Continuing and Future Work

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When we were planning our bus, we had heard a number of stories of people who lived in their bus or van for a short while, only to discover that they needed to make extensive changes to their build. We read as many posts about these changes as we could, in order to avoid the same fate. Unfortunately, as the saying goes, “The best laid plans of mice and men…”

 

Luckily we haven’t had to make any major revisions to our bus. We had to re-seal the roof with some elastomeric paint. As much as we tried to seal all of the rivets and seams and patches of the bus, we ended up with some minor leaks. After prepping the roof, we painted the seams and rivets and rolled the rest of the roof. Thankfully it seems to have done the trick as we’ve remained dry throughout some downpours.

 

We’ve also added curtains and a heater. The curtains were added in order to shade the windows as well as act as some form of insulation. We’re also very much looking forward to the privacy the curtains afford in our next stay at Cracker Barrel. Adding a diesel heater was important for our travel throughout 2021. Having a heater will be helpful for surprise cold nights but will also allow us to travel even throughout the winter or into Canada (if the border opens back up).

 

Otherwise it’s been mostly smooth sailing. A lot of our ongoing projects have been the finishing work - adding trim, paneling and paint. Speaking of paint - if you have dogs, you should be sure to choose a very durable paint (we’ve already had to perform a few touch-ups). It seems one of the biggest complaints people have about their builds is a lack of storage or storage that just doesn’t work for them. We’ve actually found that we have more storage than we thought and that it is sometimes challenging to keep that space organized. We’ve made frequent changes to that organization - rearranging our bins and boxes and crates.

 

We have plans to construct an awning for sun and rain coverage beside the bus. We’re also planning to cover the window behind our trash can (the sun beating into that space bakes our garbage). We’re still weighing adding some form of parked air conditioning - either a residential mini-split or a split system frequently used in tractor trailers. As part of our planning process, we even left space for a mini-split in our electrical panel and installed a 50-Amp shore power inlet. Just like a stationary home, it seems that there are always projects to work on and improvements to be made.