We bought our bus in late August, 2019. Living in the northeast, in the state of New Hampshire, we knew we were going to be short on time before we had to put the bus up for the winter. Our winters can be brutal sometimes, but we usually get “feet” of snow in some variation or another. An average year for us is between 4 and 5 feet of snow over the course of the season. We didn't expect anything different this year. However, life changed as we all know it in the end of 2019.
We'd completed the gutting of the bus, taking out the seats and subfloor taking everything down to the pan. The walls and side ceilings were removed, the old insulation was taken out and we realized we had work to do on the floor. I'd heard that our type of bus was notorious for leaks. We found out that was true. It leaked around certain windows and there were some heavy rust spots in places, we knew that part of the pan would have to be replaced and we put in a plan for a project for that for the next Spring.
We parked the bus for the winter and went on with life, a project started but nowhere near complete.
At the end of 2019 the world receives the news of a worldwide pandemic on the make, no reasons, no answers, stay tuned to learn more. As the next few months progressed into 2020 we realized life had changed. Lockdowns and masks, sickness and fear, lies and untruths and no more trust for anything. Shelves in the stores became bare, including our local hardware and lumber yards. There were no supplies, our bus project was put on hold. At least the build out portion.
We did, however, continue to do research, get quotes for work we didn't know how to do, and, we watched another multitude of build out videos so we could learn and hone in our personal crafts for this crazy project of ours.
As the new year rolled around and things began to loosen up, stores reopened, people went back to work, it was time to restart our project. Only now, everything, I mean everything…3 times the cost. Our budget was blown, we'd have to become very creative to accomplish anything. We did know this…we're very resourceful. We believe in barter, in working hard, and we both believe in continuous learning, which is a trait that has come in very handy.
In the next post we'll talk about some of the decisions we made to cut costs without cutting quality to restart our project. FRED is still a project ongoing, we will get this skoolie finished, it's just going to take a little longer to get it done. There's nothing we could have done to stop the world and let us off, escaping the over reach of lock downs and trying to figure out how to stay healthy. But as I said, we're resourceful and we've found a path that we believe will let us continue, we may have to change a few things, we may need to wait some things out, but we'll get there eventually and hopefully sooner than later. It's now the Fall of 2021, we're back in action, but our winter is upon us again.
Wish us luck, we have determination, knowledge and patience, and a new budget…yikes!