Last month we shared how we bought a bus. This bus will be our home, the kids’ school and our business premises for 18 months starting next year as we travel Australia and take our mission to Transform Children’s Health, One Lunch Box At A Time to as many children and parents as possible.
The decision to buy a bus over a caravan, camper, 5th wheeler etc did not come easily. I can’t even begin to tell you how much research into the different options we did. In the end we decided on converting a bus to a motorhome because we felt it best suited our requirements – home, classroom, office and a big mobile billboard for our mission.
I guess we knew there would be a lot of work involved in having someone convert the bus for us, but we probably hadn’t factored in how much time would be required of us. I don’t think we really comprehended just how much it would be like building a home or renovating one, but just into a bus. I know that might sound kind of like “Duh… what were you thinking?!” but I guess we thought the scale was so much smaller that we wouldn’t encounter the many issues people talk about when building or renovating. Wrong, how very wrong!
So as we write this post, we are currently about 5 weeks behind on Stage 1 of the build. Suffice to say we have been a bit anxious this month, but have made some in-roads this week. Next month we hope to share ALOT more progress with you. Until then, here’s a few bits ‘n bobs so you can see what’s going on.
The build stages
Stage 1 of the build includes:
- stripping out the interior of the bus
- removing the windows
- cutting off the roof
- raising the roof 30 cm to accommodate Israel’s height (6’4″)
- putting the roof back on and re-sheeting
Stage 2 of the build includes:
- wiring
- building everything internally
- installing fixtures and fittings
- installing solar, water tanks etc
- certifications to enable registration etc
Progress since last month
Whilst Stage 1 is behind, we have been super busy. We totally underestimated the amount of time we would need to spec everything out precisely for Stage 2 even though Stage 2 was no where near starting. Israel literally spent days and nights for a good few weeks researching, drawing, mapping out, costing etc.
Now that I have bullet pointed what we’ve achieved, it doesn’t look much, so you are going to have to trust me when I say it was ALOT of work. Anyone who has built a home or renovated will probably appreciate what we’ve been through.
- Finalised our design plans for the bus
- Chose the colour scheme for the cupboards, benches, lounge & dining area, picked door handles, selected the window style and chose our appliances
- Hired a specialist to draw up our solar specification so we can live off the grid entirely (with a back up battery system of course)
- The inside is now entirely stripped & the windows are out
- We took the kids to see the bus for the first time so they could get an idea of the space (term used loosely!) that they will have. It took a while for Indrani to get her head around that she won’t have a bedroom to read and play in. We just kept reminding her she will have the great outdoors of Australia to play in.
- Put the final changes to the actual agreement with the conversion company to say the build of Stage 1 will be complete by 1st September and Stage 2 by 28th November. This WILL BE SIGNED on Wednesday 27th August!!!
A couple of things about the floor plans:
- The dining area will be multi-purpose so it can be used for schooling, office work and eating.
- It’s been designed so we could have a full size Queen sized bed, and the kids can have full size single beds. We really want to take all of our own mattresses so that we have a creature comfort we are use to from home. Not to mention, we all work better on a good night’s sleep and we know we get that from our mattresses.
- We have capacity to drive with 5 seat-belted seats. The driver, the passenger up front, then two at the dining table, and one on the other side. There will be anchor both points on both sides to cater for Rilien’s car seat (we did this so they can sit next to each other, but more importantly so we can separate them if we need to – if you get our drift?!). The extra seat also allows us to have one of Indrani’s friends (or ours) join us at some point too.
- The lounge and the dining table can both also turn into single beds if we have guests come over.
That’s probably enough for this post. Join other like minded parents at The Root Cause Community and follow our progress. As a bonus, you’ll get tips, recipes and other helpful information too.