So, it’s all well and good wanting to build a mobile bus bar but you have to really sit down and think about what you want inside it. You want it to be nice looking, practical, easy to keep clean and have a nice ambiance. The ambiance factor was taken care of by the sunroof. It totally transformed the space and gave it a nice airy feel, perfect!

I spoke to a long term pal of mine and he’d done advertising work with old buses in the past and he gave me one bit of key advice.

You want people on board, not complex furniture and fixtures!

He was bang on! I could’ve filled the whole bus with special seating and god knows what ells but ultimately you want people on board. So I decided to keep it spacious and minimally furnished. I also wanted to insure we could fit a good amount of people upstairs so I carefully worked out the with and height needed to sit comfortably.

I spent lots of time looking at color boards and charts to look for a good combination of colors to use in our mobile bus bar. I just couldn’t decide. It’s an area I feel I’m not that good at but what I had totally overlooked was all the colors where right there in front of me, all perfectly laid out.

It’s well balanced, It suites the red of the bus itself and all it’s other interior colors, it was basically perfect in every way. From that point onward I simply matched my colors off of it and the results ( I feel ) were superb!

The small seat that sits above the stairwell was saved and re-upholstered. A few of the other mobile bus bars that I’ve seen in operation opted to remove all this and turn it into a small bar that can service upstairs. Again, with preservation in mind, I thought it would be a waste to rip all this out on top of that it has become the best in the house…..or should I say bus….

The seat structure was a simple frame covered with thick MDF sheets. The bus is not very straight but my carpenters managed to make it fit nice and snug to the body of the bus. All the necessary holes were put in place to provide space to run cables for the lighting and speakers. (see previous blog post)

I was very fortunate to find a local man that specialized in upholstery like this. It was important to get the shapes right but also to get the bounce of the foam right. East Grinstead Upholstery  sorted us out with perfect fitting seating. It was not cheap but worth every penny!

As I mentioned before I’m rather on the tall side and I knew that at some stage I’d have to sleep on board the bus. I was right because I have done so on several occasions. When we’ve done gigs further a field we sometimes need more than one day to travel up so I thought (selfishly) I’ll make sure I have a bed that fits me!

The final touches included:

• Hand made moquette patterned cushions
• Aluminum kick plates
• White PVS strips to cover the LED lights
• Glow up white cube tables
• London city scape graphics

See below the final result of our upstairs VIP Routemaster bus bar lounge.