Today we're going to be talking about
the 1948 Ford F5 school bus
that I found abandoned in the forest.
And it'd been there for over 25 years
until I found it and began the restoration.
It's surprising how creepy
and decrepit the bus looked when we found it.
It was completely covered in a thick blanket of moss,
had lots of ferns growing off of it,
and there was even branches and everything
that had come down over the years,
so you could hardly even see it deep in the forest.
But I knew it was something special when we saw it,
and it needed to be saved.
My favorite part of the entire restoration
would probably be the fact
that this used to be a church bus,
and I was able to discover that
with the painting on the outside
and was able to contact the prior church
that is a 125-year-old Christian church
still in operation, one of the oldest
Christian churches on the West Coast.
Now, when it came to cleaning the bus out,
the first step was literally to get the live rats
that were living in the bus out of it.
So once all the rats were out of it,
then I had to clean up all their nests
and the feces and everything.
It was several inches deep
with rat poop and garbage.
And then we got it to where
we were ready to pressure wash it
and start washing the outside and inside of the bus.
The bus, I guess from a previous owner,
had installed a cast-iron claw-foot bathtub
in the back of it. It was all framed in.
Did a pretty good job, but over the years,
the rats had taken home in it and messed it up,
so I literally had to rip all of that stuff out.
For the deconstruction part of the inside,
I had to use hammers and pry bars
and tear some of that construction apart.
Even had to break out the Sawzall
and cut through some of that lumber
to get that stuff out of here.
Ultimately, I did come back
with some sanitation solution
and went back and really cleaned the inside
and really decontaminated the whole inside,
sterilizing everything.
Now, the outside of the bus when we found it
was covered in moss and ferns
and small trees, even on the top,
but once we started washing it
and pulling that stuff off,
it came off fairly easy,
and underneath, it looked great.
The paint was still holding up all those years.
And then once we pressure washed it,
then me and the family,
my girls and my wife, went out there
and hand-washed the whole thing, top to bottom.
Most of that came off with the rake
and pressure washing and just pulled right off of there.
There were some stubborn spots on the hood
that were really bad, and there was a product,
a company that had been helping me before, Super Clean,
and they'd sent me some degreaser
and a little bit of that solution,
and just a little bit of elbow grease and scrubbing,
and that all came off.
The engine bay actually was a giant rats' nest.
It went from the ground
all the way up through the engine bay
all the way up to where you couldn't even
close the hood anymore, and there was rats
actively living in it when I found it.
And they would run out when I'd start cleaning,
and then I just had to get all their sticks
and nesting out of there.
Ultimately, I brought out a generator and Shop-Vac
and got in there and just cleaned out
all of that debris that was in there,
getting all that rat nest out of there.
Now, this whole process
of getting the bus out of the forest
and back on the road driving again,
it's probably taken about a year and a half or so,
and now I'm driving the bus regularly,
and it's a blast.
Now, as far as the interior goes and restoring that,
we've still got a long ways to go.
I mean, for the most part it's in good shape,
but all the seats and everything had been removed.
But down the road, I think we're going to keep
working on the interior and keep making improvements.
After I discovered that it used to be their bus
and that they were still in operation,
it was wonderful to reach out and contact the pastor.
He had told me that they were watching the videos
and that there was one member,
an 87-year-old woman named Mary,
that used to ride the bus as a child,
and her dad would drive it.
So I decided that I was going to make a reunion trip
with the bus back to the church,
and that took us a 400-mile roundtrip
back to the old Stafford Baptist Church.
And we had a reunion, it was a great day,
and I met with Mary,
and she told me the story of her dad driving the bus,
and she would sit right behind him.
So that was my favorite part,
was making that whole history come full circle
and learning more about the bus.