The Conversion of "Freedom" , our permanent bus home...

[stude53]

Clan Graham,
Not a good time to be breathing paint fumes, either.
Get well first.
Good Luck,
Bob

 

[Clan Graham]

Well ... the weather was beautiful and warm today. Still all I could make in my weakened state was about 2 hours of work. Painted the dash. Put up two wall panels, glued down insulation board in bed area, put up two more shelves, and left for the day. Only Percocet and 420 is keeping me going right now. Sleep comes soon

I'm in a horrible place right now .... WAITING. Painfully waiting. I need $40 worth of magnets, $60 worth of plywood, $70 in cloth ... Just the little stuff. If you would have told me my life would come down to a few hundred dollars ! LOL

Photos by Monday ...

 

[Clan Graham]

As I said ... Photos by Wednesday ... LOL

So here are the photos, which show kind of where we are at. I will be working every day this week to get as much as I can finished on the interior. Because if all goes as planned, I will be getting our belongings from an East TX storage facility this weekend. We will be taking the U-Haul to the bus, and unloading it into the bus.

THE COUCH IS MOST LIKELY NOT GOING TO FIT INTO THE BUS !!!! Arrrrgggghhhh !!!! The couch really IS sentimental to us.

Still just waiting on money .... sigh. Enjoy !

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v112/SRTBlue/My bus is better than Yos/Janruary6_zpse594aacc.jpg

I plan on on trying to build the bed frame tomorrow ! We will see what happens.

 

[Patrick46]

"THE COUCH IS MOST LIKELY NOT GOING TO FIT INTO THE BUS !!!! Arrrrgggghhhh !!!! The couch really IS sentimental to us."


Why can't you fit it in there?? What seems to be the problem?? With that big side door, it won't fit through that?? How big is that sucker???? Any way you could modify it to fit?? :s

Love the bright interior colours!!

 

[rvwandering]

Looking good! Very bright and cheerful!

 

[Clan Graham]

"THE COUCH IS MOST LIKELY NOT GOING TO FIT INTO THE BUS !!!! Arrrrgggghhhh !!!! The couch really IS sentimental to us."


Why can't you fit it in there?? What seems to be the problem?? With that big side door, it won't fit through that?? How big is that sucker???? Any way you could modify it to fit?? :s

Love the bright interior colours!!

Hi ya Patrick ... The couch is standard sized, but it IS one which reclines. So it is somewhat plump. But that side door is probably not over 26 - 28 inches wide.

 

[Clan Graham]

I'll be going to the bus to work on it shortly, but figured I would update this morning before I did.

We have now went through several sets of magnets to hold the curtains up, and they are just not working. The ones we have now are strong enough, they are hard to get to release when you want, but they still want to slide down the window some. Think I will switch to Velcro now.

 

[Zil]

nice looking bus.
have you tried screw mounting magnets on window frame to match to magnets sewn on curtains? magnet to magnet would not slide.

 

[Clan Graham]

nice looking bus.
have you tried screw mounting magnets on window frame to match to magnets sewn on curtains? magnet to magnet would not slide.

Oooh .... great idea. I just need to order 110 of those, and charge my cordless battery really well.

---

I went back to the bus today and worked some. It has cold and VERY humid and rainy. Lovely weather ! In between the cold rain showers, I was able to cut the 2x4"s and get a lot of the bed frame finished. Here is what I was able to get done ...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v112/SRTBlue/My bus is better than Yos/Jan23rd_zps72547485.jpg

 

[Clan Graham]

Oh well .... I guess we have a bit longer to decide just how to get the couch into the bus. Finances were not as expected, and we will not be getting things from Storage yet. I will keep trying to find some plywood locally for free, and see what happens as I try to finish the interior wood projects.

 

[Simran]

I love the bright yellow. I would have never imagined how good that looks on the inside of a bus.

 

[Clan Graham]

I love the bright yellow. I would have never imagined how good that looks on the inside of a bus.

Thank you Gus. My wife really wants something that fits her eclectic tastes ... and she has always wanted a brightly Gypsy cart. So we threw caution to the wind LOL.

 

[Clan Graham]

Hello again ... My son has came to town, and will be staying a couple of weeks to help me TRY and get the bus prepped and painted. As always seems to happen, Murphy's Law kicked in, and the weather the past two days has been below freezing here in south central TX ... go figure. We have a couple of nice days to sand on the exterior, and then a 7 day stretch of rain. But we are going to go sand on it this afternoon for a bit. Stay tuned !

 

[Clan Graham]

Yuck ... just yuck LOL. While my son is here, it has turned cold, rainy, and windy. So interior work it is I guess ... tht is after he gets over the stomach bug. Rains it pours huh ! When he's feeling better, we will work on ths interior some more.

 

[Clan Graham]

Talk about a hard few days ... Just sitting in the house, with 29 degree temps outside. But tomorrow is supposed to be nice enough. So we are going to see what we can accomplish tomorrow, and will provide photos of our progress.

 

[Clan Graham]

Ah hah ! BIG update time !!! We have now ordered most of the needed supplies for the bus ... heater, mattress, generator, exterior paint, bedroom curtain material, etc ... And we expect most of it to show up in a week or so. I have already received the counter-sunk magnets, and I am just waiting on the slider window, to install in the front door, and that will also be finished. We could not find a quality made storm door in the size we need, so I decided to build a nice storm door from a SOLID wood door slab, using handles, hinges, etc of our choice. It is going to be a VERY heavy duty door, and will seal out the weather really well too. So we've kicked finishing the interior basics into high gear.

Tomorrow I plan on doing a lot of interior work, and will provide photos of the progress. Cheers to all !

 

[Zil]

good going. I am following with much interest.

 

[Clan Graham]

I now have a couple of new questions to ask. My old ( no longer any good ) 8D batteries were stolen from my bus recently. Which of course tells me my bus is NOT in a safe location. Now that I am about to start installing expensive items in the bus, I have to come up with a way to start locking up my things ( batteries, generator, etc. ) ... Unfortunately, I do not have any keys to all of those little factory locks in those compartment doors .... How are you guys securing your things underneath storage areas ? Pad lock and hasp ?

And the old front door ... again. The idea thing would be for me to build a door frame inside of the bus's door opening .... BUT, if I do it will take up at least an inch of VALUABLE door entry space. If I could keep from trimming the door down further, it will allow me to keep more "meat" on the door ... making for better hanging of the door. BUT ... Is there any reason why I can not just use the smooth steel door opening sides as the door frame itself ?

 

[Lucky mike]

the forward bus door if it is a bifold (school bus) door can be secured by adding a keyless solinoid entry lock......in fact a trip to the junkyard could get locking mechs. for all your compartments on the cheap and you could make them all keyless.......unfortunately there is no real way to stop a thief...you can only slow down a thief in training or opportunist.

 

[Clan Graham]

the forward bus door if it is a bifold (school bus) door can be secured by adding a keyless solinoid entry lock......in fact a trip to the junkyard could get locking mechs. for all your compartments on the cheap and you could make them all keyless.......unfortunately there is no real way to stop a thief...you can only slow down a thief in training or opportunist.

Yeah ... this would be the ultimate scenario. But as I was recently reminded ; This IS the cheaper living forum LOL. I have dual latch catches ; one on each side of every compartment door. At two actuaters per door, that would cost me $200+ ...
I say this because the actuator rods are fairly heavy steel jobs, and I feel pretty positive it would take two actuators ; each pulling the rods/catches in their own, and opposite direction.

Does anyone have any experience with replacing the factory locks/keysets ?


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