Bus Renovation

Hello everyone

In this post, I will take about the renovation of our short five-window school bus that we bought on the 20th of March. I have made a Youtube account and will post all my videos as links. All you have to do is click on the link and watch to watch the video.

We didn't start the renovations on the bus till about two weeks later, we were waiting for the weather to be a little warmer. My parents took out all the seats and then removed the plastic flooring it was so sticky that they had to use my dad's truck to remove it.

The next day Avery and I had to clean the hole bus using vinegar in a spray bottle, water and rags it was disgusting. Once it was clean we put down cardboard flooring to cover up the sticky plywood flooring and possibly make it not as sticky. Here is the first Youtube video that I made of our bus renovations.

The next weekend my parents took off the cardboard and the plywood flooring, under the plywood they found that the floor was very rusted but they were expecting this. My mom watched a lot of youtube videos on school bus renovations and found that the underneath of the school buses are not very well sealed so a lot of water gets in the bus. Before removing the rust my mom removed the screws that were sticking out of the floor, She used a steel disc grinder to remove them. Then they removed the ceiling panels and the insulation underneath using a piece of steel that my dad sharpened to pry the panels off the ceiling.

Over the next week, my mom removed the rust using CLR it worked really well. She then filled in all the holes in the floor that wore rusted through using a cut-up pool noodle. Then my parents screwed down 2''by 4'' planks of wood along the bus floor about 11/2 feet apart for spacers before putting styrofoam in between them for the flooring insolation. My parents also took out two of the windows on the driver's side of the bus where the bunk bed will be going. The insolation for the walls arrived it is bubble wrap insolation which is what we used inside the walls of our house. It is a very good source of insolation and is inert (does not off-gas). The lights and solar panel that will power the lights also arrived.

Next, my parents put down the flooring and made the two benches that fold down into beds. Dad got a piece of steel custom-made to fit in the staircase and at the back of the bus where the kitchen will be instead of wood flooring so it wouldn't rot when it gets wet. They also put cardboard on the floor so the wood wouldn't get scratched.

Avery and I started sanding the paint on the outside of the bus we want to paint the bus a different colour so we need to sand the paint to make it grippy so the new paint will stick. We have decided to leave the front and the top of the bus yellow and we are going to paint the rest a light aqua colour. It took us like two weeks to sand it because we wore babysitting all week and working one day on the weekends. We sanded with an orbital sander, by hand in the sections that we couldn't do with the electrical sander and to remove the stickers we used a steel bristle grinder. Well, we wore sand my parents started working on the electrical putting in the outlets and light switches. My dad also welded a bunk bed contraption that folds into the wall, a ladder on the outside of the bus to access the roof and a rack on the top for storage.

My parents put up the chimney on the top of the roof and started installing the insulation on the lower half of the bus below the windows, then they put the wood on it. After installing all the electrical stuff they put the insolation on the top half of the walls and everywhere else that needed it. The fridge and fireplace also arrived.

I will continue talking about the bus renovation in the next post. If you have any questions or comments feel free to email me backpackergirlz@gmail.com or you can comment on this post.