days 8 and 9

Today's bus work didn't go quite as I'd planned but was pretty successful none the less. I'd planned for this weekend to be the big roof raise but between having trouble tracking down some materials and schedules not meshing I decided to push it back another week. Hopefully next weekend the roof will be one foot taller.

Day 8 was a short bit of bus work. I ordered the 1" box steel I need for the roof raise a few days ago but unfortunately the steel store is only open 7:30 am to 4:30 pm on weekdays and it was a crazy busy week at work so the silent partner wasn't able to go during his lunch break (he has an hour break, I have a half hour) like we hoped. Instead I got up bright and early and went before work. Luckily the silent partner has a pickup I could borrow so I didn't have to drive the bus.

Today (day 9) I just ran a few errands for bus stuff. First stop was Urban Ore, an awesome salvage store here in Berkeley. I've been going there every few weeks to browse their sinks and there have been two sinks jumping out at me each week, both pretty small, both around 1'-6" square. One was cast iron with a pink enamel on it and the other was a stainless steel. I really like them both but decided they were probably a tad too small. Also at Urban Ore I checked out skylights and sheet metal. Nothing perfect but it was good to check.

Next the silent partner and I went over to a restaurant supply store to look for food grade water tanks. No luck with the water tanks but we did discover some stainless steel pans that I realized I could totally turn into a sink! The pan I got is around 1'-6" x 2' which I think will be a great size for the sink.

Next stop was Home Depot! We got all kinds of goodies there (well, mostly the silent partner. The tool isles are dangerous.) First stop was sheet metal. I'd found some 1' wide steel flashing that came in 25' rolls, sounded perfect but I was worried it may be too thin of a gauge. Turns out it was perfect! I picked up two rolls to cover the 1' gap I'll be making when I raise the roof.

Next I checked out the insulation. Before hand I looked online at what Home Depot has in the ways of 1" ridged insulation. I want to use 1" because the framing of the bus is made of 1" steel so the insulation will be sitting in between the framing. The 1" ridged insulation at Home Depot comes in two flavors, a cheaper bead foam that has around a 4 insulation rating and the nicer foam has insulation rating of 6. The cheaper foam costs $10.50 a sheet and the nice foam is $20 a sheet. I need to do a little more research about what those ratings mean. Since the space is so small I'm hoping maybe I can get away with the thinner insulation. 

After that we wandered over to sink hardware and picked up a drain for the new sink pan. We took a peek at faucets as well but decided that would be better purchased at a salvage store. 

My last stop was pop rivets. My dad pointed out that it would probably be best to use steel rivets. No flimsy aluminum. At Home Depot they only had steel rivets available in a variety pack that had various lengths of both steel and aluminium rivets. Rather than buy a bunch of stuff I don't want I'm going to wait and order some steel rivets from a hardware supply company that we order from at work. 

Tomorrow the silent partner and I are going to pop over and do a little more bus work and drop off the materials I've collected in the past few days. 

♥

mer.