Saturday, August 09, 2008

Painting the bus

I've been painting inside the bus today (upstairs) with some really lovely eco-friendly paints from a company called Auro. I've only done a little bit of the painting myself. Celia, who is a local artist and graphic designer, has done most of it, including all the beautiful ivy on the outside.

It's quite difficult painting the inside walls of a bus...they're really smooth so we had to do loads of sanding to get a key. There's been a lot of sanding in this project so far!

Anyway, we've given the top deck a first coat but I don't like the colour as much as I thought I would. It's pale green and looks a bit like hospital walls. I think we'll give it another coat in something more neutral....maybe a nice creamy colour. I'll take some photographs once we've got it done and put the seats back in.

Talking about seats...we have decided to leave the original covers on the upstairs cinema seats because it would be a big (and unnecessary) job to re-cover them, but I'd like to cover the few downstairs seats we've left in with hemp fabric. All the decisions I've made about what to use inside the bus have been based on trying to showcase as many sustainable products as possible...and fabric made from hemp is the ultimate sustainable fabric. I'm getting the hemp from a lovely lady I met at a green fair in North Devon called Samantha Pickering. Her website is http://www.hempfabric.co.uk/index.asp