We’re floored. Literally.

Converting a bus into a home is daunting, frustrating, exhausting and down right infuriating. But after this month, we are floored. Literally and emotionally. We have our flooring finally installed in the bus.

One night after work, my wife and I left our children with my mom (they call her Sasha, we don’t know why, but it’s adorable) and we headed up to the bus. Our plan was to sleep at the site and work on the bus the next day.

When we reached the bus it was eight at night. I opened the bus door and used a lantern to light the interior. We had bought a king size foam mattress online, when it came to us in the mail it was vacuum sealed and rolled up tight and resembled a large cinnamon roll. At the moment it was holding down our one piece of plywood flooring that was glued down.

I unrolled our vacuum-sealed cinnamon roll bed. According to the directions, the mattress should inflate to regular size in a matter of minutes. The directions also said that foam mattresses are temperature sensitive, which normally means that when it’s cold outside the bed will be firm at first or if it’s warm outside it will feel softer. However, on this chilly night at the bus, it meant that our mattress was not going to inflate.

Awesome.

So Jenn and I got a hotel room for the night.

Morning came quickly and we met it head-on with Starbucks in one hand and Liquid Nails in the other.

We had already laid one piece of plywood and glued it going back to front rather than side to side. Our thought was that it would help make the bus look longer. As we were cutting and gluing the other pieces, we realized side to side might be better. Luckily, most of these front-to-back pieces would be covered by our bed. The other part would be our storage area, so we wouldn’t see much of the floor anyway.

Laying the flooring side to side actually made working around the wheel well easier than we expected. Before we knew it the bus had flooring and we had a world of possibilities open to us. We can build walls, we can sleep there with the kids, we can build furniture. The bus is our oyster.

Next time on Redefining the American Dream: Was camping at the bus with the kids really the best choice? Wood screws should screw into wood, right? We’re going to need a bathroom in here stat.