South Carolina floods

This is what remains of the road close to where I live. Given that many bridges, roads, dams and homes have been compromised by the recent floods caused by the record-breaking 30 inches of rain over the past few days, its probably pretty safe to say that the roads leading to and from my workplace are impassable. Indeed, due to that I might even be correct to consider that I now need a new job.

Leakage inside my bus overnight was minimal. As its still raining, I couldn't go to put tape on the roof. In fact, aside from looking at things in the bus, I really didn't do anything today.

I'm lucky to be parked on high ground in the countryside. I hear there's major flooding in lower lying areas with many people now being homeless. In the cities and some residential suburbs, looting has become a problem. Much of South Carolina is currently under curfew from 7pm to 6am or dusk til dawn.

If I am correct in needing a new job then my bus is all but ready for living. At a pinch, it is usable - even without running water.

Air conditioning!

It would be lovely to be able to work in a well lit air conditioned garage or bus. Just think how much more work I'd be able to get done in a day. Today, for a long time, I was working clearing stuff from the bathroom which during construction became the general storing and dumping ground.

Amidst all the clearing, I found a soda can full of some strange beverage. I took a break and hurled the thing at the ground, up in the air but all it did was bulge. Not terribly exciting. Then I sought out my old air pistol to shoot it with. I know I had a ton of boxes of pellets but could I find any? Heck, no. That was disappointing.

I swept the floor, noting that the grain side of the plastic planks which was uppermost and which seemed to offer more grip, trapped dirt in the grain. Perhaps I should have put them in, flat side up.

Then I took a break and located another hard brush. This I used to paint the other side of the steel I cut and painted yesterday. I decided i might install that later should the paint be dry enough.

If I was starting the bus from scratch, I'd probably have been better getting one with seats rather than working with an already converted bus. I'd also have taken a different direction in the light of things learned. As the seat back contains a decent sheet of steel, those would have been used to replace unneeded windows.

After sweeping, I sprayed the silver side of the OSB with water then wiped the dust off. I hope this means I won't get a repeat of the experience I had some days ago when a sheet of latex paint just peeled off. Again, if I was starting from scratch, I think I'd have been better off just using ordinary OSB rather than this silver coated thermal stuff. Then I caulked the gaps with llatex caulk for a change.

The next thing was painting. Thank the Lord I had two roller handles because the first one disintegrated, trying to remove the roller. I looked at my roller tray and simply peeled the hardened latex paint out of it. That doesn't exactly fill me with confidence in latex paint!

Painting seemed to take forever as I slowly broiled in my tin oven in the midday sun. Eventually I had covered everything I could reach with a roller. The next thing is to try to get the corners I missed, with a brush.

The skies darkened and thunder began to roll. That pretty much was the end of that for today. Tomorrow I need to touch up what I did today. This is just primer so it doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to cover everything.

Tomorrow, assuming the storm abates, I might start cleaning the cockpit and possibly put primer on. As part of that I might also put the metal sheet on and put insulation behind it. I'm definitely getting to the point of needing blue and green paints for the respective areas.

With all the stuff moved into the dinette, there's little space left. Any more wood cutting and trimming will have to be done outside the bus because of dirt and dust.

The mixing tub that will become my shower base is a little taller than my PVC plank is wide. I had thought of putting the tub in a box made of PVC plank. I'll have to rethink that now. I want to keep wood, steel and water separate for obvious reasons though I'm wondering whether wood might be the answer with wide planks being available fairly cheaply.

No picture today. The storm was upon me before I had a chance to take one. Now it's as dark as midnight despite being but 8pm!

Paint, paint and more paint

Today was just a painting day. Yesterday I put primer and sealer onto the bare wood of the dinette. Today I put primer and topcoat on the dinette. This time though, I used a brush.

The advantage of a brush is that I can get into corners and crevices. The advantage of a roller is that the finish is more even and its faster but it doesn't get into all the imperfections.

Anyway, I painted the inside and outside of the cabinets white. The drawer and doors will be purple as will the walls and ceiling. I'll put the purple paint on after I've done with the kitchen cabinets.

This is what the interior looked like yesterday. Today I didn't get a chance to take a picture because just as I completed painting the dinette, rain began to fall, followed by darkening skies and the sound of the hooves of the horses of the four horsemen of the apocalypse thundering over the horizon. As I'd pretty much finished when the storm began, I closed the bus and rinsed out my brush.

It was a good idea to paint the cabinet with just a single drawer first. It proved how hard if not impossible it is to paint properly with the runners in situ. Painting the dinette used over half a gallon of topcoat. The dinette and ceiling etc took probably two thirds of a gallon of primer too.

I'm not sure how well this latex paint will hold up. I'm hoping it'll last reasonably well. If it doesn't then I'll have to find oil based paint somewhere.

Meanwhile, visitor figures are down without Facebook. On the other hand, I'm not prepared to send Facebook the documents they demand. In fact, I informed Facebook of this. Despite losing maybe 30% of my visitors, its not worth surrendering my identity to something that sounds like a Nigerian scammer.

Reading around, I understand that facebooks stance on proof of ID is generally designed to block San Fransisco drag queens and transsexuals/transvestites from joining in the gender and name of their choice. Essentially, its anti constitutional but who said the Facebook marketing juggernaut cared about human rights or national laws?

A cynic would wonder whether Mark Zuckerburg designed the policy after an unhappy encounter with a drag queen...