Since my last update, I’ve mostly done a lot of thinking about next steps. I’m finally getting into the Construction stages and frankly I’m a little nervous about it.

Today’s Big news is that I was able to move my bus into my parking spot so I could reach the power outlet and run my angle grinder again, so I finally was able to remove the last pesky interior wall panels on the starboard side of the bus! This means that really, the demo part of the basic bus is complete and there’s nothing left to do but construction.

First order of business was to begin installing the wood framing for the walls. You can see in the photo I managed to get a few pieces cut and screwed in today before I had to call it quits – these batteries just don’t hold much of a charge these days. Tomorrow I’ll get the corded drill out and really go to town on this.

So I’m taking a tip from Chuck Cassidy and his recommendations on how to frame the interior walls. Rather than do vertical studs along the bus ribs, I’ve decided I’m going to do four long runners from front to back – one on the floor, one at the chair rail, one just below the window, and one above the windows. These will be screwed directly to the bus ribs for maximum stability. The idea here is that reducing the area of contact between the metal ribs and the wood runners will minimize the thermal bridging. Now, I’m using single 2x2s for my runners, not Chuck’s recommendation of cutting the runners from 3/4 plywood and doubling them up, so they will still have SOME thermal bridging, unfortunately. Having thicker walls will allow me to double up on the insulation, for what that’s worth. And I can also add vertical studs where I need them for placing outlet boxes, switches, or whatever.

I also managed to start taping out some of the furniture I want to install, but all the sizes are in my Sketchup model and I keep forgetting to bring my computer out to the bus, so haven’t gotten far on that yet. Next time, for sure.