days 19-22 ish? - seat!

Sorry for the lack of bus posts. I've been in a grumpy mood in regards to the bus because lots of things weren't going smoothly and I felt like I wasn't getting anything done when I worked on it. I probably had a few days of puttering with the sheet metal, trying to plug holes in the past two weeks. We will call those 19 and 20, though I'm sure there was more. 

Beyond puttering with the sheet metal I did accomplish something excellent which was building the passenger seat! I had been planning to buy a bucket seat for the passenger but I was getting frustrated by Craigslist, because I'd have to go get it, the seats available weren't that cute and they were more expensive than I wanted ($100ish). I also was planni to buy a new seat belt because most used seats don't come with full seatbelt setup plus it seemed safest to buy a new one. The seatbelt was $60. I got an orange one!

Back to the seat, I did a bit of internet (skoolie forums mostly) on rv seats and realized a lot of rv people add seatbelts to their existing bench seating for extra safety. Most times legally only the driver and passenger have to have a belt but some folks prefer to add a belt for other people in the rv. This got me thinking why not just add a belt to a chair? I also was assembling an ikea chair during work and  realized how it's simple, blocky design would be great for the bus! The chair was like $300 on ikea and a bit bigger than I wanted, but it was so simply built I figured I should just make one custom to my needs. Those needs included a storage box in the seat, a small profile and the ability to have it face forward for driving and backwards for tabling. 

Here is my design. It breaks into three parts- storage box, seat and back. 

I built the wood structure in one day with scrap wood from work. I was able to upholster it in two days with a bit of time after work, during breaks and a few hours my boss was nice enough to let me work on it during work. For this project I bought the foam new but everything else (including the awesome orange velvet) was stuff from work I was able to salvage or given. A Craigslist seat probably would have been $100 and still needed to be re upholstered, so I think this was a grand success.