Toward the end of November we had finished prepping the floor for paint so I went ahead and laid the first coat of Rustoleum down.  A few days later, after the paint had dried, we were anticipating a huge rain storm to move through, so I had to wait to lay down the next coat.  Unfortunately, we found that we had a few leaks around the emergency exits.  I went online and researched a good method to cull the leaks and found tons of information on eternabond tape.  So, I went ahead and ordered a roll to place around all of the edges of the various emergency exits and vents on top of the bus.  Luckily (I guess) for us, there was another rainstorm moving in after placing the eternabond tape, so we got to see first hand how it worked.

Eternabond is awesome.  A silicone paint job will be even better.

It actually worked flawlessly, the spots that we had put the tape didn’t leak at all… unfortunately, whilst walking around on the top of the bus, I believe I may have broken some of the seals where our roof panels meet.  Which meant, the next round of rain revealed a few more NEW leaks… doh!

Excitement to put the subfloors in was dwindling now, because we had to figure out a way to stop the leaks.  We have a good idea for stopping the current leaks and all future leaks which requires a few coats of silicone based paint, better known as elastomeric paint.  Unfortunately, we were STILL waiting on our personalized license plate for the bus.  I had ordered it on November 16th and actually just received notice today, December 8th, that we can go ahead and pick up our personalized plates, yeah!  Since our temp tags have been expired for around 3 months now we need the plates so that we can drive the bus to a friends warehouse where it can be covered for painting.

The silicone within a seam on the ceiling of the bus

With that said we’ve actually recently had a break in the rain and a bit higher temperatures this week, so I’ve siliconed the seams in the ceiling of the bus and Annie and I also just painted the second coat of Rustoleum on the floor.  I’m hoping that the silicone will help put a stop to the leaks, even if it doesn’t stop them fully, it will be good insurance for the future.

In the midst of all of this painting and leak craziness, my father and I went ahead and replaced the heater hose on the bus and routed it just beneath the floor along the chassis on the drivers side.  This freed up the space inside the bus where the heater line was running which will help a lot with laying out the design we’ve come up with… which has also just recently changed.

The heater hoses running under the bus, just along the chassis.

When we were visiting the Tuttles (http://www.travelingtuttles.com) they had a custom fabricated passengers seat that I really fell in love with.  They placed it diagonally behind the driver’s right side so that when you sit down in it, you are offered a 180 degree view out of the front of the bus.  With our giant flat-front windows, I think having the seat in a similar location will really afford the passenger some awesome views.

I also recently watched a documentary on Tiny Houses.  On the documentary there was a guy building a Tiny House and one of the projects they outlined was of his couch/bed.  It’s basically a modified IKEA Hemnes Day Bed (Hemnes Day Bed).  I like the idea so much, that I’m going to be building my own which will be about 7ft long and placed in a different location than my original plan which was to build an L shaped couch at the front of the bus.  Instead, the couch will be against the driver’s side wall just opposite of our ADA door.  The cool thing is, the door practically has a “TV” on it where we can look out and view our surroundings, either with the door opened or closed.  The bed will also be a great guest sleeping quarters, if and when we have friends stay over.

You can just make out the holes for the drivers seat.  The passenger seat would go just beside it.

Now to figure out what to put over the front passenger wheel well.  We’ve got some ideas, but haven’t really solidified anything just yet, but we’ll keep you updated!