Couple Built a Gorgeous Roof-Raised Bus Home For Their Family of 3

[Music] so the reason that we decided to do best life was because we were just seeking freedom freedom in time freedom in money freedom in getting to spend time together to see the world and just all of those types of things so before we got a boss I was a full-time youth pastor we had been in Youth Ministry for going on seven years had been a teacher and then she actually started a photography business which I let her talk about I would personally say like in the life that we were in in that moment like things were just so busy that there wasn't the freedom to experience other pockets of things that we were really Desiring in our life so yeah like our calendar was full like every single day we had something and so it's like man we just love the idea of kind of not really having plans although we still are planners and that's just who we are but being on the road and being in the bus it's less PL you get to just kind of go with the flow and I even think we're learning a lot of what that's like because we've never gotten to do [Music] that so our front door we definitely wanted a house door we knew that so we went ahead and took off the original bus doors which actually cleared up a lot of space up here from the handle of opening that most people that come in our bus don't actually realize that this is storage as well so we tried to build in storage like in every little cubby that we could and then up front as well we built in storage up here and then on the driver side we have the same little cubby for storage and then taking out the front heater from up here allowed us to make this a little cubby we each have a little shoe storage in here so we can fit our three pairs of shoes we built more storage over on the driver's side like all of my little switches we just built storage to cover those and then I love to snack while I'm driving and then up top of course over here we have more storage more storage in these Cubbies when you have a job and have a 9 to5 that you don't necessarily have the freedom to just up and go whenever when you're you're running your own business or you live in a bus and you can pick up your whole home and move you can still experience the world and the comfort of your home which is something like we desired so much one of the questions we get asked a lot is what is it like to have a kid on the road or in the bus and my honest answer is I feel like it's like if you had a kid in a house or anywhere else having kids is hard at times but we also get to do things that are way cooler sometimes than just being planted in a house um in one location and so he gets to wake up like on the way here he's waking up every day he's like where are we and so we get to tell him that and where are we going where are we going and so it's just fun and exciting every day is a new day and it's um you don't always get that when you're planted in a home in one location for a long time [Music] so Liam really loves race cars we had to bring a RAC track on the road he's always begging us for it so we just store that right underneath our rug on the floor he loves to play down there so doing the 18-inch roof raise allowed us to build upper cabinets in our kitchen area so these first three cabinets are actually just like game storage and craft storage but once you get down into the kitchen then it begins storing all of our plates cups knives glasses bowls so we went with a butcher block countertop which we love that we just put some polyurethane over it so it looks shiny and it keeps it protected but then we went with just some basic cabinets from I think we got them from Home Depot because I didn't want to worry about designing and making sure everything went out perfectly but once we did that we decided we could actually build our own and paint them to save some money so we wanted to do everything as affordable as possible so underneath this side of the couch we actually store all of our camera gear for photos and films we do wedding photography and videography and events across the country so it's good to always have that along with us this side of the couch underneath when you pull that up it stores a dies heater so we can heat the front of the bus but it also stores our blankets and sheets for our guest bed when it pulls out when you got on the road like we aren't mechanical engineers or anything like that and so the hardest part for us personally has definitely been like the thing that we created that we love that we value so much breaks down on the side of the road and you're kind of like okay how do we fix that yeah we we literally had no idea about like solar electrical or plumbing and so we were able to talk with the community who's so helpful and loving and um be able to do this and build this on our own but really it's it's because of the community and the people around us that are willing to help and share what they've done um and so I would say and this is personal but it's like the hardest thing for me about this life is the lack of control um and a lot of people might not struggle with that but I struggle with the lack of control and that really is like she mentioned with like the engine and things that don't work when they're supposed to work or the bus doesn't start here or this doesn't happen a pro to that as well is truly the fact that there are things that we honestly can control that we've built a bus that we 100% could not have controlled previously living in a in a home because we didn't know a single thing about Plumbing or electrical or any of those types of things and now like something goes wrong in the bathroom well you built it you made it and so it's a really cool concept the fact that like he can kind of troubleshoot it and try and fix it and that's something that I really genuinely think like a couple years ago that would not have been a chance we would have called someone else to come and do it we absolutely love our oven we make lots of meals and because I feel like that's the way to get to people's so you bring them in you give them some food you can have some good intentional conversations and we just love getting to know people that was one of the reasons we wanted to join the bus Life Community we decided to keep our emergency windows and just paint the handles but we use them cuz we can open them out prep them up every once in a while but we have a couple of those on each side of the bus and then this area we wanted to keep it open so Liam would have a lot of room to play this is Liam's chair it just goes onto the countertops and then me and Megan each have one of these bar stools that just folds up comes out and sits down here this gets into our pantry so all of these are just Pantry storage so they're all pull out drawers until you get down to the very bottom is actually our trash can and there's some more storage in the back cuz we had storage everywhere so that we could have plenty of space my wife's favorite thing is a fullsize pullout mirror one of my favorite things to do with this mirror is take like big family selfies when we get dressed up and things like that and that's why it was important to me so that we can all take pictures together and have a space to capture that these are also super cool because we store all our spices and all these things in here but they tuck everything away so it's not like disorganized very like everywhere so it's super nice we also have another one this one doesn't store our food but it has our over preparedness of tons of bug spray and sunscreen laundry soap and all that type of stuff because we do which I don't feel like it's very common but we do have a washer and dryer in our bus which we love it's really hard to use it um when we're not plugged in we tested it out um like a week or two ago and it uses like 30% of our power I think but it's