully "off grid".
Very cool, I know your already done, but electric heat is super inefficient off batteries. Just draws way too much amps for the heat generated.
In reply to java230 :
We're not quite done yet, and electric heat isn't the end goal. Going to experiment with propane with wood as a fall back. The space heater is a temporary measure to make it less miserable to work in the bus.
In reply to JohnInKansas :
Very good.
The Chinese diesel heaters are super cheap these days too. I run one in my truck and its great.
In reply to java230 :
You know, it had a diesel heater when we bought it. Not sure how the ones you're referring to work, this one heated water and ran it through a couple of gigantic heater cores under the passenger seats. I still have the components, but was planning on giving them to the local bus mechanics when I take the bus in for service...
At this point, I was informed that I might be leaving for flight school three months earlier than anticipated (two months away rather than five months away). Great news from a professional standpoint, not so great from a project manager standpoint. If I do go early, I have six weeks to get the bus to the 90% solution; all major systems functional, habitable, inspected and retitled as an RV, and roadworthy for a 1000 mile roadtrip. And the weather’s getting cold. And the holidays. E36 M3.
I took a week off of work for Thanksgiving, and Mrs. InKansas’s EMT class didn’t meet on Thanksgiving week, so we hauled ass for damn near 10 days straight.
Wife managed to get some trim put up over the windows to house the lights. She also got the tongue-and-groove paneling finished on a couple of the walls, including the window sills above. She’s a hero. Having the walls covered really helps make the space feel more like a finished space. She thinks it’s that, when you walk in, it doesn’t seem so much like EVERYTHING is unfinished.
Water was the next major hurdle (maybe the LAST major hurdle…?). I had picked up four food-grade plastic 55 gallon drums from a local fellow who said he gets them from a local distillery; they get their flavorings in barrels like this and he gets ahold of them somehow. $15 apiece. They’re the one-piece units with no removable top, just bungholes (heh). Plan is to run them horizontally under the floor like saddle tanks; fresh water on the driver’s side ahead of the rear axle, grey water on the passenger side ahead of the rear axle and black water on the passenger side behind the rear axle. Bungs will be more or less at the 12 and 6 o’clocks to allow nearly full use of capacity. Fresh water fill will be a standard hose connector between the two barrels and routed to one of the 12 o’clock bungs; the other 12 o’clock will serve as a vent. The 6 o’clock bungs will be plumbed together and directly to the on-demand water pump. Just downstream from the pump will be a shore water connection; if we’re parked somewhere we can hook up to water, it will pressurize the system enough that the pump won’t come on when a tap opens. Water will run up through the floor into the kitchen cabinet, where it will split off into cold water supplies (kitchen sink, shower, toilet) and the water heater intake. Water heater outlet will split off to hot water supplies (kitchen sink, shower). Sink and shower will drain nearly straight down to the 12 o’clock bung of the grey water tank; toilet will drain down and back to the 12 o’clock bung of the black water tank. Both 6 o’clock bungs will have large ball or gate valves with standard RV drain hose connectors for dumping. Bulk of the plumbing will be PEX for the sake of flexibility once installed and ease of installation/service.
In reply to JohnInKansas :
The diesel preheater/coolant heaters are awesome. I wish I would have done in floor heat and used one on my build....
But I was refereing to the air heaters like this https://amzn.to/2GtIRud
I like the temp valve. I used an on demand heater, and it takes awhile to get hot. I wish I would have run a line like that so I could dump water back into the tank and "preheat" the water heater.
In reply to java230 :
Preheat is an interesting idea, I was thinking more as a freeze-protection measure. I'll have to see how well the water heater keeps up with the cold.
The big trick was mounting the barrels. A full 50 gallon barrel should weigh a little over 400 pounds, definitely enough to warrant a really stout bracket. Regular old semi truck saddle tank j-brackets should suffice; unfortunately, used brackets sell in the neighborhood of $200 each with appropriate hardware, and I need 8. Pretty sure I can come up with something nearly as good for less than $1600. I did some research on what other bus converters have done, and plenty of people choose to use barrels for water. There were a variety of mounting solutions, but the two that seemed to me to provide the most security and durability were DIY j-brackets (lots of curve cutting required, ideally get pieces laser cut) or heavy duty channels spanning the full width of the bus bolted to the bottom of the frame rails, with “chocks” on the top surface for the barrels to sit in. I don’t work at the facility that would let me get parts laser cut for scrap metal price anymore, and full-width supports were going to foul the driveshaft.
