Spring clean!

Well it's the first day of spring (not according to the weather) and I've been inspired to get rid of a lot of my 'rainy day' things (those things you keep in case one day you might just need it) also we've just been down to visit a friend and help her clean out her spare room and seeing the space she freed up made me want to come home and attack all of my piles. Don't get me wrong I still love my junk but there is only so much one bus can hold!
I started with the easy stuff like sorting through all my shopping bags and throwing out the ones with holes and rips, then moved on to the toiletries/first aid/anything that doesn't have another home box. This was a bit more painful as some of my rainy day things were quite expensive to buy such as cosmetics (which incidentally I last wore for my sisters wedding 3yrs ago) and natural health products and throwing them out even though they were out of date felt terribly wasteful. I needed a bit of a push to make that decision and luckily Black Velvet came to the rescue with all the reasons I shouldn't keep them haha.
Next I tackled the kitchen bench which had become unusable as a bench because of all the stuff stored on there. I'd bought a new food processor just before we went away and I really wanted it and my juicer to have a place they could be used but not be in the way. After deciding to get rid of the coffee machine I had space above the bench to store the dehydrator and yoghurt maker (btw I'm not really an appliance freak most of these lovely machines have been given to me and once I have them I do use them unlike in a lot of kitchens where they sit in a cupboard collecting dust) (note that little bit of a defensive edge creeping in to that justification there, it is a bit of a sore point :s) anyway back to my story, the end result was a tidier kitchen with a lovely bit of bench space that my gigantic chopping board can now fit on.
All in all it was a productive day. Tomorrow I'm going to tackle under the bed!

Ok I have a lot of old photos that I'm not sure what to do with so I'm going to just post them with little blurbs and hopefully the story will piece itself together somehow.

This is the bus (black velvet and his little brother sitting on the stairs) after we got the mechanic from up the road to drive it to the caravan park because neither of us had a bus license yet and frankly we were both a bit wary of driving such a huge old beast.  The caravan park was at Avoca Beach NSW and was the only one that would allow us to stay for more than a week. It was a pretty sketchy place full of single men living in dirty caravans with lake on one side and swamp on the other ( I dont think the ground dried up once in the whole six months we were there) but we were happy! We finally had our own little space that we could do whatever we pleased with. 
The tape above the passenger window was holding a piece of metal on where a window used to be which weve since reinstalled and the plastic bag and tape on the left-hand side is where we removed a window and the rubber to see if we could get replacement rubbers the same or some made up. The answer to both of those was no, so we reinstalled the 50yr old rubber until we came up with an alternate solution ( they are still there)

Rabbit hutch in the foreground. When we moved into the bus our family consisted of two humans, one dog, one cat, one rabbit and a rainbow lorikeet.

The bus after her first paint job. We scraped, sanded and painted her all by hand as the only two power tools we owned were a jig saw and a drill. We spent ages trying to decide what colours to paint her, originally I had wanted a nice shiny red or brown and cream but then  freaked out for some reason and thought green would blend in better when we were parked places we probably shouldnt be. Dont know what I was thinking as if something that big was going to go unnoticed. The colour on the roof was called 'lettuce' which still to this day cracks me up because it reminds me of a joke Jimoen told about a snail eating his letters (corny I know)  can't remember what the bottom colour was called but we used exterior weathershield paint.

Things we've learned

Black velvet and I have learnt a lot about housebuses in the time we've lived in ours, especially what to look for when buying one so I thought this could be helpful for anyone out there still dreaming about becoming a bus dweller.
Hmm where to start?
Ok firstly our engine is mounted in the front between the driver and passenger seat which makes travelling extremely noisy. Rear or midbus mounted engines definitely have an advantage over front unless of course your engine is outside under a bonnet.
When we bought ours she had an old Perkins diesel engine which on our second trip proved very expensive and difficult to find parts for. We have since replaced it with an isuzu engine which is cheaper to run aswell as easier to get parts for.

