Freakishly Happy

Summer has arrived in the Green Mountains, and I have the barefeet calluses to prove it! It has indeed been a long, long, long, long, long time since
I have blogged. We have been working very hard (just ask Rich). We were abducted, not by aliens, but by Mary
Lou at the Slate Valley Museum- more of this to come later.

We finally got the leaking in the bus to cease and desist,
at least for the most part. There were a
very frustrating days way back in May where we’d think that we had the leaks
licked, but then it would rain and there’d be water all over the floor and we’d
have to start looking for leaks all over again. John spent many a warm day on top of the roof
scraping out all of the old nasty caulk and replacing it with new. This means
not only do our windows not leak, but our roof is drip-free, too! Hooray.

We have also been trying to paint the bus with a
tractor-primer coat for a very long time.
We got most (95% or so (but my math and estimation skills are lacking so
ask John about the exact number) of decals off the bus, and scuffed the ENTIRE
surface to prepare it for painting. Unfortunately, we need a stretch of three
perfect days in order to paint. We’ve
had several of these stretches in the last few weeks, but unfortunately, they always
seem to coincide with other scheduled events.

Last week we insulated the walls. We are using board foam
insulation, with foil backing, which means that it has a higher “R” value. For
those of you who are not total geeks, the “R” definition of value is, “a measure
of a material's resistance to the passage of heat, the higher the R value, the
more insulating.”

Foam board is a great product, the only down side to it is
the squeak factor. Imagine driving down
the road with a whole bunch of Styrofoam in your car, eeee rrrr eeeee rrrr
every time you hit a bump. Now magnify that by 40 feet. You can see our
dilemma. We had already purchased this
stuff called Red Rosin, which is used when you are laying down a floor to keep
squeaks out of the flooring. John had the brilliant idea of wrapping all of our
foam in this before putting it in the walls. So, he cut and measured the foam, while I put
the foam into little pink packages. It looks like our bus is making out like a
bandit at Christmas time. We have jumped
up and down in search of any noises and things have been quiet.

Before we began working on the floor, we had several holes
that we needed to cover up to prevent bugs and moisture and colonies of gnomes
from moving into our bus from below. I
was really concerned about this aspect, being certain that it was going to be
too difficult for us to do with out some sort of outside help. Neither of us had ever experienced cutting
metal before, and it seemed like a totally different ballgame than cutting
insulation or wood. But, after going out
to a great brunch in Londonderry, John and I
decided to tackle it. We got out the old
air-conditioner casing that we scavenged from Juli’s
trash pile, and set to work. We measured
the holes and drew templates on to the steel, and within probably 45 minutes
had all of the metal we needed cut out. It was WAY easier than I had anticipated. The we set to work making a caulk seal around
all of the holes before placing the metal on top and riveting it down.

We also laid down insulation on the floor with subflooring
on top. We began this project one
evening after I’d been in the store all day.
We’d been having a hot stretch here, where it was 98 degrees and it felt
like it was at least 130. It was so hot it took my breath away and made me want
to cry and scream at the same time. We
were tired, hot and frustrated, but decided that we wanted to make some
progress that evening. We cut out the Red
Rosin to go on the floor and laid the insulation and just as we were starting
to cut the subflooring the sky began to rumble. We decided that we were determined to get at
least one board in before it rained, and we did. Just after we dropped the
board, the sky broke open and we went and danced in the rain. It felt so good
to have the heat break, and the rain helped wash away the frustrations of the
day.

It took us a few days to finish, but it’s all in now, and
looks great! As of last week we’ve been
married four years and holding. It’s amazing how fast time has flown by. We spent our anniversary at the Slate Valley
Museum, helping them to
get ready for their big opening on Saturday. We love Mary Lou, and will gladly spend any
anniversary painting for her!

This week has been somewhat adventure filled. We went up to Bristol (about an hour and a half away) on Monday,
to go order our wood floors. On our way
up, the brake light and ABS light in the truck came on. Now, growing up I drove our old Toyota pickup, whose
brake light was ALWAYS on, because the emergency brake wouldn’t go all the way
in. This kind of desensitized me to any dashboard light-up warning mechanisms,
so I didn’t really think anything of it. That was until, we were coming up over a hill
at a T intersection, and no matter how hard I punched the brakes we weren’t
gonna stop. Fortunately, there were no
cars in our immediate vicinity and we were able to get to a automotive shop. Unfortunately,
we had to try three automotive shops before we found one who could or would
help us. When we popped the hood we found that there was no brake fluid left,
but that the shop couldn’t get us in until Wednesday. Not wanting to be stuck in Bristol, or miss our Monday night potluck :) we bought some brake fluid and headed back to Middlebury. I learned a lot about driving a manual that
day, and am now quite an expert. Heck,
who needs brakes anyway? We found a nice
garage in Middlebury who was willing to get our car in that, and have it ready
by the following day. We rented a car
from Enterprise,
and headed down the road.