Talked to my old man about the predicament and he suggested that as long as I wasn’t planning on doing a lot of long-distance hauling with full tanks, brackets wouldn’t see too awful much stress; a full load of water without vibration/sloshing is a lot less load than a full load with vibration/sloshing, and vibration of an empty or nearly empty tank should cause WAY less stress on bracketry. I don’t see why I’d need to do real long distances with full tanks, aside from back-country camping with no water hookups at the destination; that’s not really how I plan to use this thing in the short term, so we’ll call that a problem for another time.
Armed with that engineering decision, I opted for simple straps holding the barrels up under the floor supports. Each strap is 1 ½” x 1/8” steel with angles welded on either end. Each end is held to the ¼” angle floor supports under the bus via ½” bolts with nylock nuts. Each barrel is held in place laterally by a pair of wooden chocks cut to fit the diameter of the barrel, and the straps are isolated from the barrel with pipe insulation to prevent chafing (we’ll see how this works and adjust as required). Since my description is clumsy, here’s what I mean.
Photos taken from the back of the bus looking forward, behind the passenger side rear wheels. This is the black waste water tank. Other barrels are mounted similarly.
I installed and removed these barrels a couple of times each during the plumbing process and to install various other components (that I should have installed before I did the barrels), and it was a pain in the ass every time, almost invariably requiring blood sacrifice and really creative use of swear words. I shouldn’t have to remove them very often, though; maybe just for an occasional deep cleaning.
With the tanks mounted, I could start plumbing. Started at the fresh water fill and worked downstream through the whole system. I used 1/2 inch PEX piping wherever possible; busses are soft and PVC/black/copper pipe doesn’t like to bend. Most of the drain plumbing wound up being PVC with rubber hoses and hose clamps in strategic points to facilitate disassembly for service and to allow the system to flex without breaking. All the exterior supply lines got exterior-grade self-healing pipe insulation, and the drains got waterless HEPVO traps (essentially a low-pressure check valve using a rubber “reed”) to minimize freezing risks.
Top photo shows the potable water fill/drain valve. Bottom shows the top of the barrel on the left in the top photo; filter and pump, then a one-way valve and a tee. Bottom of the tee is the hose connection for bypassing the pump, with another one-way valve, a pressure regulator, and a filter.
Meanwhile, Mrs. InKansas started working on countertops. We have a long-term solution for kitchen counter; I salvaged a hardwood log from a friend’s house and helped a local fellow run it through his sawmill. Turned out it was red oak. Came away with a pickup load of 12 foot lengths of 2” thick planks. Eventually, we’ll turn a couple of these into a countertop, but they’re still way too wet to work with.
In the meantime, a sheet of 1/2" plywood split longways and laminated back to itself will serve the purpose. Not pretty, but it’ll work. Got that attached to the cabinet, jigsawed a hole for the sink to sit in, and polyeurethaned the crap out of it to seal it up the best we could. Attached the top to the cabinet with a series of 2x2 cleats screwed into the countertop from underneath. The sink got clamped to the countertop with some carefully clearanced lumber and the drain plumbing acting as a pinch nut.
About the time I was ready to start assembling the sink/shower drain fittings, I realized that I really needed to get the propane manifold installed before finishing the drain plumbing, since the gray water barrel blocked access to the space I wanted to use for the manifold. So drains went on hold while I figured out gas.
Apologies for the late post, it was all sixes and sevens here today.
Two appliances will run off propane, for the time being. The water heater, and the stove. We picked up a really cool old Detroit Jewel natural gas stove at the local ReStore for $40 (half off for Black Friday!). The ceramic/porcelain coating isn’t perfect; it looks like an old stove that’s been moved a few times and used for something like 80 years. I did enough research to know that I’d need to run the correct pressure regulator and gas orifices for propane, but I had some concerns about the design of the stove and its compatibility with propane. I called half a dozen appliance and antique stove repair places, with mixed responses but not much help. Finally brought in the retired gas service tech who lives up in town and had him look at it. He looked at it and didn’t have the concerns I did, talked me through getting it hooked up and adjusted. Rigged it up in the driveway with a bottle and regulator and got the burners and oven adjusted before hauling it into the bus. It’s pretty big, so it has to live right in front of the driver’s rear wheel arch; we’d planned on installing a wood stove in that location for heat and a two-burner propane cooktop in the kitchen counter for cooking, but if the big stove doesn’t work out well, we can pretty readily revert to our original plan. The water heater lives in the kitchen cabinet under the sink.
