Renovations and kids don’t mix

Anyone can go camping, but it takes a certain type of family to go camping in a bus.

My wife, Jenn, and I have been hard at work turning an old school bus into a home. It’s been a long and trying process at times. Ultimately though, it’s been rewarding. We are so close that we can see the finish line, but there are still so many obstacles.

In hopes to make some progress, I took time off of work to focus on the bus. We packed up the kids and headed to the site for a short camping trip.

We’ve put down flooring and insulated the walls. On our bus to-do list is to add wall panels over the insulation, build a bed frame, and to build a half wall to separate our living area from our storage area. Here’s how the weekend went:

DAY ONE

Campfires and s’mores. We got to the bus rather late and the kids really wanted to make them so we made a fire and toasted some marshmallows.

DAY TWO

Do you know what’s more distracting than children? Nothing. So we send the children out of the bus to play in hopes that we can get work done.

“Mom!” One of them yells.

We handle the issue and continue our work installing the first wall panel.

“Mom, I’m hungry,” the other child yells into the bus.

“We just ate!” I reply.

“I’m starving,” the other child moans.

We tell them as soon as the panels are installed we will go to Chic-fil-A and get lunch. We think, “we’re so clever this should buy us some time.” We were wrong.

We get half of the bus done before giving into our kids’ demands. We take them to eat, they fill up on waffle fries and nuggets, then we head back to the bus where we’re ultimately able to finish the job.

DAY THREE

This is the day we get the mattress off the floor by building a platform bed frame. We use 2-by-4s because we have kids, who have learned nothing from injured monkeys and their doctor’s advice, so the likelihood of bed-jumping is high.

We measure and cut the wood, and are ready to build. The children, however, are not. They refuse to go outside and play. They refuse to play a game or watch something on the phone.

This makes it incredibly difficult to build a frame. In between the children’s grumpiness we try to put our first screw in. We drill a pilot hole but hit a problem when we try to put the screw in. Halfway into the board, the screw gets stuck. Try as we might the wood screw would not do its job. We change out the drill bit and get the screw in a little further, but not all the way. So frustrating.

We call it quits and cool things off with a shake. It wasn’t as productive as we had hoped (is it ever?) so we return a few days later — sans children — and finish the frame. It turns out I drilled too small of a pilot hole. The frame goes together easily. It’s sturdy and will more than likely hold up to our monkeys jumping on the bed.

Next time on Redefining the American Dream: It’s a race to the finish. We have to move out, we have no walls, no bathroom and no kitchen. Will we finish in time? Will we catch a break? Will we chicken out? All this and more. Same bus time. Same bus article.