Tag Archives: Flooring

Kitchen floor needs to be fixed.

27/06/2018 Bernie Cross

Ripping Up Kitchen Floor

One step closer to finishing the floor for good. After the kitchen floor there will be only the front to do. But now the fun bit of pulling up the old floor, they keep using too much glue on one side again.

Two side’s???

There are two side to every bus and on this bus one side the floor is glued down way more than the other. The driver’s side had always been the painful one to rip up. I’ve started on the easy side even though I know it’s better to do the crappy job’s first.

First off I’ll have to pull up the rubber floor.

Ripping up more flooring this time the kitchen.

Now the hard side

So I’ve had to cut the old floor ply into little pieces just to get it up, the floor that is!!! One bit at a time I had to pry up and scrap off the glue.

I’m having to cut the flooring into small bit’s to get it up.

New ply time

Next I’ll have to cut off the old seat rail that runs down both side’s of the bus so I can fit the new floor sheets into place.

Just have to cut off the old seat rail now.

Now all I have to do is cut the new flooring to size and screw and glue it into place. Yes glue and lots of it as I’m not going to be pulling it up ever again.

After this I’ll only have the floor down the front to finish, so I’m looking forward to that day. The next job though will be vent’s in the wall for the fridge.

Motorhome fit out

Time to fix that roof leak

29/12/2017 Bernie Cross

Leaking under the top deck

Thank goodness that I’ve been able to park the coach undercover for this job as there has been raining on and off. The Showgrounds have let us use one of the sheds for three weeks, thank you.

Now the fun begins

After trying to get the decking up and failing to do so, as I’d done a too good of a job gluing it down. Great! I had to come up with another solution.

Going over the top of the deck and sealing it instead, this way I can lay down some tiles to finish it off.

Time to seal it up

For some reason the Sikaflex didn’t stick between the decking boards. So after scraping it all out I troweled in some bitumen putty to take its place. The next step was three coats of bitumen paint to go over the decking boards. After the bitumen paint had dried the next day I got the fire hose out and flooded the area for one hour with no water leaking any more.

Now the tile underlay goes down, after cutting it to size. A box of nails later it’s all in place ready for the wet area under tile waterproofing.

The deck painted with bitumen waterproofing paint.

Next will be cutting the reinforcing bandage with bond-breaker for the edges. This will stop any damage to the waterproofing membrane if there is any movement.

Reinforcing bandage just to make it boom proof.

Now to start wet area tile waterproofing.

The under-tile waterproof membrane just paint on nice and easy thank goodness, so after going over the bandage and nail first. Then it was time for the first coat of three.

Next blog will be about the tile set out and the gluing of them in place, with all the other fiddle bits to finish it off.

Motorhome fit out

The Bedroom Floor

11/05/2017 Bernie Cross

Motorhome Madness

We started working on the coach when we were down in Leigh Creek which was around two years ago now. I started by stripping out the old toilet down the back as this is where we would like the bedroom to go.

We started pulling things apart and should have know as a past chippy myself, that the job was bigger than we originally thought. As I started taking the loo apart I realised that it had been leaking for quite a while, (how long no one knows)….. not outside, just under the floor so their were pools of slop and rust under the timber flooring. YUCK!

Just a bit wet and rusty under the old loo.

Clean up time

Some days you think to your self ……why did I start this motorhome project? …… but then, envisioning the big picture …..it’s going to be our permanent home. The though of not having to pack up a house ever again makes these shitty jobs bearable.

So we started grinding the rust off and sanding the metal back which was a bit like a chemical shit storm in the coach, thank goodness for dust masks! After the dust had settled and was cleaned up in was time for some painting.

No more rust and first coat of paint to stop the rust coming back

Water proofing the floor

It might be over kill but bugger it, we though even if the roof leaks we know the floor is not going to rust again. So I used some polyurethane floor paint inside the back floor, with two coats before the flooring went down.

The floor is now water proof so no more rust

Flooring getting laid

Now the fun bit cutting up the timber to size, we are putting in a flat floor so the old aisle will no longer be there. We will however be able to use it as storage in some places and ducting in some other areas. Screwing as well as gluing the floor went down just fine. We will be having an access point to get into the gearbox under the gas strutted bed.