raising the roof!

after much planning and hoping and dreaming we finally have finished a big part of our bus conversion. Today Robert is securing the van to the bus, but we are beyond blessed to have so many wonderful strong muscles and there were 3 girls including myself who helped man handled this project. mrs. Julia Kevon and Marynell Powell were very helpful!

[the boys strategizing]

[the whole crew helping us!]

["scooting" the van on top of the bus]

[still "scooting"]

[final destination]

[so beautiful!]

so you may be asking yourself, why? why would they do this?

our goal is to turn this bus into a "home" we aren't sure how long we will be in it or where we are going.

All we have planned now is to go out this summer and travel. We are putting a really nice, big kitchen [well as big as we can fit...] and the van is going to be our lofted bed.

We are going to just go!

thanks for reading.

happy bus travels :)

She's comin' together

I have been working on the bus most diligently the past couple weeks.

Since the last post, I have completely finished taking all the sheet metal out of the inside.

1000 rivets later, and it's metal free.

I then began grinding away all of the rust that had accumulated under the old flooring.

After that, I painted the bare metal with rust preventative paint.

After that, I began to cover the windows with sheet metal.

Once Hannah and I decided on a well thought out floor plan, the metal work commenced.

With the help of my friend Graham, we began drilling, and pop riveting the metal to the bus.

After one piece!

also, we have starting making a small list of a few things that we need:

[more to come.]

first: a small-ish toilet.

and we would also love a water-saver back of the toilet sink! (only $70!)

an old gas stove/oven combo. (chambers! please)

a 15-passenger van to cut in half and put on top and make our loft-bed.

ode to the fluffy

after much thought and prayer- we've decided that we are going to travel around america serving up hot breakfast!

specifically fluffy pancakes, but all breakfast foods shall fly free!

as people have passed through nashville in the past, they always remember us cooking them breakfast.

of course we offer many tasty goods at our cozy home, but breakfast is our specialty!

such a delight, waking up to that freshly scrambled eggs, or that warm maple syrup for the banana pancakes.

so you will see us roaming the streets of america. serving pancakes.

enjoy the hotcakes!

oh and the toppings we will serve up! (previous pancake parties!)

day 1: hammer your heart out.

day 1 of our bus conversion:

here starts the ups and down's of our bus/home conversion.

we will be posting pictures and all the little short-cuts that we will try and take.

our goal in doing this conversion is to travel the open roads of america. (and canada if we are creative enough)

if we are lucky we can head to bonnaroo in June 2010 and then head up north.

then out west!

we have felt stuck in a "just get married and settled" coma.

thinking that because we are married we are suppose to be settled.

but we are 21 and 22, and we have a 2 year old dog, there are many roads that are yet to be traveled.

so here is to the next 7 months of our home conversion.

Here is what we had started with, the same layout I had before Hannah came along.

Enough for me to live.

First I started by gutting the inside of all that we had in there, wood, couch, JUNK!

The floor in the back had some rust to the metal flooring.

We will sand down the rust, paint over with rust inhibitor, and then cover with our flooring, with plenty of insulation in between.

All the while, waiting on the couch to be sold so I could get down to the nitty gritty, I started blocking out the windows that are not going to be in use.

I will place insulation of the wood pieces in the windows, and then cover with plywood, from floor to ceiling, and proceed to place sheet metal on the outside.

This will give it a nice contoured look.

After a couple days of work, this is what I have.

Most of the transitions to the ceiling are stripped, and once I get a friend over, we will be grinding away the rivets to take down the ceiling and the side metal panels.

All new insulation will be placed throughout the whole bus, along with reflective panels, and then sealed off with some hard wood of our choice.

Hopefully in a weeks time, we will have the whole inside gutted and ready to insulate.