And on today's episode...
ChickFix gets crushed by a bus.
Where we're going, we don't need roads.
So Alex and I came out over the weekend to get a few things done, the first of which...
We wanted to get this lock put in, which we did.
It took a little bit of effort to get some screws that were long enough
to actually go through all this metal. Took a few trips to Home Depot but we did manage to do it.
And the other thing was to get all of the seats loose in order to get them pulled out.
And we experimented with a few different ways to do that. I started off by trying to just use the
impact driver on the bolts from the top, just to see if they would come out. A few of them broke off,
but it really wasn't an effective way to do it, because there's a nut holding it
underneath the bus. So then Alex tried to use the angle grinder on it, and it works, but it's
really not a very efficient way of getting rid of them, and we kind of just resigned ourselves
to the fact that the best way to do it is for one of us to crawl underneath the bus,
hold the nut in place, while the other person drills it out with the impact driver.
There we go!
There's actually a really surprising amount of space underneath this bus.
I was actually able to sit up straight in a lot of areas.
You know, in my life, out of all the places I never thought I would find myself,
underneath a school bus is probably at the top of the list.
Up until you get to about the middle of the bus,
where there's a lot of tanks and pipes and things in your way, so that got a little bit
trickier, and my core muscles are killing me today, but we were able to actually get most of them
out this way and it really took maybe an hour, hour and a half, to get all of those bolts out.
Yay!
(spitting) Gross.
It's done, it's out. did it break off no throw the window
(Alex) Did it break off?
Nope.
Try the window (side)
(Alex) Okay.
(Alex) All right!
Oh, I'm gonna need the biggest shower ever after this.
We did still have to use the angle grinder on a few of them,
and then of course they're also attached to the side of the bus, so we had to loosen those as well.
But in the end, it only took us about two and a half hours to get
all of those seats completely loose. We were pretty d*mn happy about that.
Now the funny thing though is: this bus seemed pretty clean when we first walked into it,
until we started taking the seats out, and then it got really gross, really quick.
So now the question becomes: what do we do with all these old seats? They're not really in any kind
of a sellable condition, they're pretty beat up. I would love to be able to take the metal at least
to a scrap yard. The butt of the seat actually pops off really easily, it just has two little
latches, you turn them 90 degrees, and you pop the whole thing right off. The back of the seat,
however, is actually stapled on, and to get them off is going to be a lot of effort. So I'm hoping
that I can find a metal scrap yard that will actually take them with the back still attached.
(airplane overhead)
There's like nothing around here. Why is it so loud?
(gunshots heard) Well one reason is that the sheriff's office is right over there,
and they have an outdoor shooting range so you're going to hear gunfire a lot out here (more gunshots)
All right, so today is the day that we are going to try to get rid of all of the seats in there.
We stopped by the scrap metal yard on the way here, and they want to see one of the seats first,
just to make sure that the ratio of metal to the cushion and the vinyl is appropriate for them.
All right so it turns out we're good to go, so we're gonna take the bus
over there and chuck everything out the back, and yeah, we'll be good to go. We can actually
start an account there. They're not paying much for scrap metal right now. Tt's really only about
five bucks per pound. Sorry, NOT five bucks per pound...that would be awesome!
Five bucks for a *hundred* pounds, and since the cushions take up about 25 of the weight,
they won't pay us for that portion.
So, off we go!
So we're on the way to the scrap yard (things falling)
Be careful with this metal, right?
I am.
I don't want your head to get chopped off.
I appreciate that babe! Love you!
Did you ever have one of those moments where you kind of look around you,
at the situation you're in, and think:
What the f*ck am I doing?
A lot more space in here now.
Still got a couple seats that we didn't take out, probably should have, but that's all right.
We'll do it on the next round
We can't actually give them the the base, or the butt part, of the seats,
because there's plywood in it, and they won't take anything with plywood. And there's
really no metal in them, so we have to still take those to the dump, unfortunately. But we got rid of
a lot of metal today, which is fantastic, and we actually even made a little bit of money.
