The decision we soon reached was that we wanted something we could stand up in, and we wanted a camper interior, the perfect bus seemed to be an SO 42 with a pop top, so that's what we targeted our search on.
We soon bought a fresh off the boat, "dry state" bus that suited us down to the ground, it had some battle scars, but part of the deal was a repaint. It wasn't in original paint, and was wearing a poor paint job from the states, so that seemed ideal.
Here are the first pic we saw
The interior was like this
It came with a fair bit of history:
Originally went to California
Ended its US days in Wyoming
Original Handbook, a bit water damaged
It then had some work
Lots of polishing got the windows looking OK
A couple of months later we went to collect the bus, now lowered a little to fit in our garage, converted to 12v and wearing its new colour scheme titian and beige grey. The interior was incomplete, but in my naivety I thought we could find them reasonably easily- little did I know I would spend the next 5 years looking for parts from Europe and the US
Once we got it home, it was looking OK, and the garage was tidy at this point!
It then had a makeover courtesy of Joanne and Steve at the Trimshack
New floor and various parts of the interior started to arrive that I had tracked down, during the course of the first few years I bought 3 part complete interiors to make one good one, Chewie generously donated a badly damaged iceboX that I managed to fashion into a cupboard until much later when I got my hands on a half decent one
More next time
