We’ve still been busy building – sometimes it’s been in the house, working on refinishing our new bedroom floor, other times it’s been on the bus, refinishing our new bus floor.

Last week I was able to obtain enough solid oak flooring from a neighbor who reclaimed it out of one of these old St. Louis homes to do the floors in the bus. He sold it to me for a few bucks and we ran it through the plainer to remove the prior finish. …being reclaimed the tongues and grooves were split here and there but this wasn’t my first time rebuilding a floor with reclaimed wood.

I put down the vapor/thermal barrier and began the install as soon as I could because well, I was tired of looking at that naked floor.

Lana likes to check in sometimes and make sure I’m working and not dreaming…

The floor went in fairly easily and once it was sanded was a REALLY pleasing transition to behold, the warmth of wood always makes things better.

Around Starlight Lab and Camp Jessop, we’re not afraid of color – it’s welcomed in fact so we went with a blue stain from Varathane called “Vintage Aqua”. The color theme of our bus it to be coppers/bronzes/aluminums/blues and gold. Later we will be incorporating the burned wood/2-part epoxies w/mica and the Lichtenburg burning machine to make the faces of the cabinets, their doors and the walls of the shower/toilet room. (That be the really fun and pretty part and when our skoolie really will start taking on it’s own character.

(I was on the roof the other day and took another photo of the solar panels)

I found one day so far that the humidity was low and the heat wasn’t horrible and took as much advantage of it as I could to begin painting the exterior as well. We chose a hammered copper for the base color.

Luckily the bus is in pretty good shape and requires minimal prep for most of the surface though I will need some metal work on the bottom of the “garage door” due to rust. The Rust-Oleum – Hammered Copper covered well and sticks better!

The hammered copper actually hides many imperfection in the surface anyway if they are not too sever and ends up looking very smooth. I just rolled it on with a 4″ roller that I made sure would shed very little.

Below is the first real look I’ve been able to get outside of my mind of what the bus will become. We are painting the black rails a bronze color that will be a little lighter than the copper and Lana is going to paint ALL the rivets individually, with hammered aluminum and we know it will look awesome – to us anyway but the good thing is – as far as this is concerned – we’re the only ones we have to make happy. :). The roof is getting hammered aluminum as well and I can not wait to paint and take more photos to share.

…as for now – ON TO THE NEXT DAY!

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