Given the space I have under the bus, the best solution for propane tank storage seems to be ahead of the gray wastewater tank. I think I want to run a pair of 20 pound bottles; having two will allow me to retain full functionality while I get an empty tank refilled, and 20 pounders seem to be the easiest to remove for refilling (really don’t want to have to drive the bus to go get a larger tank filled, since I’m going to be long-term “camping”). Picked up a two-stage auto-changeover regulator and a pair of braided stainless bottle hoses. The regulator connects to a 6 foot length of black pipe that will run down the passenger frame rail to a “T”; the perpendicular leg lines up with the water heater location, and the co-linear leg continues 4 feet to an elbow. Both of these spurs got “dropouts” to trap any debris in the lines, followed by quarter turn shutoff valves and braided stainless steel hoses that run up through the floor near the respective appliance.
I’ll need to punch a hole in the side of the bus for the water heater exhaust. The bus is far from airtight and the water heater and stove will only be used for short periods of time, so I could probably get away with not venting to outside, but the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning outweighs the downsides of punching another hole in the bus. In talking with the old gas technician, I brought up venting for the stove, and he said it shouldn’t be a problem.
And THEN I was ready finish plumbing the drains.
Except that we got 5 inches of snow.
So I moved my efforts inside.
We snagged up 12 square feet of (what turned out to be SUPER SOFT) stone for under the stove. Made the mistake of setting it down flat on the floor of the bus, came back a few minutes later to find it had all broken. No point storing broken stuff, so we mixed up some thinset mortar and laid the stone ahead of the left rear wheel arch. Hung up a couple of pieces of cement board on the wall behind the tile for heat isolation. The kitchen stove will live here for the time being; if we decide the stove isn’t right for the bus for whatever reason, we can sell it and put a wood stove or propane heater in its place for heat and add a set of countertop propane burners and a toaster oven for cooking duties.
We also found a recycled cabinet that fits really nicely over the driver’s rear wheel arch. Built a base for it to sit on so we didn’t have to sacrifice any storage space in fitting it down over the arch, and made a top for the cabinet to match the kitchen countertop (we’ll probably re-surface with the red oak at a later date).
We made similar boxes to cover each of the front wheel arches. The driver’s side box is sandwiched between the back of the driver’s seat and the couch, keeping it pretty neatly out of the flow of traffic. As such, we opted to go with a simple, rectangular box. The passenger’s side, however, lives far enough from furniture and close enough to the stairs that we wanted to make the box as small and close to contoured as possible. This made construction a little trickier, but leaves us with less interference with the entry corridor. Eventually, we want to cover these platforms with something similar to the cabinet over the rear wheel arch, but haven’t found the right pieces of furniture with the right dimensions yet.
Built a couple little boxes to cover up the front door opening mechanism and a matching one over the driver’s window (the one over the window was a serious pain in the ass; had to build it around the upper seat belt bracket, window surround, windshield support, front shelf lip). Once they were completely attached, I decided I’d better fill them with insulation; we have a whole bunch left and no reason not to, any extra insulation will help in a vehicle with this much glass. So they came back down, and back up again with more pink fuzzies inside them.
Wife did a whole bunch of really fiddly trim work over the windows; the lights that run over the windows are REALLY BRIGHT and needed to be shielded from direct line of sight and directed up at the curve of the ceiling instead. She screwed furring strips edgeways to the ribs right above the windows and finished the exposed edges with sections of flexible plastic trim and a coat of white paint.
