TheCrabsHomestead

Stage 6: Removing Ceiling Panels & Insulation

Later in the week, we tackled Stage 6 of Operation Chitty Bang, which was Removing the Ceiling Panels and the Fiberglass Insulation. I don’t know which part has been the most strenuous so far, the seats, the floor, the sanding, or this one. Most of the screws came out with a drill gun without a problem, but others needed to be banged/pried out with two hammers and brute strength 🙂 I let my professional Grunt tackle that part if it came to it! The panels were sharp on the edges and heavy. We wore gloves to help handle them when we got them down and to chuck them out of the back of the bus. I definitely recommend wearing shoes/boots here too as it can slide over your foot while pushing/kicking it out the door. We were able to toss the panels later on into our dog kennel cage area where we have been storing the other scrap metal. When you have kids/animals, someone/something will get hurt if you have sharp crap hanging around. That is just the way it is!! 🙂 LOL

I forgot to take a before pic of the roof, but you can find some pics in my previous posts with the roof in it.

Oh the itchiness that is in our future! Pic from rear to front, Crab taking a quick break after we ripped down the metal roofing.

Pic from front to back. After we tore out the metal roofing (Tip: Wear Gloves, shoes. Heavy pieces of metal and sharp sides!) We also filmed the work we did removing the panels, which will be in a time lapse video we will upload soon!

After the panels came out, I grabbed two big totes we weren’t using, and brought them aboard the Chitty Bang. We pulled each piece of insulation out and stuffed them into the totes for easier clean up. Holy Cow did I regret not wearing long sleeves! We also wore masks to prevent breathing in the fiber glass particles.

Some of the insulation stayed stuck to the ceiling, so Crab decided to sand it down. We are thinking of painting the ceiling with an radiant barrier paint. I hear Hy-Tech makes a good one, but I need to do more research on that one. Here is a before sanding pic:

After ripping off the fiberglass insulation, some was still stuck to the roof, no matter how much we tried to scrape it off with our gloved hands:) — We removed the door “head bumper guard” and the device the door was attached to so we could remove this ceiling panel.

Starting progress of removing the pieces of fiberglass from the roof. Crab did 99% of this as my arms were smoked from holding the sander after about a minute of doing it lol. Starting back to front.

Voila! Front to back pic of the now clean ceiling:)

Removed the “bumpers” from the back of the bus and Crab sanded down the Emergency Exit Letters and where an old sign was above that.

After we finished everything to do with insulation, we used the leaf blower again and blew the bus out really well. We figured we might as well get all the itchy stuff out while we were already covered in it! I definitely wanted to be done with this project ASAP!! It took all afternoon, but it is completed!

Next will be Stage 7…..Not sure what we will be doing next though. There are a couple of things we can do here at our homestead, like paint the exterior of the bus, replace the flashers with clear LED lights (got this idea from the Skoolie Converters Facebook page to use at night at tour camp site!) or paint the ceiling with radiant barrier. We are currently trying to trade for a nice welder right now so we can fill the holes on the floor instead of using bondo (we were told the floor can still rust from underneath where the holes were b/c bondo is not water repellant). But our electrician friend and Jimbo live near each other (about 5 hours from us) and they both know welders who will trade for work (I LOVE BARTERING!) so we are trying to figure out if we should just go ahead and go there with Chitty Bang to get the welding done, and the electrical stubbed out. We want to have the electrical done before we put up the ceiling/flooring insulation and frame it all out. So, I will post once we decide what the next step is!

UPDATE: Stage 7:The Rust Double Tap

Editing Our Life Series