Bus Project Brainstorm

Now that Holiday Market is over and Erin and I are finally starting to come out of our recuperative period, we've been dreaming a lot about all the exciting things we want to accomplish on our bus! Though we haven't had time quite yet to delve in (besides tidying and cleaning), we have a pretty extensive list of projects that we'll be undertaking in the near future.

Up until leaving Eugene, our main focus was getting the "main systems" in place - making her a functioning living space. Now that we've had a chance to really live in our bus full-time and travel a bit, we're about ready to start the "tricking out" process. Well, before that actually, there's still a few function issues to be smoothed out, as I expect there'll always be. To get us started, I thought I would share our rough brainstorm of the projects at hand. In no particular order:

• Tile around wood stove and on kitchen counter - we're ready to replace all that grey Wonderboard with some color and texture! Plus, I think our bare wood kitchen counter has about had it from all the sudsy water from the sink, uck. While in Santa Rosa, we scored some sweet recycled tile at the local ReStore perfect for the project.

• Fix range/oven issues - the range fan still needs to be tweaked and the oven is mysteriously not working either.
  

• Install our 3-way mini fridge we scored at Bring - this project probably won't happen for a while since our fridge is in Oregon and we are now in California. Interestingly, we've pretty much been living without refrigeration completely this winter. All it takes is not buying milk and eating your veggies pretty soon after you buy them! We'll see how that goes come summer-time though...

• Extend couch - we've been re-designing our whole living room zone. We took out the sewing table corner and are changing the space up in exciting ways. Making the couch zone more comfy is a key ingredient of this.

• Carpentry finishing work - this includes putting some sweet doors on our cabinets to start, but also finishing all those rough edges to our novice and hasty construction job. Also, we still have that pile of recycled hardwood oak flooring we want to put down! Other small jobs like making our kitchen table a few inches shorter, putting up a few more shelves, the list goes on...
  

• Re-design clothing closet system - we've realized that two people actually need quite a decent amount of space to store their clothes. The main thing we are lacking is some kind of closet rod to hang our jackets and some precious garments of Erin's... but where??

• Re-vamp some electrical kinks - this involves installing a DC plug so we can charge our computer more efficiently, rigging up a sweet stereo system, finally covering up all our dangling wires, perhaps investigating some new lighting fixtures and/or investment in a strand of 12v LED lights to make it super cozy.

• Finish ceiling details - our bus-friend Michael that we met on the Smith River had ingeniously used a cloth tapestry as a ceiling covering (instead of paint or wood, etc.) This is a very exciting idea for such a fiber-lover as Erin! Now we just have to find the right tapestry and a nifty non-toxic glue to attach it with.

• Streamline fresh & grey water systems - we want to create a fresh-water fill nozzle on the outside of the bus. Also, we are very much looking forward to finding a more permanent spot where we can build an experimental constructed wetlands to process our grey water! No more yucky smelling grey water to empty...

• Beautify the driver's cab - self explanatory. This also involves finding a more convenient and permanent location for all our tools (right now they ride right under the passenger's (me) feet when we drive... a little awkward).

• Build a sweet roof rack/deck.

• WVO conversion!!

Well I'm sure there are a million more things to be accomplished, but this is a start. We will keep you all updated on our progress. First thing up - re-designing the living room zone. We've already started on this and hope to post pictures soon.

Thanks to everyone's patience as we slowly get back into sharing our bus-life adventures after a short hibernating hiatus.

All our love.