I’ll take a moment here to acknowledge Mrs. InKansas’s contributions. While she hasn’t been paid for most of it, she has had the responsibilities of a full-time job since we moved from Fort Riley about 18 months ago. She was also away for several months for training, then worked what seemed like every available weekend, often with a day or two of travel on both ends (for the paying job). In the meantime, she had frequent obligations as a volunteer training coordinator for what has since become a state-backed organization; “frequent” to the tune of 20-30 hours a week of helping people work through issues with their individual training regimens, coordinating group training at various venues, and lobbying for the move away from volunteer-only toward a paid, state-endorsed program, not to mention the time needed to keep herself on track with her training goals. As much as she has been able, she’s put a lot of time and effort in on this project. This whole project has been essentially “figure it out as you go”, and I was relieved to be able to push some things off on her. And I absolutely did; there were a few things I just told her, “you figure it out, as long as its sound and looks okay, I’m good with it”. While she’s used to working like that, she’s pretty unaccustomed to working like that on construction projects, and I know that has led to some frustration toward me. On top of all this, she knows the finish line is me leaving for a year and change. While she understands separation as the nature of the job, she hates being apart, and I know she’s been torn between wanting to help out and feel the satisfaction of making progress, and resenting the whole project as a representation of the coming time apart. Somehow, she still gets out to put in an hour or two here, a few minutes there as she has time. She’s done really good work and has made a lot of progress, especially given how little time and energy she’s had to work on it. She feels like it hasn’t been much, but it’s all the stuff we’ll see once it’s done; walls, trim, paint, cabinetry. It has been monumental having some of these things done; really contributes to the momentum when you can start to visualize the finished product a little better. She’s fantastic, and I wouldn’t have done this without her. Really looking forward to doing some touring with her in the finished bus after I get done with school.
Be back on Monday.
I am amaze. You two have put out quite a project here.
In reply to JohnInKansas :
Yep. Amazing work.
Mrs.-InKansas sounds like a real Gem. Be sure to let her know how you feel.
Somewhere in here, I found out the mid-January class date was a no-go, and that I was back on track for mid-March. Would’ve been nice to get started with school earlier, but we’d have been real tight getting done in time.
We got enough warm weather that the snow melted off and I could work under the bus again, so I tore back into the drain assembly. I’d been dreading it, and decided my best bet was just to rip the band aid off.
Sink and shower drains were pretty much just assembling the accumulated parts. The sink drain runs through pretty tight quarters, with the breaker box, fuse box, water heater, water supply lines, and trash can all occupying the same cabinet.
The shower drain was comparatively easy. Drain has a total drop of 4 or 5 inches over about 4 feet of run, and incorporates a vent tube that runs up through the shower wall and out a fitting in the roof to allow the black and gray tanks to breathe.
(this is looking forward from in front of the passenger rear wheels; shower drain is in the foreground, vent comes off the top, sink comes in from the right)
The toilet drain required major surgery. Because of the layout we chose, the toilet drain piping really needed to live in the same space as a section of the rear wheel arch. Cut a chunk out of the arch, ran the piping, and worked up a cover out of sheet steel to protect the plumbing and exposed interior bits from spray and debris off the rear tires. This turned out to be a real pain, as the available space between the tires and the wheel arch was just barely enough to get a drill into. I ran out of curse words.
(no photos of the actual drain, as I didn't think to take pictures before I put the cover on and damned if I'm taking it back off short of a major malfunction)
Had to chase down a couple of leaks inside the bus; fortunately most were right out where I could get to them, but I did have to get creative to access a leaking fitting under the water heater next to the back wall of the kitchen cabinet.
To say that having cleared the hurdles of electricity, water, and propane was a fantastic feeling is a serious understatement. Beyond the satisfaction of simply having those milestones out of the way, the plumbing drains, the last of the outdoor projects, were complete by mid-December 2019, with no promises of nice weather until we needed to be ready to actually use the bus.
In talking through the to-do list with Mrs. InKansas, she brought up the bathroom door. I had planned on a barn-type sliding door on the outside of the bathroom (in the hallway), but hadn’t made any solid plans; I’m going to be in the bus by myself, so bathroom privacy is pretty low on the priority list as far as I’m concerned. She suggested a pocket door instead, as it would look neater and would free up a couple inches of width in the hallway. Interesting, and not something I had considered. Went and looked at the options at the hardware store, and discovered that pocket doors were going to be far and away the cheaper option. Not sure if that’s a product of the current popularity of barn doors, or if pocket doors just require more work to install, or what.
Picked up a hardware set for a 36 inch pocket door, including a locking latch. Had to backtrack a bit to get it in; two studs in the hallway wall had to come out, along with the bathroom light switch and its 2x6 backing. The rail system for the door extends down from what would have been the header an additional 4 inches, so I held up a scrap of 2x4 in the existing door opening to get a feel for how much difference it would make. Definitely low enough that I feel like I need to duck to clear it. So I took out the header and mounted the rail directly to the rafters, making the height of the opening about 78 inches, with allowance for the flooring thickness. I’m right at 76 inches tall on a good day, so I’ll still have to watch my head, but its better than 74. Mounted the rail system centered on what remains of the hallway wall, and propped it up with the (shortened) reinforced stud replacements. While I was in there, I fitted the rod for the closet (1 inch dowel that slips into holes drilled in the paneling on the exterior wall, and through a hole in a 2x6 in the hallway wall, where it is secured by a screw).
