The demolition has been hard, but we are getting closer to the end of this phase. We began day 10 with an early start, good attitudes and the reward of a relaxing bbq after a hard days work. We are enjoying the fact that we can grow veggies while we stay here in the midwest and are looking forward to making a spinach salad fresh from the garden for dinner.
When things get hard and we get down, I find it’s always good to express gratitude for the good things in life instead of wallowing in pain and frustration. While life has been tough here dealing with the extreme humidity and heat while working on the bus, we have been thriving in other ways. We are grateful for our daily walks in the forest, a roof over our head and the help we receive from Don’s parents, the ability to grow veggies and herbs in their garden, and to finally be able to compost our veggie scraps which is greatly reducing our trash.
As we discussed in the previous blog post, we were trying to remove the floorboards of the bus without damaging the air lines. We could not pull them all the way through the holes in the wood, so we had to cut around the tubing to get it out. We continued to pop the floorboards out the way we had the previous day.
What did we find underneath the floorboards? Well in some places more fiberglass insulation, in others there was nothing and you were looking straight into the luggage bays.
The panels in the center however had a rubber subfloor glued onto the underside of the plywood. These pipes run down the center of the bus and in some areas there is nothing under these pipes. We assume this rubber acts as a sealant to keep the moisture from the outside from getting into the floorboards and into the bus. We will have to make sure we find something similar to put on our new floorboards.
In the meantime, we are trying to salvage as much as we can from the bus and these old pieces of plywood may be reusable so we are using a Multi Tool to remove the rubber from the wood.
Under the last piece of flooring we removed, behind the driver’s seat, we found an ant colony had moved in! This is one of the reasons it was important for us to take everything out and start from scratch, as then you know exactly what you are working with and now we can clean this up, seal it up and make sure no other families move into our home.
Up Next
Now that the floors are out we need to clean and treat the frame of the bus to get it ready to actually start building our tiny home.
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Speed Oscillating Multi-Tool Kit
This tool has been very helpful for us in removing the subfloor and glue from the floors. Just as the name says it has many uses and can be used for cutting, sawing, trimming, grinding and sanding. I'm sure we will be using it again in the future!
Hi Mela & Don,
Note to Don, you dont need to reinstall the thick sealant that you removed at the base of the wall. This sealant is used to fill the gap between the plywood sheet and the steel frame so that no water goes there to collect and do damage to the wood and the steel structure. Only because on a passenger bus, the floor get wet from peoples shoes or boots when it’s raining or snowing. Plus they are rinsing the floor with a garden hose beginning from the back all the way to the front entrance.
For the way you will use the bus, that floor will never see water again. Just put a bead of sealant under the plywwod sheet at the base of the wall and that will be enough, you wont see the gap with the wall finishing and the floor covering.
Hey Denis
That is good to know. I wondered what that thick sealant was really for! I did some research and we bought some silicone sealant for the edges of the new floors we are going to put im
Hi Mela & Don,
Try to avoid product with silicone, it’s not the best and is a pain to clean when you want to touch-up redo paint.
Instead, use polyurethane sealant. Look at Sika products, something like Sikaflex 221 is what you need. If you want to glue at the same time, Sikaflex 252 or 254 would do the job.