Purple rain

I never meant to cause you any sorrow
I never meant to cause you any pain
I only wanted to one time to see you laughing
I only wanted to see you
Laughing in the purple rain

And so sang the artist formally known as Prince which gets us rather neatly to today's first achievement. Purple paint! Today I put purple paint on the ceiling of the galley or rather, a second coat of purple paint. The white undercoat was showing through in places. A second coat should see that gone from view. The walls also needed some recoating and the new drawers had a coat on the fronts. This latex paint isn't very durable and I've already had to touch up some areas.

Needless to say, there have been a few drops of purple rain from the ceiling and I did run my head into a freshly painted patch. I'll have purple hair for the next few hours! It always washes out pretty easily.

Earlier today, I had a trip to Lowe's. Yesterday on my way back from my voluntary work, I also stopped off at Lowe's. It's nice to wander around the electrical aisle to see what's there. I'm trying to decide how to approach the electrical system. Thus far, these are the ideas....
1. 3 x 110v sockets in the kitchen for a 110v fridge, microwave and one other appliance.
2. 12v or even 5v for two USB sockets in the bedroom and on the othger side of the galley.
3. 12v led lighting throughout or no lighting bar movable led lanterns.
4. Electric water heater. This could be a small (1 gallon) gravity tank above the handbasin or shower.
5. Underbody hot tank. This needn't be more than 5 or 10 gallons and could be heated directly by solar panels.

It's all very much of a mishmash because I've not really decided on my direction. I could go solely solar with no plugin whatsoever. Basically, a totally boondocking solution. I could go with a totally plug in solution that would eliminate batteries and inverters and just use a small generator for boondocking. Wind hasn't featured in my deliberations though perhaps it should.

Reading about people's wind power solutions with RVs, they seem to be universally disappointing. I'm not sure why though - whether they're expecting more from wind than it can deliver it whether there are problems of scale and location. I'm not even sure what kind of power consumption they have.

Solar seems popular though it is expensive. A single 100w panel will cost around $100 and will produce 6 - 10 hours of power at around 50w average. Thus, a 100w panel will produce about 50watt hours of power per day. Putting that into a 100ah 12v battery would put about 4.15ah into the 12v battery. That's not really practical!

I'm thinking that I should have a solution initially that has no battery and which uses solely external electricity. I'm beginning to see why people use gas for cooking and water heating. I must admit that a gas solution does look attractive!

So, after painting the ceiling and the drawer fronts, my next task was to work more on painting the toilet. This will take several painting sessions. There are some areas I can't really reach with a brush but I'll do my best as always.

It's getting rapidly to the point where I will have to tidy the galley, to free it of construction debris. Indeed, its approaching usable! Question is, where to put everything? I guess I need to plug on, put up the closet chain and put the batwing doors together. That should reduce the quantity of stuff yet more.

After the toilet, while waiting for the paint to dry, I had a good knobbing session in the galley. Put that dirty mind away! This is what I meant..

I put the knobs on almost all of my drawers. The last knob on the other side of the bus proved problematic. It's bolt was too short so I need another bolt. Measuring it, it seems to be 3.9 to 4mm diameter which probably means its a 5/32 or it could be an M4 since the knob was made in China!

There are 3 varieties of knob. Two are close enough to be the same but packaged under different labels. There are 2 different sizes. Basically, its what I got from Ace Hardware's bargain bin the other day. Only a real plonker would buy stuff at full price!

Returning to my labors, I touched up a lot of the white paint and turned the kitchenette counted the right way up. The smooth side is now down. Now the idea had been to put self adhesive vinyl tiles on top. The new idea is to get thick, vinyl tablecloths as long as they can reliably be as long as my countertops then to attach Velcro strips and simply Velcro them into place. That seems to me to be much easier and cheaper as well as more instantly replaceable than vinyl tiles.

Putting yet more paint on the toilet, I noted that two more very brief painting sessions will see the whole toilet painted. The bathroom vanity top needs but one painting session before it gets screwed into place or rather, after it ius screwed down.

In essence, there are but three tasks remaining. To put up the closet chain, to build the saloon doors and to screw all the countertops down. Then it's all electrics, water and attending to the front door locking/unlocking mechanism.

Trying my cutlery tray into place in what will be the cutlery drawer showed it to be a little wide. Darn! Still, it was only ever a cheap thing. I can do better!

Space - the final frontier

These are the voyages of the the good bus NSA 2011. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new places, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no Brit has gone before.

Well, I don't know about a 5 year mission but I do know I'm running out of space rapidly. After painting the green paint on the bathroom roof or rather, giving the roof a second coat, it was too soon to consider giving the lower wall a final coat of white as the green was not hard enough to take masking tape.

Clambering around the galley, I constantly tripped over pieces of molding. Thus, it was time to use them and use them I did. The first piece, I glued and nailed but it wasn't that great. The second, I just put the glue and nails away, drilled, countersunk and screwed it in place. Much more satisfactory and a load faster.

I noticed how warped some of my doors are and how off vertical some of my verticals are. All highly unsatisfying but they're good enough that nobody will notice and it'll all work just the same. The green paint could do with another coat in places but its not really enough to merit the time. I have until the 17th to have the bus ready. After that, woirk recommences and further construction will be relegated to weekends.

My biggest challenge right now is rehousing all my construction materials as its becoming somewhat challenging to find space to do anything. I've transferred my paint cans and long wood to the front closet but tools and supplies take up a lot of space.

In order to work in the bathroom, I'd moved the toilet to the bedroom and the shower base to the galley while the handbasin is in the cockpit. Moving two pieces of molding from the galley because I was falling over them to use them in the bedroom meant clambering over the toilet. It would be so nice to be able to do all this in a great big air conditioned garage where I could pile things ready for use!

I washed the somewhat mucky head protector from the emergency exit and replaced it after the paint had dried. There's now no Virgin Exit sign - they all left! http://schoolbushome.blogspot.com/2015/07/virgin-exit.html


I had a feeling I should be doing more painting and painted a cupboard door purple before deciding that my effort would be better employed marking where to put the drawer handles I bought last week at Ace. Thus, the drawers were marked and holes drilled. Now I can install knobs when I've finished the paintwork.

Tomorrow its probably going to be a good idea to paint the lower bathroom walls, washstand and some, if not all of the toilet. That way I can finish the bathroom then move all of the bathroom bits into place. That should give more room in the galley to work on the galley.

The batwing door hinge looks pretty straightforward. Looking at materials, I should have just about enough to complete the doors. They won't be a fancy shape - they'll be square but they'll be there!

I can see all the flaws in my workmanship and that makes me want to do better but honestly, I've done it just about as well as is reasonably practical given I need it completed by August 17th. Apparently I should be starting back to work about then.

Onwards and upwards! Completion is getting incredibly close. I look back to where I was just two weeks ago and progress has been little short of amazing!