Heya! Been a while since I’ve had a good housebus update, but today’s the day for one!

Today I got out to the bus and cleared up the space up front that’s going to be used as my workspace, I’ve been calling it The Office (obvs, I know). This is where my rolltop desk will be set up, and will also be home to my electrical closet. I’ve had this filing cabinet and secretary desk in place for a good long while now, but today I managed to install them permanently as part of my Office furniture.

First things first, I needed to go ahead and insulate the wall under the windows. Much as I would have loved to use good wool insulation, I’ve pretty much had to just use what I have on hand, which is a combination of 2-inch foam panels and 2-inch thick faced fiberglass insulation. Layered on top of each other they fill the walls pretty nicely though I have no idea what the R-value is here. I know it’s not the ideal way to insulate, and there’s a non-zero chance I’ll need to redo it down the road, but for the time being it gets me moving forward, so I’ll take it. I definitely need to get some seam tape to clean it up a bit.

I didn’t bother sealing the walls up yet, since the furniture I was installing is basically just wooden boxes anyway — I’m letting the backs of these pieces hold the insulation in place! So a few screws to secure the Filing cabinet to the wall under the windows, and a few more to secure the secretary desk, and I have permanently installed pantry and art supply storage! (For now they’re both full of tools, but that will change when I start getting ready to move in, hopefully) I might at some point take the bottom drawer and convert it to flat file storage, I’ve always wanted to have some good flat files!

I did make one modification to the bottom of the secretary desk before I installed it. There were these great decorative corner feet underneath, but I didn’t want any open space below the cabinet so I removed them all the way around and mounted 2x4s to the base to keep close to the same height. This also allowed me to cut off the part that bumped out from the side, so I was able to mount the cabinet flush against the kitchen half-wall. Later on I’ll be installing another storage drawer in the space beloe the cabinet, after I’ve got the flooring in place and know exactly how large an opening I have to work with.

Now I’m left with a nice space in between where I’ve got access to my fuel sensor, and enough empty space to install some kind of combination shelf/staircase leading to the top of the file cabinet and eventually to the sleep loft above. Part of me wants to build-in something from scratch, but part of me is thinking of just getting one of those wooden chairs that converts to a step-stool. We’ll see.

There’s some placeholder electrical boxes mounted to the wood now, and I need to run some wiring back there before I seal it up completely. I also picked up a free sheet of white bead-board paneling to use in this gap. I’m hoping to do all the visible walls in the office with this, but I’ll probably need to get more somewhere in order to make that happen.

So yeah! I’m celebrating a good day of ‘building’ in the bus, getting more of this permanent stuff installed. I’ve got a plan to get back out more tomorrow and Friday, to rearrange some of the materials taking up a lot of space right now, and to get cracking on cutting out and installing the remaining four window deletes I’ve got planned.

Additionally, I’m excited because tomorrow is the second anniversary of me flying to Alabama to pick up my bus! I’ve already put up the old hammock hooks, and think I might go ‘rough it’ and spend the night in the bus again for the first time since I got it home two whole Novembers ago!