Windows, they may seem insignificant at this stage but spend one cold wet winter or hot summer in your bus and you will soon see that windows have the power to make your bus life hell! Our bus has both fixed and sliding windows mounted in (very) old rubber seals. They leak, they don't let enough air in during summer and they let too much in during winter, to put it nicely they suck! Look for a bus that has large aluminium framed windows that slide open to let in all those summer breezes. If your bus is like ours and the windows are shitty and leak make it a priority to replace them BEFORE you do any other work on inside.

Storage is another big priority. Our bus is lovely and old but she doesn't have any under floor luggage compartments. These are definitely a bonus as it gives you almost twice the amount of storage space especially useful for all your tools, camping gear and all those other things you don't want inside but need to have.

Another thing our bus is lacking is somewhere to store the spare tyre which means every trip we take we have to lug it inside and lay it flat on the floor. We have also nearly lost it when trying to roll it out the door it kept rolling about 800m down the paddock towards a dam. Some buses store their spares up underneath at the back, look for one of those.

Our bus is a 2 door one behind the passenger side front wheel and one behind the rear wheel. This has its positive points as well as negative. I like having 2 exits for safety's sake and in summer i love laying on our bed with the back door open, but having 2 doors reduces the amount of usable space inside. Also the placement of our front door creates a small space where the passenger sits. This could be a nice little nook but in reality it's where everything gets dumped as you walk in the door. Our friends leyland has the door in front of the front wheel which gives them a nice entry space as well as a bigger space for the lounge room.

If you find a bus that you are seriously considering buying, try and check it out on a rainy day. Every bus i have come across leaks somewhere and it is best to know beforehand so you can fix these as soon as possible. Also have a trusted diesel mechanic check out the running gear, engine, electrical and body etc they will be able to tell you what is fixable and what is not.



 

Welcome
A little bit to fill you in.
Black velvet and I bought our 1961 White Super Power bus from an old man named Harry in 1999 and have lived in it ever since. We have made alot of changes to it in that time which i hope to write about in the future but for now we'll just start at where we are up to right now.
At the moment, we are parked in my mums backyard in a town on the midnorth coast of nsw. We have been here for 2 yrs and havent done any work on the bus until quite recently when we finally insulated the roof. (yay!!!!) our next major job will hopefully be the windows (which have always leaked) we want to replace the existing ones with timber framed windows that open outwards.

history of the bus

We have been inhabiting our 1958 white super power bus for 11 years. We bought it for $1500 unregistered from an old man named Harry West who was selling it because he was getting too old to maintain it (he was over 80 and walked with 2 sticks but still managed to change the bus tyres! no easy feat).

The bus was a rusty brownish red colour down the bottom and white on top. Harry had decked it out with toilet, shower, washing machine, double bunks, 3/4 bed, wardrobes, full size kitchen sink and cupboards and the biggest darn fridge i had ever seen.

The view from the front of the bus.

The flooring was carpet on top of the original vinyl squares. Some of the windows had been painted over and had the original rubber seals which all leaked.

the view from the back of the bus looking forward

Our first decision before moving it was to rip everything out and start from scratch. We had to take the door off to get the fridge out and the kitchen bench weighed a ton. We gave away most of the stuff to the other people who were building boats etc in the yard where the bus was parked.
After scraping the windows off and unblocking the drainage holes in the window seals, the inside was looking a bit brighter. My next job was ripping up the carpet and scraping off the original vinyl squares that were underneath. This took 2 days of hammer and chisel work because the vinyl was so old it came off in tiny little peices. In the end i left some on the back steps because i couldn't handle the thought of doing any more . They're still there. The bus was now smelling a lot better no more soggy carpet.
We decided to paint it on the inside before moving in and chose a creamy white colour to reflect the light and make the space look bigger. Its amazing what a coat of paint can do. I ended up painting the window seals as well because they already had paint on them and i figured it might help with the waterproofing. I forgot to mention that when we took all the cupboards etc out we discovered that the walls underneath the windows were made out of masonite and were all swollen and soggy so we took them out and replaced them with aluminium pool surround which looks a bit like mini orb.
Next step getting a road worthy certificate and someone to drive her to the caravan park.