Day... 950. Emergency Exit.

So, you may have noticed that our progress on the bus came to a screeching halt all of a sudden and we went on radio silence about it. Well, our niece became our daughter during that time, so huge life adjustments and finances got in the way. But, we are happy to report, at long last, we have resumed progress on the school bus.

We were having a serious conversation the other day about what we wanted in life, now that things had changed so drastically for us. Should we sell this bus sitting in our backyard, or should we get back to work on it? We decided that it makes the most sense for us in so many ways to finish converting the school bus into a functioning motorhome. Now that we have a human teenager and 7 dogs, there is no way we could easily travel without it. We decided, it doesn’t have to be perfect at first like we envisioned; we could make improvements along the way, but we needed to get started again!

The leaking roof emergency exit was the most important thing to tackle first. Once that was sealed up, we could begin working on sanding the floor down, applying rust remover, painting the floor, installing insulation, etc… But so long as the roof leaked like a sieve every time it rained, it would mess up everything we worked on inside!

We angle grinded off the rusty screws holding on the emergency exit door, and tore off all the old sealant with a flathead screwdriver. It came off without too many issues… But how to cover up the gaping hole in the roof left behind? After a good amount of research and considering replacing the emergency hatch, putting in a sky light, or attaching our AC unit here, we finally landed on covering it up. All these other options presented the issue that we could again, have leaking in the future. Stopping the leak was our number one priority and adding those things later could be easily done.

David decided to repurpose the steel sheet metal from the ceiling by cutting out a 26.5” square with an angle grinder, applying self-leveling lap sealant underneath, screwing in self-tapping sheet metal screws, and applying more lap sealant over top of the edges and screw heads for good measure.

You could say we have officially taken the emergency exit out of the rut we’ve been in.

Now… I think we mentioned we have SEVEN dogs? More on that later!