The floor

Today was the day designated toward working on the floor of the bus. The plan was simple - sand the plywood until the screw heads became visible then unscrew the screws and remove the plywood. It wasn't that simple though!

After sanding furiously with an electric sander for an hour or so, I was no nearer to revealing screw heads. The plywood had been dreadful plywood with large areas of filler added to fill in huge gaps in the wood. Having decided that sanding was just not going to work, I pulled out a pry bar and pulled away and the plywood splintered up nicely, revealing deeply sunk screw heads. That was slow process so I pulled out a bigger pry bar and managed to lever up much larger chunks of plywood. Doing that, it was possible to see printing on the plywood that declared it to be an exterior grade. That hadn't helped much though as the 48 inch wide by 91 inch long section that I eventually removed had rotted pretty thoroughly where the water tank had been situated and where the emergency door is situated.

Thinking laterally, horizontally and perhaps upside down as well, it made sense to put plastic planking down in the shower and toilet areas. This plastic planking is expensive at $40 for a 12 foot length but I should not need many lengths to cover the toilet and shower floors.

I had been struggling with ideas for doing the shower until I realized that I had removed a perfectly adequate bath from the bus initially. That would seem at 5 feet long to fit in the space allotted to the shower area albeit overlapping by 8 inches. That's something I can work with however. It does mean that I have to remove more of the wood from an adjacent sheet of plywood on the floor - on both sides of the bus. Where I had thought there was a join, turned out not to be a join so this is going to be a tricky operation using a chisel.

Another thing that was done today was that I went up and sealed a couple of areas on the roof and around the windscreen where water might have been entering. I'll have to wait for the next rainstorm to see if the leaks have been sealed. There was a potential area further up on the roof but as I was on a stepladder, I couldn't quite reach. I did see areas I'd missed when painting with the roller but that's a job for another day - when the weather's warmer. I have doubts as to whether the sealant I put will cure with the current sub zero temperatures.

I did nothing to the flooring in the bedroom area that needs to come up. Despite my intent to work the bedroom area, I worked the kitchen and shower areas instead. Before much more can be done, the windows that need attention need to be attended to. That's replacing one that's been replaced by a sheet of plexiglass with a sheet of aluminum then moving another to where there's a sheet of plexiglass and replacing the donor window hole with aluminum.

Underneath the plywood that I removed, for some strange reason, somebody had seen fit to lay a sheet of something that was covered in black tar. Below that is a bright, galvanized floor. Clearly the tar paper is something put down by the hillbillies.

Today I was having to take breaks to lie down in the dark between sessions of pulling up flooring. At first I thought it was a bug or mold spores. Then I realized it was the same feeling of yuckiness that I'd had before I got reading glasses. Perhaps it's time to invest in a swanky pair of ordinary glasses. I'll have to look into that as I can't go on feeling yucky.

Meanwhile, I don't yet know where the odometer cable has disconnected but I have got a nifty app for my phone that calculates my speed from GPS. It beeped successfully after I set it to warn me when I went over 45mph. Whether I can hear it over the bus engine is debatable. I'll have to get the odometer fixed. There're a growing number of things I'd like looked at anyway.