This RV is a resurrected vehicle

[Times photo: James Borchuck ] Nola Mancuso closes the door on one of the bays under her bus. This one holds tanks for LP gas, water and wastewater; others are used for storage. The animal motifs on the sides of the bus, known as “Nola’s Ark,” were painted by Ron Eland.

By JUDY STARK, Times Homes Editor
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 19, 2003

With nine months of work, Nola Mancuso and her father turned ''one nasty bus'' into the ultimate home away from home.

LARGO -- Nola Mancuso's home away from home has maple floors and kitchen cabinets, granite countertops and a sleek black refrigerator. There are two TVs, a VCR and a DVD player, and the place sleeps eight.

This luxurious getaway is 8 feet wide and 40 feet long.

It's a bus.

But what a bus. Last Christmas, husband Tony hired an artist to paint birds and animals on the outside, so now the bus is known as "Nola's Ark," as the signs on front and rear attest.

"We're like a Pied Piper" when the bus pulls in at the Fort De Soto campground or at the south Skyway fishing pier, two favorite destinations. "People come and beat on the door, 'Oh, can we look inside?' "

They're even more dazzled when the driver steps out: Nola herself, 55, all curly red hair, mascaraed eyelashes and long fake fingernails.

"It was a labor of love," she said, "and a testimony to sweat equity." She and her 83-year-old father, Garland Mitchell, did all the work, gutting the bus and building it anew from the inside out. "We tore it apart with saws and scrapped it," she said. "We'd never done anything like this before. It was the project of a lifetime."

Nola and Tony used to have a smaller motor home, but the last time they went to Key West, "we had nine people in a 27-footer, and there just wasn't enough room," she said. She has two sons, both in the military, married and with three kids each, so it was time to start looking for a bus.

They found the future Nola's Ark in a consignment lot in Tarpon Springs. Formerly owned by a gospel singing group, "it was one nasty bus," she said, with teal carpeting and burgundy walls.

They paid $25,000 for the 40-passenger 1976 bus. ("We'd have got it cheaper, but she was in a hurry," said Tony, 73, a goal judge for the NHL who works Tampa Bay Lightning games.) They have put another $20,000 into it. The bus spent several months undergoing mechanical repairs. (Nola said they burned through three clutches in short order while they learned how to drive it. "If I knew then what I know now, we'd have got an automatic.")

The past nine months, she and her father spent every weekend working on the bus. They keep it at a mobile-home park off Seminole Boulevard. They'd drive it to the Mancusos' home on Fridays and run extension cords from the house to the street so they could work. They could park the bus in Nola's deed-restricted neighborhood for only 48 hours at a time, she said. (Once a police officer stopped by to see what was going on and was so impressed with the work that he never bothered them again, Tony said.)

"I would dream it up, and between the two of us, we'd make it happen," Nola said. "Dad would say, 'If I hear "What if" one more time . . .' "

Mitchell is a lifelong do-it-yourselfer, and he taught Nola from childhood how to do it herself. "I was raised doing all kinds of projects. Even on a school project, Dad and I worked on it together," she said. "It's refreshing to do it as an adult, and I enjoy every minute working with my father. It gives you confidence: The more you do, the more you feel you can do."

[Times photo: James Borchuck ] It’s the getaway that goes with you: Nola Mancuso’s luxurious bus, 40 feet long and 8 feet wide, takes her and her family to favorite fishing spots.

The cream-leather sleep sofa in the living area had to be taken apart so they could maneuver it in. To get the full-size refrigerator inside, they had to boost it onto the bed of a pickup truck pulled up against the bus, remove the bus doors and heave it over the dashboard on their shoulders. The 15-foot fabric-covered decorative topper above the windows had to be negotiated cautiously through the doors and down the length of the bus.

The glass dining table started its life as a coffee table, but now it serves a second use atop a new, higher pedestal. A lamp atop the desk is bolted in place, and the desk chair is secured with hooks and bungee cords when the bus takes to the road.

"You have to think of mobility," Nola said, pointing out the latches that keep cabinets and drawers tightly closed on the road. All the cabinets (from Home Depot) had to be adjusted by her father to accommodate the curve of the ceiling.

Besides installing the cabinetry, they laid the floors (Nola works for ProSource Wholesale Floorcoverings in Largo), created the built-in seating and bunk beds, and installed the bathroom, the kitchen sink and the electrical and lighting systems.

The bus has a generator to supply electrical power when they're not at a campground. Nola would like to install a solar-powered system, and Tony is talking about a removable awning they can set up outside when they park.

Nola estimates that she spent $1,000 on 49 yards of fabric for bedspreads and the built-in seating. The bus has an electric stove, hot-water and propane gas tanks, and a bathroom with shower and toilet.

It makes a pleasant atmosphere for her frail mother, Barbara, 75, so she can accompany the family when they go fishing.

Father and daughter say, "We didn't know anything about this stuff. We learned by error, and we ask a lot of questions. But if we can do it, anybody else can do it if they half try."

Nola recalls a hot, humid day last August when her father was working inside one of the luggage bays under the bus installing electrical wiring. He emerged, drenched with sweat, and told his daughter: "When I die, I want to come back as a helpless female." She said: "Dad, so do I."

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