I'm not sure exactly how to present all this stuff! On this page are a bunch of drawings I did for what I thought at the time was the layout we were going to utilize. Then I did the "quickie" conversion for our vacation trip and using that layout convinced us that we really wanted to have the shop area right at the back of the bus; of course, that meant a major change in the overall layout. Because I did so much work on the drawings for the early layout I thought I'd leave them on this page for information and ideas; click HERE to move to that part of this page.
Final layout
I'll add more drawings of our final layout as I get them done.
Some comments about the final layout...
There are two major things that drove the layout shown here; the first was the desire to get the workshop located at the back of the bus and the second was the location of the rear wheel wells protruding into the bus. The location of the wheel wells dictated where the shower, bathroom, or passageway couldn't be since the toilet needs to be positioned directly above the waste tank (as does the shower) and we didn't want to have to walk up and over the wheel well hump in a passageway placed to one side. I can't honestly say how many iterations of this 'rear workshop' plan I went through; it was many! I was trying to balance requirements for seating (we definitely want to be able to seat four comfortably), decent counter space in the kitchen (since we are going to be living in this bus), an "open" feel, and the workshop. I really wanted a queen-sized fixed bed but I finally had to give that up in able to make everything else work. I placed the two 30" x 75" single beds directly across from each other; the mattress platforms are mounted to the underlying cabinets (bed bases) on heavy-duty slides. When on the road the twin bunks will be fine and when parked we'll be able to slide each bed out away from the side where they'll meet in the middle and form a queen-sized bed. In this configuration they'll only impeded access to the workshop which has its own access door at the rear of the bus from the porch. In really bad weather (when one doesn't want to make the outside trip to the rear door) it won't take much to slide the beds out of the way to clear the passage; in fact, it may be so easy that we'll tend to slide the beds out to the side every morning even when stationary for a while.
I also wanted to be able to have another couple spend the night with us if the occasion arose (I've got two sisters who, along with their husbands, like to travel too). I had to really put on the 'ole thinking cap to work in another double bed. That finally happened by placing two couches directly across from each other up forward; they essentially work the same way the rear singles-to-queen conversion does except this forms a 54" wide double bed with the occupants sleeping across the bus rather than lengthwise. Since the toilet is in the middle of the bus it's available to everyone even with the beds extended.
