DIY Bus Home: Creating a Spacious Home on Wheels

this is just the first half of the kitchen we have a luxurious giant shower so we did an 18-in roof raise in the bus because I'm 6'4 and could not stand up straight in a normal school bus that's where I met Emily was actually on a job site working for the family Earth moving business yeah she was my boss at the beginning hi we're Josh and Emily come take a tour of our schoolie welcome to the kitchen in our kitchen we have bulk storage below here and then this can flip up to be our dining table so we can have meals together and we love to have our spices exposed because it inspires us to try different recipes and have fun in the kitchen so then once we're done cooking our meals we wanted to make sure that we had a big sink to do all of our larger dishes because our smaller ones can go right in our dish dishwasher and we love it because it can use 1 to two gallons per cycle which we figure is less than we could do them by hand we have a 12vt electric fridge which is an apartment size which is plenty for just Josh and I and then we also made sure that we had lots of storage for all of our utensils so we can have bulk Pantry or our kitchen appliances in all of our drawers and cabinets this is the second half of the kitchen in it we have a few storage spots that we couldn't access with our drawers so we have extra tall storage right in our countertops we also have a three burner propane stove and oven for our pantry we decided to standardize all of these containers as well so these are all quart size jars and then for the vinegars we have um standardized containers as well and for all of our spices quart jars and our vinegars we have um made them so they won't tip out we've added an extra lip so you can tilt them up tilt them out and then they're free but they won't fall out while we're driving under here we have Pantry for our canned goods but we also can flip this side open to access larger bulk items like flower we've had three different locking mechanisms that we've tried in the two years that we've lived in the bus so our last system that we've come up with that has actually worked is a system of linear actu that we can roll it up it'll catch everything and then once we get to our destination then we can roll everything down and then open our drawers like normal so all of our curtains have insulation in them and so depending on if it's sunny or dark out we can have them rolled up have them rolled down each of the um bars have magnets to them so we can relocate them and they will easily snap into place and we can have them them as much exposed to let in as much sunlight as we want or as dark as we want for blackout curtains can you guess how many spices we have in our spice rack be sure to put your guess in the comments below we found our bus at triaa Bus in Phoenix Arizona uh I actually flew down picked up the bus and drove it all the way back to South Dakota all in one weekend it's a lot of driving um the whole build took us approximately 2 years and CAU cost us around 80,000 of that 80,000 I think 7,000 was the purchase price of the bus but uh we still worked full-time and we did the bus conversion on the weekends and in the evenings and it was basically our second full-time job so we did an 18-in roof raise in the bus because I'm 6'4 and could not stand up straight in a normal school bus uh at the front that gives us almost 8T of ceiling height which makes it nice and lofty but at the back we wanted more storage so we added a foot of storage beneath the floor and floor hatches and I can still just stand up in the hallway Welcome to our bathroom in our bathroom we have a RV style toilet which means we have a black tank down below 80 for black and 40 for gray and then we have a luxurious giant shower and we were able to have a recessed shower pan because in the hallway you we have a step up for storage so we kept the original floor height for our shower pan we have a nebia shower head which is amazing to help us conserve water and we also like that we can adjust the height so it can be lower for me versus extra tall for Josh and we lined it with a shower liner so it is all completely waterproof as well as behind our shower walls we have that shower liner as well and then we have a vinyl floor tile um for our walls so that these two walls are waterproof as well for our sink we wanted to make sure that we had an extra small format sink but we struggled to find one that exactly fit our needs so we ended up using a succulent planter for our sink instead and then in the floor panels we have a little bit of extra storage where we are able to fit a full-size laundry basket and our cleaning [Music] supplies as we move from the bathroom to the bedroom our bathroom door can double as a divider between the back half and the front half of the bus which is really convenient when we are both on teams meetings to help block some of that sound from each other in our bedroom we have a queen-sized bed and above our bed we have an air conditioning unit which was originally one of the emergency exits from the school bus and we converted the opening for our air conditioner and then on the front side we have these little storage Cubbies which is for our whole closet and then below my feet we have more storage which we use for bulk Pantry items as well as bulky clothing items