The school year has resumed so I have very little time but hubby has a couple of hours during the day to kill while he waits for his shifts (morning and afternoon). On the weekends we usually take the hour and a half drive to the nearest bigger town to get things we need for the bus, this takes up a good part of Saturday and I do school work on Sunday. That doesn't leave a lot of time but a few things are still happening.
1) The last of the tint arrived.
A sheet of white frost for the bathroom and the larger sheet of road-legal tint for the odd sized driving window. We also found out that you can add layers of tint over others, so we have decided to 'black out' the windows where the pantry will be, one window where the wall for the bathroom doesn't quite line up and parts of the rear window where cupboards will be fitted. This way we know the tint is UV protected and it will not look as odd as taking the window out and filling it with a panel.
2) Hubby has started making the storage cabinets which go above the windows, almost the whole way around the interior of the bus.
He is using steel angle, welding a frame, painting and rivnutting it to the frame of the bus (that rivut tool has been a godsend!) We bought the lining for the bus roof today so he can put in the back cabinet. I can't remember the name but it is thin ply with acrylic sheeting over it, similar to the Laminex product Aquapanel but far cheaper. We will use actual Aquapanel for the bathroom as it is water resistant but for the bus roof, this shiny white lining will be fabulous. We also got the pop-out cabinet locks off eBay this week (I will add a link when I do a full write up about the cupboards).
3) The bathroom goodies arrived in the mail too!
I did a big order from 'Caravans Plus' in the ACT (I will add a link and more info later when I do a post about the bathroom) and it arrived within three days. I ordered the shower/bathroom base, cassette toilet, basin, mixer, retractable shower tap and drainage bits (plugs etc).
4) We attached the solar panels to the roof.
We stupidly bought some of those plastic molded brackets to attach the panels but they didn't have enough clearance for air flow under the panels. An expensive mistake. Eventually we just bought some 3mm steel angle brackets, cut rubber stoppers so they didn't wear into the roof steel as we drove along, used plenty of Sikaflex and rivnutted them to the roof. We think we can fit one more panel on the roof so we will probably do that before we finish that part of the roof interior. Hubby has done a little work with wiring and junction boxes to neaten things up... but more on that later.
The Sikaflex and rubber also stops the steel from reacting with the panels aluminium frame and rusting.
Bolted the the raised part of the roof, as you would in a regular house, to minimise the risk of leak.
After the tint and cabinets, I think we will be making the base for the bed. The frame and some side storage is already there but we have to make the slatted part which the mattress sits on. The plan is to make it in two parts, from steel box tubing and putting struts under so the storage under it can easily be accessed.
I'd better get out there now and give him a hand!
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