Got out to spend a couple hours in the bus this afternoon, and here’s what I managed to accomplish:

• With the wire-cup on my drill and a steel-wire hand brush with scraper, I loosened and ground out as much of the top of the rust as I could manage. Maybe I could go deeper with a braided wire wheel on my angle grinder, but I did the best I could with what I have.
• Swept
• And swept
• And swept again. It’s remarkable how much loose dust you can work up with a wire brush!
• Started painting the floor! You can see the black paint in the photo, that’s as far as I got with two cans of this black Rustoleum.

Now, many bus conversions take multiple steps here, starting with an Ospho or a Corroseal treatment to both convert any surface rust to inert metal, and also prepping the floor to paint. I was going to go that route, but opted instead for this Rustoleum “Rust Reformer” spray paint. I found a study that compared several rust conversion methods over time, and it found that this particular paint held up better long-term without any new rust forming than even the ospho and corroseal treatments. I almost only bought one or two cans, thinking six was going to be overkill, but as you can see, two cans didn’t go as far as I’d thought it would.

I have to take measurements, but by a rough estimate I think those two cans painted about 1/6 of the bus. So, with the other four I should be able to cover about 1/2 of the total bus floor, which means I’ll need another six cans to finish the whole bus. Total cost would come to about $100, which is a little more than I was expecting to spend on the Ospho-and-paint route, so I guess I didn’t end up saving any money here. I’ll double-check, I might be able to finish the bus with a gallon of ospho and some enamel paint I already have, which would come in less expensive than another case of this spray paint.

ANYway, once the paint is dried and cured, I can start plugging all the little holes in the floor (liquid nails & pennies), and then move the stacks of foam panels over to do the same area on the port side of the bus. When THAT’S all done, then I can start actually framing in my subfloor! I’ll be able to finish up a full 8 feet of floor from the back door forward, and that’ll give me space to stack the rest of the wood & materials I’ve got in the bus so I can continue clearing and prepping the floor in the middle of the bus.

But I think the best thing about today, is that I’m at a point in the process where clear progress can be seen working just an hour or two at a time, which is good motivation to get out to the bus more, maybe in the mornings before I need to head to work, and try to finish something small. So, now I’m gonna update my list of ‘small cheap things I can finish on the bus’, so I can start knocking things off it.