Casey Knight knew it was crunch time when her husband asked her to pick up a paint brush.
“The fact that he allows me to paint tells me that perfection is a lost cause and we just need to get this done,” said Knight, as she painted boards bright white on the front lawn of the Auburn home they share with their three children.
Soon to be four children.
Knight and her husband, Peter Floyd, have until Monday to finish turning an old school bus into a “mobile boutique.”
They will board a plane Monday, fly to Ukraine and bring their 16-year-old adopted daughter, Nastya, back with them two weeks later.
“She’s coming home,” Knight said.
Home to her own room was the advice of the social worker who met with Knight and Floyd.
The couple talked with a bank about a loan to expand their home, adding another bedroom. They struck out.
“So we brainstormed,” Knight said.
Knight owns a clothing business, LuLaRoe Knightly, and uses a spare room as her office.
The idea of converting an old school bus into a “mobile boutique” for the business and allowing Nastya to use the spare room won hands down.
Knight said they searched all over the country for an old bus, but that the average price of $32,000 was out of the picture “for someone who had no luck getting a home equity loan.”
A friend came through and sold the couple a bright yellow 2007 Freightliner bus with 127,000 miles at the price she paid for it at auction.
The bus was used to transport Boston schoolchildren and has a restricter device on the motor that does not allow the bus to exceed 55 mph.
“Absolutely nothing,” Floyd said when asked how much knowledge he has about turning an old bus into a clothing showroom.
“Lets just say I have been watching a lot of how-to videos,” he said.
The couple removed all of the windows and left the inside looking like a bare room. “We put insulation and vapor barriers throughout,” Floyd said. “This is Maine and we plan to use it all four seasons,” Knight said.
The floor is made of recycled wood from an old barn. “We want it to be a little bit Maine,” Knight said. “A little bit campy.”
Knight and Floyd will fly to Ukraine on Monday to finalize the adoption and bring Nastya home. They bought one-way tickets in case the adoption process gets hung up.
“Our social worker accidentally put her own ZIP code on one of 100 papers, so it almost got kicked back,” Knight said. “You just never know.”
Nastya hopefully will be home a week before she starts her sophomore year at Edward Little High School. She has chosen Ash to be her new name.
She will share a home with her mom, dad and three brothers, Birch, Attigan and Rain.
But she will have her own room.
Casey Knight, left, and her husband, Peter Floyd, work on the old Boston-area school bus in their front yard in Auburn on Wednesday. A brainstorming session between the two led to the bus being converted into a mobile business so that Knight could move her office out of the house to accommodate the 16-year-old Ukrainian girl the couple is in the process of adopting.
Casey Knight, left, and her husband, Peter Floyd, FaceTime with their soon-to-be adopted teenage daughter, Nastya, while working on the old Boston-area school bus in their front yard on Wednesday. Nastya is speaking from an orphanage in Ukraine.
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