What did he say?
(Alex) Total is $42.
42 bucks! Instead of spending 50 bucks and putting them in a landfill.
Ahhh, much better!
(Singing) Under the bus again...
(Singing) I just can't wait to get under the bus again...
All right, give it a try...
Okay, sh*t!
One of these is going to be a pain in the a**.
One of these is under the gas tank.
(Alex) Okay, so you cannot get to it.
No.
There's one, and the other one it way back there.
So we're just gonna have to cut them off with the angle grinder.
It doesn't look like we made good progress but we did.
You know, we're figuring out that we have very different approaches to projects.
Earlier he said "You know, we don't have to get the WHOLE floor done today."
And I said, "Yeah we do!"
He's probably right; I'm probably gonna be in pain tomorrow.
(Alex) We're gonna have to spend quite some time on this floor.
Yeah, we will. Yeah we didn't find any rust on anything before,
until we started pulling the floor up. and then it was like "whoa boy!" It was still wet in a lot of areas.
Somebody on my Facebook page, Penni -- shout out to Penni -- who is, or was, a bus driver told me that
sometimes in order to clean the floor they'll just open up the back door, and bring in a
garden hose, and just hose the whole thing down. Which explains why
the subfloor was so soaking wet. I was starting to worry that we had some
crazy amount of leaks or maybe it had been through a flood or something like that, but
now it actually makes a lot more sense. And I can absolutely see why they would do it that way.
We've taken as much of the metal as we can over to the scrap yard, but getting rid of
the rest of this junk has proven to be a lot more challenging than you would think.
I mean the obvious answer is just take it to the dump, but that's actually not as straightforward
as you would think. And I'll get to more on that in a second. But we looked at a bunch of different
options for doing this. We talked about renting a dumpster, but that was going to cost at least $300.
We looked into a junk removal service, where they come and they take all your stuff to the dump for
you, but again that was going to cost at least $250, if not more depending on who you talk to, and what
they say when they come and see the amount of stuff you have. Another option was to get one of
those Bagsters that you can buy at Home Depot or Lowe's, and then you schedule a pickup from
Waste Management to come get it. The bags themselves are only $30, but the pickup fee is $150, and
we would probably need two of them, which almost doubles that price. I even looked into the idea
of taking all of this stuff back to our house and scheduling a bulk pickup with our trash company.
And get this: they were gonna charge us per piece - which means per cushion - $10, per cushion!
And then only pick up two per scheduled pickup. So it was going to take us 12 weeks and $240
just to get rid of the seats, and they wouldn't do anything with the wood at all.
So that wasn't even really an option.
Which brings us back to the dump. We do have a city dump here, where people
can take bulk items and throw them into these big dumpsters, and they can even do it for free!
Except you have to be a resident in the city limits, and of course we are not. I even went online
to see what the city limits actually are, figured maybe I had a friend that could come with us.
And suffice it to say I was pretty surprised at what that map looks like,
and i don't have any friends that live there. So that's not even an option for us, which brings
us to landfills. Now there are several landfills within a reasonable driving distance from here.
But the problem with landfills is: you really got to know what you're getting into. Because with some
of them, in particular one that a lot of people had suggested to me, you drive into the landfill with
your own vehicle and dump out your stuff. So you're literally driving over old garbage and
a lot of dirt. And it's been raining here for the last four or five days. And I ended up talking to
a few guys who work in an industry where they go to the dump a lot, and they said
"Oh no, you don't want to go to that one. I've been stuck, I've torn tires, you're definitely
going to get stuck, even if you put things in your pickup truck." So that wasn't sounding like a really
wonderful option. But I did find a landfill locally that you drive up on a gravel road, you dump your
stuff off into this one big covered area, and then they come along with their claw machines and they
put it into the landfill for you. So you're not risking getting stuck or puncturing any tires.
And that's certainly going to be a lot easier for us because we can just drive the bus over there
and chuck it out the back.
Well it's finally dump day!
I never thought I'd be so excited to go to the dump.