The first day of a NEW YEAR!

    After a relaxing morning spent with friends sitting outside in the very unseasonably warm and sunny, melty snowy weather, Phil and I headed back to the bus to get a few hours of work in before the day was over. We removed the luggage racks that were on the walls above the seats. Those metal brackets will come in handy to add support for our cabinets that we'll make later. And the aluminum poles that were part of the luggage racks look like they could have many uses on my future farm. (hoop house, perhaps?)

Goodbye, rusty floor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   
      We also used the grinding wheel to finish removing the rust around the wheel wells. Wear a respirator, this job is not fun!
     I discovered some more holes around the wheel wells too. We are going to use the scraps of aluminum that we cut off the walls to patch up the holes.








   

Me washing the dusty, mildewy ceiling.

    
     Grinding away the rust spots on the metal bus floor on Saturday left the whole inside covered in a coating of rust dust! So on Sunday we swept, shop vac-ed and scrubbed the ceiling all nice and shiny! It felt good to be getting rid of all that rust and rot and decaying pieces of rubber and all the other dirty stuff that was in the floor. It made me really glad that we made the decision to take the whole floor up. Taking the time to do that extra step means we won't have to be living with all that under our floor!



   

The holes filled in with silicone caulking.

      When we removed the seats a few weeks ago, there were holes left in the floor where the bolts were. You could see right to the ground. So today we took advantage of the warm weather and filed in all the holes in the floor. (The silicone we used needed at least 40 degree temps for it to set properly.) Now we are pretty much ready to start putting in the new floor!

Walls under the window. Aluminum cut off.

     Another thing Phil did today was finish cutting the aluminum walls below the windows that I had cut a few weeks ago to pull out the old insulation. He used the grinding wheel to get them nice and smooth so we can put new walls right on top of this.