The opening between the narrow, reinforced studs will accommodate a 1.5-2 inch door. We’re going for lightweight, and since our door opening is WAY shorter than readily available premanufactured doors, we made our own. Built a pair of matching frames out of 1x lumber, and used them to sandwich a piece of 1/8 inch hardwood veneer plywood, bringing the width to just over 1.5 inches. Installed the rollers and latch on the door, and hung it on the rails. Some minor adjustments were required, but then we reinstalled the hallway wall paneling. We're still debating paint colors for the door; the "frame" will be white, but the insets could be painted a different color. We're leaning toward teal panels on the hallway side, and possibly a mural of some kind on the bathroom side panels. Suggestions welcome.
As a side note on the subject of headroom. Really glad we left the curve in the ceiling, as I’m pretty sure it helps fool the mind into a false sense of security. I have at best 4 inches of headroom at the center of the span; a house with 4 inches of headroom would be really claustrophobic. I can still walk upright with my shoulder against the trim over the windows, although I only have a little room between my head and the ceiling. I think the curved ceiling acts kind of like one of those endless swimming pools; with no hard corners to use as reference for perspective/depth perception, I’m convinced it tricks the mind into a false sense of security. By rights, it should feel way tighter than it is. Maybe I’m talking nonsense, but that’s my theory.
We really wanted to get the flooring down to start the new year (2020). We’ve been hauling this stack of flooring around for almost two years now, and between the abuse of living and working around it (uninstalled) and what I suspect was several years of hard use by the large military family we bought it from, it’s a little tired. It’ll do for now.
We started with the full-length runs down the center, then worked outward in the front half of the space. Wife was feeling under the weather on NYE, but I got the underlayment down before calling it an evening. New Year’s Day, everybody was feeling froggy enough to attack the project, and by dark the whole space was floored. I did all the measuring, cutting, installing, wife cleaned the windows, scraped off the remaining “emergency exit” stickers (waaaaay overdue, makes a big difference not having them blocking the top of the windows in the kitchen), and scrubbed the finished floor (it was DISGUSTING; it had to have been filthy when the previous owners pulled it out of their house, and it has collected dust and construction debris with us for 18 months). We were concerned we wouldn’t have enough flooring to finish the project. It had been advertised as 250 square feet, quite a bit of it was cut already, and in the 18 months of moving it and working around it, we damaged the edges and corners of some of the boards. By my figuring, we put down about 198 square feet of flooring, and MIGHT have enough to do the whole thing again (albeit only if we used the boards with chipped corners and such). We’ll probably take the remainder down to Habitat for Humanity.
5:30pm on NYE:
7pm on 1 Jan:
The pieces of masking tape on the floor in the first "complete" photo marked matching boards that I'd put next to each other. Wife came out about the time I'd finished the front half of the floor, saw the matches, decided I must have decided it didn't really matter, and didn't say anything. I got almost done before I noticed it and said something. I tore the front half out the next morning and rearranged it.
Significantly changed the acoustics. Much less clompy footstep noise, little bit more echo (unfurnished space, so echo shouldn’t be a big problem). Wife promptlt wished she’d stained the countertops before she put polyurethane on them now, says the color doesn’t play well with the blue walls and brown flooring. She may redo them if we have time before I have to leave. I’m not worried about it, as the countertops were a temporary solution anyway. As is the floor, realistically.
Our neighbor has a good relationship with a construction foreman who has been stashing leftover building materials from job sites at his farm. Evidently, they typically spec out the amount of corner molding (for instance) required for a building and bulk order the spec’ed amount. Any leftovers at the end of the job can’t be held by the contracting company for use in a later job, and can’t be returned to the supplier, so the contractors get first shot at them before they go to the dump or wherever. My dad clued me in to this stockpile, and I talked to the neighbor, who told me I could have whatever I needed, as long as he didn’t have to move his tractors to give me better access. We didn’t have to dig very deep to come up with a couple of 16 foot baseboards and a couple 16 foot pieces of quarter round trim. Mrs. InKansas supervised the lumber on the one mile drive home.
We're still finishing getting them installed. Pictures as we get finished. If you're sharp-eyed, you may have spotted some of this in previous photos.
You'll need to log in to post.
