We have been working on installing the floor and we have the main section completed tonight.

I still have to paint and reassemble the driver’s area of the floor with sound deadener and seal the gap between the engine and the cowling of the bus compartment. 

Last week Mellie and I went to Billings to get Kyle and Zack at the airport and looked at some flooring shops to see if anyone had Marmoleum locally.

Everything in the store was fake looking wood vinyl type planking.  And very expensive at that.  The salesman was a little haughty when I mentioned nothing had any real color and suggested I go look at Home Depot. I sort of had my heart set on some linoleum sheet flooring with the colored flecks that go all the way through the material because I won’t have to worry about gaps and damage with pieces flooring. The salesman said “that’s not the direction the market is going.” Apparently the market is going towards ugly fake wood with no color or originality. 

Aside from the actual floor, I am planning on making a shelf that conceals the curtain track on the bottom, and has open shelf storage above.  I plan on making the front of the shelf have some decorative trim or other embellishment and have thought about mosaic tiles so I also looked at the tile section, and sadly, found this gorgeous sample:

Once the salesman gave me the price on that, I mentioned again that I was really looking for sheet flooring.  He then mentioned that he heard a rumor that their sister store, the World Famous Carpet Barn, had some rolls of marmoleum on closeout.

So I decided to check it out.

I had already priced marmoleum and figured with the amount I’d need, it would cost about $1800.  This was the color I was hoping to use on the floor:

 I walked in and saw a remnants section.  They DID have a small piece of marmoleum, about 80 square feet, in a bright yellow color.

A salesman came over to assist me and I told him what I was looking for.  He listened, and said, “well, I do have this…” And lede to the back of the store where three rolls of linoleum sheet flooring was lying on the floor, dusty…

Apparently, they had had it a while.  It wasn’t in their system, and no one was sure what it cost.

“Tell your boss I’ll give him $50 for the roll,” I joked to the salesman, “Cash money.”  He had a far better attitude than the guy at the upscale store.

He kinda chuckled, but then he said, “Let me check,” and went to give my offer to his boss.

He came back a few minutes later and said, “He’ll take $175.”

Compared to almost $2k, the color is close enough! So I figured out how to get a 500 lb roll of linoleum home.

We got most of the flooring pieces cut yesterday, and laid up to the wheel wells from the back last night.  It took a while to figure out how to put a durable edge at the rear entrance to the bus.  We came up with this solution: two pieces of extruded aluminum which we will cover with the linoleum, and put a grippy rubber stair tread on top.

Today, we got all the way to the front before we ran out of glue.

Ideas for labelling my spices in the rack.

“Thyme” to go for now. 😉