Plan of action

What with the toilet floor costing $50, I can quite see the bathroom floor costing $100 and the rest of the floor in that area costing another $50 or $100. The big bonus is that it will be rot proof. It was an unexpected bonus to find the original rubberized floor was still present.

The gameplan is to complete the toilet to a point where it has a toilet (of sorts), walls and a door. The next thing is to complete the shower room to a point where it has walls, the bath, a shower head and a working drain. After that it's a case of completing the bedroom. The bedroom will be completed in full.

Following completion of the bedroom, I'll work on the water and electricity supply. After that I will consider the bus to be livable and will move into it. The kitchen will be the next thing to be completed followed by the construction of the dinette.

All the time I am not living in my bus I am paying through the nose for both rent and electricity. Although my electricity is but $30 a month, it's not free unlike solar electricity. The goal is to be bill free by March or April. Now that construction has commenced, I feel that the speed of progress can only increase.

There was a suggestion that there should be a full, king or queen bed in the bus but given that the interior is but 91 inches wide and a full bed is 54 inches, a king is 76 inches and a queen is 60 inches, that really won't allow much space either side for people to get in and out. Better to have a 39 inch wide twin and maybe have bunk beds. That's something I'd been thinking about anyway. I have a quantity of stuff to store and I'd want one side of the bus dedicated to storage and wardrobe. The very back of the bus will need space for my bicycle and various tools.

I measured the bus - not the outside as that's really not too interesting - and found that my load bay is about 24 feet by about 7.5. This makes for a living area of about 180 square feet. This is definitely doable. Organisation and space optimisation is the key. My big thing is that I want a wide aisle and that cuts down on storage but does make the place feel less cramped.