really nice because it works really well when you have a kid and if you know anything about bus life it can tend to be really dirty when you're out parking in the desert so we do end up needing to do our own laundry pretty often for the past six and a halfish years we have run a wedding in photography and videography business but that also entails like a lot of other things we shoot families and couples and newborns and maternity and events and all types of things like that we definitely love and specialize in photography and so something we're loving is being able to like Branch out into destination wedding and photography now that're on the road like we have the opportunity to shoot in these epic locations and beautiful places and so like that's definitely something our hearts desire and are loving a lot we do everything together whether it's business whether it's work whether it's Family Travel whatever we want to do it together and that's our goal we do value that a lot and I feel like that's exactly what marriage is supposed to be about in anyways is just tag teaming all concepts of life and so for us that means like raising our children and bringing in money for our family and cooking and cleaning and making our life something that we all love and enjoy and so we just pretty much as we vowed to love each other vowed to do it together and so um those are just Concepts that work really well for [Music] us on this side we have our little bo bedroom if you will so we love this um popup because it allows us to like make sure he stays in there he's never fallen out we've never had an issue with it but it locks up top we love this little thing and just got off Amazon this is absolutely the cutest thing in the world in my opinion which I know it's my kid and he's my mom and we built it but I absolutely love this all the essential things he needs like not a million pajamas he has them but he loves them and they're here too we have tons of all the pull-ups and we're in that season of life right now we're trying to potty trained so he has all those little boy undies right now we're in that stage of where we're trying to teach him the the things that you need in life like learning and numbers and all those types of things and so we have lots of toys that are catered towards that but then we also 100% believe in all the fun and Liam is a little boy so we have all of the swords and the guns and Nerf guns and race cars and like dinosaurs tools all the things that I think that a little boy probably wants to play with and have and has all that imagination in stuff so it's all jam-packed with stuff that he loves and he's really proud of it one thing I'll say is we love building relationships with people yeah and I think one of the one of the things we've learned is the fastest way to build a relationship with someone is be in their home yeah and let them be in your home yeah and so that's pretty much what this community does every day yeah and we love [Music] it we also added especially right here you can tell we added in a skylight but we have actually Four skylights throughout the bus we love open air and light and so we kept a lot of our windows and a lot of the skylights so that we could add in the light we don't really have any lights on right now and you can't tell so we love that on this side we have a sliding barn door that covers our washer and dryer combo along with our closet so we just share a closet up top um and then underneath there of course we built in more storage just to store some candles extra hangers um and then this door works two ways it covers this area for our closet and our wash and dryer and then it also will slide over and cover our bathroom so it's actually our bathroom door as well when you walk down further in the hallway this becomes our bathroom space so on this side we have our composting toilet and sink and on this side we have our shower in the middle we put in a max air fan that way we make sure we're venting um all of the Steam and stuff from the shower out when we can inside the shower my wife really wanted a bench so when we built that bench we used that storage as well to be a pull out cubby that would become our laundry drawer so that's where we store all our Dirty Laundry before we wash it especially being off-grid we wanted to make sure we were conserving water as much as possible so we went with a nebia shower head does a really good job of saving water when we're showering and then we added a sky out in our shower because we love [Music] lot all right coming back into our bedroom we put in a pocket door so that we could close off our space when we need to but then inside our bedroom we lifted our bed up high like I was talking about so that we could fit in our 100-gallon water tank which is underneath and then the rest of underneath the bed is All Storage these two drawers are our shoe drawers so we each have one this is mine that one's magin and then we build these with heavyduty slids so that we can either step on here or on these actual handles to get up onto our bed have our own little sections of storage for ourselves so that has a bunch of just things for me and then Lon has the same for himself we both have hat storage we love hats we have books we love to read we love to learn and I feel like if you're reading you're learning um we both have our own little like nightstand type area so here's Landon's and there's mine we have all the extra cubby storage for our clothes it was important for us to have like a good source of heat and air so we have like the mini split up here um and then just kind of like to finish off this space we have our garage space in the back which has a lot of technical stuff probably knows a lot more about that than I do I kind of just keep the family alive happy and cozy and fed and Lon takes care of all that normally it's truly a blessing not only like pulling up on different locations of the world and getting to see like just the beautiful creation that there is but then honestly getting into like Landon said like get into other people's spaces that there's just also a lack mindedness in this community of you worked really hard to get to what you have um in building your bus and in all of those things and so like it's just it's an incredibly beautiful and almost like I would say just supportive community of loving each other and helping just serve each other and if there's issues on the road like you're almost always like have help and so it's it's amazing we're just thankful to be able to do what we get to do and to live the life that we get to live in the home that we've gotten to build thanks for watching our tour we'd love to connect with you more if you have any questions or want to reach out we're on Instagram at the price spam Adventures we'd love to talk to you Justin don't forget the roof deck's dangerous don't fall off again thank you Megan and Landon for showing off your bus you guys did a fantastic job and if you are also building a mobile dwelling and in need of off-grid electrical components like solar panels lithium batteries or inverters I've been researching this for more than 5 years now and the absolute best prices for now are at signatur solar.com they even sell solar panels in pallets of 10 for only 27 cents a watt and I've never seen anything that affordable ever on the market before now if you check out use my code Juicebox and you'll get an additional $50 off thank you guys for watching this tour I'm excited to bring in the next one and for now see you out there peace

Channel: Mobile Dwellings

Views: 17,337

Keywords: skoolie tour, roof raised skoolie, price fam adventures, gilligan phantom, mobile dwellings, school bus conversion, skooliepalooza, nomad family, nomads, bus conversion tour

Id: cv48dW1o8tU

Length: 14min 3sec (843 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 28 2024