After 34 years of marriage – over 25 of them spent living in homes with cellars, garages, and in one case, an attic – David and I have accumulated a whole lot of “stuff”.  Much of it is our own, and some is from stored belongings of our parents, things they couldn’t use but didn’t want to throw away, often inherited from their parents or other family members.   The great thing about this is that over the years, we have frequently been able to go shopping in our cellar when we needed something.

• Broke the carafe from the kitchen coffeemaker?  There is an old, mini 4-cup one downstairs.
• Motor burned out in the Blender?  Isn’t there one in the cellar?

Etcetera, etcetera.

This is largely the case in our bus conversion.

If I haven’t stated this directly, here it is:  we are doing phase 1 of this conversion on a very low budget.

The thing is, if we keep waiting until we have saved up “enough” money to finance this project, it will never happen.

So, here are the financials so far:

• Bus Seats: sold on eBay for $500
• Scrap Metal: 3 loads taken to recycling center for a total of just over $250

That $750 has been put back into the foam tiles for the floor and miscellaneous tools – saw bits, drill bits and the rest applied to the cost of the Nature’s Head toilet.

The rest of our conversion construction materials are coming out of the house, and even the backyard.

All the scrap wood that David and I have been climbing over in the cellar will make up at least 50% to 75% of the lumber for the project.

Over the foam tiles, we will be placing assorted area rugs.  We have a lovely, brand new Berber for our bedroom area (OK, the small amount of empty space at the foot of our bed), remnants of the carpet laid in our smallest bedroom, and stored in the cellar since the house was built 20 years ago.

We have several large area rugs that will go in the middle and front sections of the bus. All are pictured.

We inherited 2 cedar chests from my family – one was my grandmother’s and it suffered some water damage in our cellar a few years ago.  The other was my mother’s, and we’ve been using it at the foot of our bed for the past 10 years.  Neither is in perfect condition, but they are both totally functional, and the chest in the cellar was loosing its veneer laminate on the top.  We plan to use them in the bus, to anchor the bed in place and serve as storage for our clothes.

I decided to decoupage the top of the water-damaged chest.  I have several magazines with Island/Coastal Living/Florida Beach themes, so it took me about 20 minutes to rip out enough pages of photos that appeal to me.  Another 30 – 45 minutes to trim them up, and I have all my decoupage art pictures ready to go.

I used a razor, scraper/putty knife and a steak knife to get the rest of the veneer off the chest lid.  Today I will sand the top enough to glue the photos on top, and then by this weekend I will pick up some lacquer or acrylic to put multiple coats on the lid.  I will check my stores downstairs, first, as there is a cabinet full of old paints, stains, lacquers and more, but these things do go bad eventually.

I remember doing decoupage projects as a kid, and it was fun, easy, and inexpensive.  We are pleased by the decision to use these chests, since they will be multi-functional and of minimal cost to convert and mount.

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Our kitchen area will include a sink and stovetop salvaged from an old pop-up camper that belonged to David’s parents, which ended up retired in our back yard.  Our seating/eating area will consist of the 3 original bus seats taken from the very back wall, mounted on the side with a table-top set in front of them.

We are also planning to use a few other pieces of furniture from our household, but I’ll present the details on that when we get to that point.

This is all coming together quite nicely! 

Cool Features, Extraneous Background, The Actual Conversion No Comments November 10th, 2009

David has been researching this project for a few years now, and in that time he has accumulated quite the library of web site links.  The various web sites that document a bus conversion done by a particular person or family were, of course, the inspiration for this blog.   We will do some things suggested by these other conversions, and we will come up with some completely original choices, as well.

These links are now updated on our sidebar, and we will certainly continue to add more as we find them.  I’ve included descriptions for every link, so just hover your mouse over if you want a little more info before you click.

Some may require a bit of explanation. 

Why yurts and tiki huts?  Just in case you might like to spread out!  Seriously, Yurts are designed to be portable.  The idea of toting the parts to put up a yurt whenever we end up someplace for more than a week or two, is appealing.  Don’t know if we’ll ever do it, but we like the info.  Same goes for the tiki huts, and particularly the fact that much of the raw material needed for a tiki hut, or a “chickee” as they are sometimes called, might be obtained from routine palm trimming.

We have a strong interest in composting toilets because they eliminate the need for a sewage holding tank in the traditional sense.  So, not adding weight to the bus is a good thing.  Composting is a GREAT thing.   In any event, being different is a given in this arena.

Bamboo is THE wood of choice for us if and when we do use any wood for finishing.  The exception there will be anything we can recycle or re-purpose.   If we find good wood of any variety that we can re-use, it is better than starting with something new, however renewable the source may be.

If you have links you’d like to recommend, please suggest away!

Cool Features No Comments October 26th, 2009