Quick setting glue fail!

Yesterday, work called to inform me that there was no school for the first two hours of the day so I set my alarm for 6am instead of 4am. At 6am I checked my phone as it had just gone ping. My codriver had messaged me that there was no school at all due to snow. Checking the website, it seemed that school had been cancelled abound 20 minutes earlier. I could have continued sleeping!

Later, as light snow briefly fell and melted instantly on the warm ground, I went to the bus to start to do some work. The cold was not conducive to doing much work and even the little heater fan didn’t put out much heat. I used to use that heater fan when I lived in the slums of Lexington town, South Carolina. It would warm the only usable room in the hovel I was renting fairly swiftly. The bus is another matter. At 210 square feet, it’s way bigger than the 80 square foot broom closet I used to live in. Still, after a while the place does warm up nicely.

The first thing done was to hunt to find my glue. I’d looked everywhere yesterday and could not find it. It turned out to be exactly where I’d thought it was, covered by about the only piece of paper I had not moved when hunting for it! Swiftly thus the bulb mount from yesterday was glued to the bracket. The glue used was described as “Liquid Nails, quick setting”. I can tell you this for nothing. By the time I left the bus it had not set. It was still as goopy as it was when put in place. I just hope it does set and doesn’t leave me with a mess to clean up. Glues have a tendency just to make a sticky mess and not actually set.

Having done that, the next stage was to work out how to install my switches and chargers etc for the bedroom. I decided simplicity is best. Originally I was going to control the fan, the light and the charger from a bank of switches installed on one project box. I’d bought some project boxes from eBay but they were rather smaller than needed. Looking through things, hunting for my glue, earlier, I found a suitable project box however. It already had a switch installed from a previous project but that was quickly removed.

So, having put the panels that hold the voltmeter and USB charger sockets in place, there clearly wasn’t room for more than a single switch. The screws have gone missing but I’m pretty sure I can find suitable screws in my collection of screws. Realizing that since the glue hadn’t set, the chance of paint setting today was slim to none, I sprayed the box pink to match the bedroom. It clearly will need several coats as the black of the box shows through too well. Maybe I should have bought acrylic paint in pink instead?

The box for the galley is more flexibly sized. It’s possible since there is no need to install chargers and voltmeters to install just two switches and control the fan and the lighting from one box. In anticipation I gave the box a spray with purple paint.

Neither of my two paints are a perfect match. They’re the closest color that was in Walmart. To get an exact match I’d have to spend $20+ and buy a gallon of that color in the hardware store. Given that I needed Lime Passion, Cosmic Pink and Opulent Purple, that would have come to some $60+ whereas my 3 cans of spray paint were just $12 for the 3. If I was sure acrylic paint would stick then I could probably have paid less and got more of the 50c acrylic and brought the cost down to $1.50.

Having sprayed the first coat onto each box and having attempted to glue the one bulb holder into place, I gave up on today as being non conducive to bus work. There are a lot of little projects to do right now. They’re all little and they’ll all take time. As far as I know, there are no further major projects.

Reading around with people’s experiences of insurance, at the moment it’s looking that liability only and not bothering to retitle might be the way to go. It seems from what I read online - which might or might not be on a par with the famous statements “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” and “I smoked but didn’t inhale”. So many people seem to be having trouble. Indeed Progressive (the insurance agency that doesn’t actually seem to know what it’s doing) now says on its website that it does not insure bus conversions. This seems to be a theme with insurance companies. Tellingly, I asked a bus conversion company what insurance group they recommended and received no answer. This is a topic that needs more investigation and more work.