Happy Belated Thanksgiving All

I have three floating holidays I have to take before the end of the year (or lose them) so decided I'd take one the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, have Thanksgiving and the day after (regular holidays), Saturday and Sunday (regular days off), and take another floating holiday Monday which is tomorrow and that would give me a week off and not even have to dip into vacation hours. Needless to say I have been working on my bus project.

First of all, to make it a double-decker the overall height can only be 14"...equalling 14' in real life. Actually it was quite interesting. I was surfing the net to find out what a typical double-decker bus was and found out on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Transit the following:

"Community Transit put a double-decker bus into service on August 1, 2007. An Alexander Dennis Enviro500 manufactured by Alexander Dennis Limited, it will be used on commuter routes between Seattle and various points in Snohomish County during its first year in operation. Community Transit is one of three transit agencies that operate double-decker buses in the United States for non-sightseeing purposes, the others being Unitrans of Davis, California and Citizens Area Transit of Las Vegas, Nevada (which operates the "Deuce").
Community Transit has since then ordered 23 additional buses to reduce congestion within the Snohomish County-Seattle Interstate 5 corridor. The first of these 23 will be delivered sometime around 2010."

So I am right in step with progress around here.

Doing some more surfing I found out the overall height was 14' thereby making my miniature needing to be 14". So the kit if made according to the instructions would measure 11 3/8" so I have to do what the miniaturist community calls "bashing." Bashing just means taking a kit and modifying it to make it work for the purpose you want to use it for. I figure I need at least 7" for the first floor and 6 1/2" for the living quarters...I know for my relatives that sounds awful short but not everyone is 6' or over in this world...lol They should be sitting when it is moving and they'll just have to deal with the lower ceiling.

To accomplish this I lowered the first floor. Quite the undertaking I might add but it gained me 1 5/8" that I didn't have before. Measuring and then cutting 30" lengths four times (okay 6 before I was done) took quite a bit of time. Thanksgiving day I cut the floor apart into three pieces using my hands to stabilize the wood...not very effectively I might add. As much I as didn't want to venture out on Black Friday, I found I could order online from Lowe's and they'd have it ready for me to pick up at the customer service desk. I was in and out in 10 minutes. I got a set of 15 clamps ranging in size from 2"-18" for under $20.00. Well worth the dough and saving wear and tear on the ole muscles. This allowed me to make the other 2 cuts with relative ease. Go to glue it together only to find out I hadn't allowed room for the axles and had to recut the two vertical pieces about 1/8" off...least with the clamps it wasn't that difficult but time consuming...lol Below is the glued, puttied, sanded and ready to paint results of my efforts.
The three sections were the original floor. I had to cut that apart and then with the extra wood that surrounds the pieces I was able to get the two vertical pieces that actually drops the floor.

Here is a side view with the driver seat just sitting there to add something different to the photo...lol You can see the wheel support...the cut away section is where the door will be. You can also see the dashboard and wheel. They look purple in the photo but are actually a deep blue. I found a picture of a speedometer, gas and oil gauge online that I can cut out and paste to the dashboard and it was a deep blue so this will match it nicely.

The first floor I don't want the windows because there will be displays against that wall and for whatever reason I felt the bus sides should be reversed. I want the closed side out to the traffic so to speak and the open side towards the side of the road. That required cutting the two sides apart and gluing them back together so that the drivers window and the solid side are one and the door and open side are the other. (If you are confused look at the last post with the pictures of the bus put together and I think you'll know what I'm talking about...if not...wait until the bus is done...lol)
Instead of punching out the windows I put wood putty in the cuts and puttied where the driver's window meets the solid side section.

It may not seem like I got very far but you have to realize that every glue step takes 30 minutes to dry and if I don't just leave it I tend to fidget with it and mess it up so best just to glue and go play Pogo...lol It also takes the wood putty 2 hours to dry to where you can sand it...that was enough time for a nap! It is the holidays after all. Well that's the progress and here's hoping everyone had a good Thanksgiving.

Update

Several people have asked me..."How's construction going?" And my pat answer has been, "It's going." A couple of things have come up.

1. I was waiting for an order to come in with my outlets and eyelets for outlets because I needed those before I could properly measure the wainscoting.

2. Order arrived but now I can't find the piece of wainscoting I painted for the living room because things are so disorganized. So construction stopped organization started.

3. Weather turned cold and the second bedroom - the construction zone had stuff piled in front of the heater so needed to clear that so I could be comfy.

4. Bought two cheap utility type shelves to store the "stuff from in front of the heater" on and another work table.

5. I belong to the Greenleaf blog which is all about miniatures and they were encouraging me to start work on my Garfield. What? Start another house before the other one is finished? Most people on the blog have several going at once so that argument went right out the window.
6. One thing I didn't do with the first house was to make a template of everything. (I was too excited to get to work on it to do that boring step...well now I wish I had.) So I'm doing the Garfield right by making templates. Something that takes a lot of time but doesn't really need pictures to show what I'm doing...it is punching out the pieces and tracing around them on poster board...real exciting stuff...lol

7. Then I get an email from the business I bought my kit from. They have contests throughout the year and the next one is going to be, "Get on the Bus." The email included a discount of 50% off on the bus. (Shown below)

Now their contests have some great prizes such as $1000.00 gift certificate at their online store. And generally all entrants get some kind of thank you for entering type prize. Well 50% off and a chance to win how could I pass that up???? So my focus has now changed to thinking about what I can do with the bus.

Began surfing the net for ideas, asked my co-workers and friends and came up with making a miniature mobile classroom. For those who have been to my office you would know I love wolves. I have a bulletin board plastered with all kinds of pictures of wolves. I have a plaque of a wolf, my calendar is of wolves, I have coffee mugs with wolves...basically I collect wolves! So one of my staff (thanks Tim) suggested doing a mobile classroom devoted to the education of wolves. BINGO!!!!!

I'm thinking of making it a double-decker and having the living quarters on the top and the classroom on the first level. So how big is this project? The bus measures 30"W x 11 3/8"H x 9 1/4"D so it is no small structure especially making it a double-decker!!!!! But what fun! I have the capability of making water decals on my printer so figured I can get pictures off the net, put them on decals and the bus will have a custom paint job really easy.

Well that's what I've been up too along with work which has been extremely busy...with several 12 hour days. I swear I should have taken some law classes with investigations, documentation and dealing with lawyers, police, fire department etc. Hate it when real life interferes with my working on my miniatures...lol But the job pays for the fun of working on my mini's so guess I'd best keep it a while longer;) Until next time...