The car we got was really really nice, especially compared to the truck, with
no power-steering, brakes or radio. This
one had all of the accoutrements, including a kicking stereo with XM. Now
normally, I can’t stand XM. They’re a big radio conglomerate… don’t get me
started… but on this occasion, it was really nice to be able to drive home
listening to Bob Marley with good windshield wipers and brakes.

We went back up to Bristol
on Tuesday and ordered our wood floor. We were going to go with Maple and had
already checked some out at a place in Bristol.
After talking with a friend of ours we decided to check out a different wood
company than the one we were going to go with, whose wood comes exclusively
from Vermont,
and is sustainably harvested by Vermonters.
The other store definitely couldn’t boast these types of credentials,
and the second place had more of a selection and better prices. We ended up deciding on hickory floors,
because they are harder and lighter than maple. Although it’s not what you typically think of
when you think Vermont, this too is an all Vermont wood. Unfortunately, it still needs to be planed
down, which means another trip up to Bristol
next week *sigh*.

Well, that’s pretty much all the news on this front. I am
truly sorry there aren’t more photos. We actually just got new cameras (yes,
one for each of us!), and there should be many many more pictures coming soon! Thanks
for not giving up on us!

One last thing! Guess what arrived in the mail today? An Improved Meyer Lemon Tree! John got it for me for an anniversary gift! Hooray!

I am happy to report that we were able to get out and work
on the bus today. We did a bit of poking
around behind the metal on the walls to see if there was any major water
damage, and found that everything looked to be in good shape. We stood around a bit and hemmed and hawed
about whether or not we should take up the metal paneling. On the on one hand
it would be easier and faster to just insulate and wall over the existing
paneling, which would allow us to get on the road and start enjoying our bus
earlier. On the other hand, if water leakage is a problem in the future, we’ll
have invested a lot more time, effort and money when we have to take everything
that we’ve built out because we didn’t do it right the first time. In the end we decided to do it right and we
began to remove the screws for the paneling.

We have also been kicking around the idea of doing a partial raise of our roof.
Many of the buses that we have fallen in
love with on housetrucks.org have lovely lofted areas, which really makes the
dwellings look more like homes and less like RVs (which is the look we’re going for :) Again, the negatives of this endeavor are the
time and expense it would take, not to mention the extra thought it’s going to
take to engineer it. The positives are
creating a unique and lovely living-space, and a having a little bit extra
space so that we don’t have to sweat our layout. Plus it seems a lot more
romantic and idealistic. We went back and forth with the same old
arguments that we’ve been using for weeks, before we decided that we both
really want it. Rationality and common
sense be damned! We removed the back two
panels of ceiling in order to sort of seal the decision.

We had a lot of fun today.
We both had a great time singing and being silly. Using power tools was good, too.

We’re still working on layout, and trying to figure out exactly what appliances
we want to put in the bus. Right now we’re
trying to decide on which toilet and woodstove we’d like. we’ve been looking at a Sun-Mar composting toilet http://www.sun-mar.com/index.html,
in the Excel model. I’ve done a lot of research, and although it’s
expensive, it seems to be the most eco-friendly and responsible way of dealing
with our waste. It’ll allow us to not
have a black-water tank, which would allow us independence from blackwater
sucking stations, as well as alleviate the worry of having to winterize a tank
full of poo. It also beats the
suggestion to just use a bucket and dump it in a trash can. I guess I’m willing to fork over some cash in
order that someone else is not responsible for my waste.
I think we may have also narrowed down our choice of wood stove. We really like the Swedish brand Jotul. We’ve been looking at their smaller stoves,
but secretly we both really like the idea of having a viewing screen. A closed iron black box just isn’t as
romantic. So again I think we'll throw caution to the wind, and buy a bigger stove. Although it may be more BTUs than we need, I think it's really what we want. Besides, we'll essentially be living in a tin can with windows, so we can probably use all the heat we can get :) This is the model that we're lookng at:  http://www.jotul.com/en-us/wwwjotulus/Main-menu/Products/Wood/Wood-stoves/Jotul-F-3-CB/

Our philosophy seems to be that even though some of the things we’re putting in
our bus may cost us some money up front, we’ll be able to take almost
everything with us in a few years when we settle down and buy a house. It makes
sense financially and environmentally to buy a quality item now, rather than
buy one sub-quality item now and then be forced to chuck it in the land fill
and replace it in the near future.

I’m also researching the best way to refurbish our claw-foot
tub. The one that we bought is in fairly good condition, but it does have a
spot where the porcelain has rubbed off, right where one’s bottom goes. Any suggestions?

As always, we’d love for anyone reading this to
comment or make suggestions! Thanks!

Wow, there's a lot of catching up to do. It's so easy to throw some pictures in a folder and jot down a few notes, and put off blogging until later. But eventually you have to come around and catch things up again...

We're about a year behind. Last time I personally updated we had just arrived in Vermont and had gone apple picking and on a couple short jaunts of photography. Well one of the main things we did while we were there last year was to help Juli upgrade her kitchen and entryway. There are a bunch of photos of the demolition / construction in the bumming around / vermont / construction image gallery.