Climb aboard the DreamWeaver Train!

[DreamWeaverBus]

SO! This has been a LONG time coming. I've been planning for my Skoolie project for three years while my broke waitress butt spun her wheels for a while saving up.
But FINALLY... August 31rst, I put a down payment on my bus! And Sept. 11, 2018, I finally bring her home!!!

Why have I waited so long to post? Well, the last month has been nuts. Sorry yall. I had a friend call me a couple days before I got my bus, needing my help and company, and THIS happened to be the ONE friend for whom I would leave behind my newly bought bus RIGHT after I drove it home, to come hang with her. So I did. And came home a week later. And then had to rest for 3 days.

And then me and Grampa took ALL the seats out *'cept one just for sitting, we'll take it out soon, it's the little one person seat in the back lol* in SIX HOURS!!! We lubed them up from beneath the bus and inside the bus a day or two before, made a BIG difference, used an impact driver Grampa's brother had recently loaned him to do it. Only had to use the angle grinder on SEVEN bolts in ALL the seats!

Then I had to rest again, got sick. Plus, I'm working on some other things at the same time... It's just been a little nuts. But really, things couldn't be better. I have my bus!! I HAVE THE DREAMWEAVER BUS!!! And I have the time to savor this experience too, take it slow, at least for a little bit. Life has changed a LOT this summer for me. Very transformative.

So I DO apologize for taking so long to get to this post! Pics to follow as soon as I resize them so they're smaller than 2MB!! LOL Most of the pics my camera takes are 5MB or more in size, I can't even send more than a couple pics by EMAIL if I took them on my camera... *smh*

[DreamWeaverBus]

OK! Manually resized all my pictures so I could upload them!
1. The as yet unpainted face of the DreamWeaver Bus! Still in the lot at Swansea!
2. The name is permanent, but the paint job is temporary! lol
3. Disembarking after first drive home! It was not NEARLY so difficult as I'd been worrying! Me and Grampa took turns and got about half the ride home each! Which was only 2 hours!
4. Stairwell aint bad, but it will probably get some TLC anyway.
5. That's me, noting how tall the ceiling is. (Because I forgot to bring a measuring tape Omg...)
6. 71 passengers, 11 tinted windows, 37 feet long, 29 feet interior home space!
7. Yeah, dat rust, I see it.... I have yet to get to the floor, but almost there... But this bus came with a sister bus from Ashland MO, which was similar condition, I got this one because all the tires were within 2014 though, the other one had some that were dated 2012...
8. They replaced the light cover for me! I took this at the lot to take notice, but when I brought it home they'd fixed it!

[DreamWeaverBus]

1. Not too bad around the back door, right? I also love that I have a grate over the bottom window! Take THAT would be thieves and vandals!
2. The batteries!
3. Back tires!!
4. Look at that GRIT! Stick your thumb in those treads!!
5. DOT 2414
6. Drive tires!
7. This is a weird tread, never seen one like it before... Kinda neat tho...
8. DOT 0114

[DreamWeaverBus]

1. So here's my seats, good condition! *they're actually being deconstructed for scrap metal today*
2. We've gone from this:
3. To this, in 6 hours!
4. We also got the rung above the windows off, underneath them were the wires for the ceiling lights and radios, side and rear lights.
5. TONS of screws in the ceiling! Using a philips, Grampa and I would loosen the screws from the paint, and follow up with an electric drill. Assuming I didn't strip the screws, it was fine. But I often did! lol so I'd mark them with a pencil. Grampa would follow with hammer and chisel and I'd put on the earmuffs! Then they'd often come out ok. We didn't have to use the angle grinder on these.
6. I LOVE the look of my ceiling! I don't even think I'll need to use rustoleum on this! Just clean it from the rest of the insulation still sticking to it! *Unless yall still recommend a total layer of rustoleum on the interior? Well, I haven't got the interior naked yet, I guess we'll see once I've got everything out..*
7. Close up of my drivers side wire bundle. I think this side I will mostly leave in except for the camera security system. The wires on the passenger side are mostly radio and interior lights, though I did notice a few lights running for exterior top lights. Any suggestions on how I protect these wires from future spray foam? Can I just tape them down and spray right over them? What if I have problems in the future? I won't wanna tear into my spray foam to get at them right?...

[DreamWeaverBus]

1. Okay so YES, here's some unfortunate news. DW has her wheelwells rusted clean through to daylight on both sides, not all the way round but in one or two spots each. My thought was to attack it with rust buster, then patch over it with good metal. Either by screwing it down with caulk and rubber washers and such or getting it welded.
2. We have a local welder whom I talked to about getting my ceiling panels cut and welded over the windows I'll take out in the back. He told me that by the time he'd taken to treat the metal (hammer out flat, *but it's not that curved, just at the edges...* remove paint, cut, etc.) I'd have saved myself the money he'd have to charge me for that labor by buying new metal. He recommended to me to just Cut the metal and screw it in, since I plan on using spray foam insulation it would seal it off anyway. What do you think? I don't think I have the material to cut metal but Grampa has the tools to drill the panels in. But that's for the windows, I still think having a professional welder cut and patch these holes once I'd treated it with rust buster would be best, don't you? Especially since, how my floor plan is looking, I might have both my bathroom areas right there on top of them.
3. So here's where we're running into our first deconstruction problem. The walls. Looks good underneath! Like the ceiling so far, in the ONE panel he got off this morning.
4. We pulled the other panel aside a bit so we could get this off.
5. Grampa got at it with a THICK iron prybar but this thing won't come out!! How do we get these off? This is our problem...
6. Chair rung near the bottom of the wall...
7. How a window looks when not unscrewed...
8. Tilt your head to the left and you see it upright, the side of the window wall. How do we get these things off?

[DreamWeaverBus]

Finally we have these heaters in the floor. Those need to come out. Grampa reckons we gotta go to the engine and find the pipes and wires running out to them, cut them off and plug them up, and take them out.

I just found this thread this morning: http://www.skoolie.net/forums/f13/re...nes-16460.html

So I'm gonna read through it and we'll prolly get our answer to this problem in there won't we?

[Ninjakitty]

I'd keep the one upfront so you can have a defroster for your windshield.

[DreamWeaverBus]

We already took both of them out... I think we still have heat in the front for the driver's area tho, we just put a U of pipe on the ends of the hoses.