such as our winter coats and sweatshirts and stuff like that here at the back the bus is my office growing up my family did a lot of Earth moving and I used to work for the family Earth moving business I decided to add some of my models and momentos from that time I work full-time from my workstation up front here uh behind that I have a workbench and storage that's sitting above our engine bay so the reason I have a worktop is that life on the road is always full of ups and downs and some of your Downs involve working on things so it's a nice spot where I can lay out all my tools and get to work rebuilding something or fixing something so that we're up and running and ready to hit the road again I grew up in South Dakota and I lived there my whole life until I went to college College also in South Dakota for my engineering degree I grew up in Minnesota and then moved out to South Dakota with family and ended up going to college in Iowa and I studyed construction management that's where I met Emily was actually on a job site working for the family Earth moving business yeah she was my boss at the beginning we got married and we found we were using all of our PTO to go on road trips together and see the country so we decided that once Co hit that really opened a lot of doors for remote work so then we could travel permanently yeah I changed jobs so I'm working out of Massachusetts now doing engineering civil engineering type adjacent work and your full-time remote working on in Minnesota so been a blessing for us when you walk in our bus you're immediately in our living room so we have a couch which we can pull out to have a Queens size bed if we ever have guests and it is right across from my office so I have two screens and then I usually operate with an additional laptop but these two screens also double as our TV monitors if we ever want to sit back and watch a movie what I really enjoy is doing arts and crafts and so I have a tilt up easel with spots for all of my art supplies right across from our couch we have more storage and so in this storage we decided to keep a lot more of our outdoor gear so we can just access it quick from being outside because we have a roof raise we were also able to incorporate some upper storage without making it feel too cramped in here here we are at the front of the bus to start off we did a custom Jeep rear bench seat as our driver seat so that Emily and I can sit next to each other uh going forward from that we have our custom Maple Dash it took me way too long to build this um in front of that we have our garden herbs so that we can cook with fresh herbs on the road and front of the herbs we have our cat litter box so on the driver's side side of our under Bay we have our electrical panel and behind that we have our inverter and battery storage we went with server batteries so we have eg4 Ser batteries um and it's a 24volt system and we have 640 amp hours of battery storage CU I have one custom homemade battery so on the roof we have 2400 watts of solar panels that feed into our charge controllers and we just decided to do a 24volt DC system because it's a lot cheaper to buy all the components than a 12vt system in hindsight I might have even gone to a 48v system because then you can get much cheaper than what we have now at the back of the bus we have a factory air ride system for the suspension but up front it was just spring and because we are just over 30,000 lbs fully loaded we decided to put air assist on the front axle so I have two different airbags that just assist the springs and bring a ride height up and down and I can actually control that from the driver station so if we have a steep approach or something that we're trying to get through that can actually over inflate and raise our front end up almost 4 in so that really makes for better clearance with the front door so a couple things that we found out along our bus life journey is that first off you can never plan too far in advance or have really tight deadlines cuz you're traveling in a 20-year-old School Bus you're going to have issues you're going to have breakdowns um it's not going to go quite the way you plan see you have to be flexible when you're on the road my biggest takeaway from schoolie life is how my lifestyle has changed as far as my relationships we're away from our family but we've also made amazing friends who also have this same lifestyle and we've really been able to connect with them and to make lasting lifetime friendships we actually inspired my parents to actually take up part-time living on the road and sometimes they will meet us and we will spend a couple weeks together on the road they're actually parked right behind our bus at at this moment so it's fun to still have family close by when you're on the road too thanks for watching if you'd like to follow along with us we're on Facebook and Instagram at aurora. thee adventure buus and on YouTube at the Hardway

Channel: Tiny Home Tours

Views: 53,315

Keywords: tiny house, tiny house on wheels, living big in a tiny house, tiny house movement, tiny home, small house, small spaces, small house design, alternative living, affordable home, off the grid, small space living, tiny house life, diy home, tiny house living, school bus conversion, skoolie tour, diy skoolie, school bus tiny house, tiny house tour, bus conversion, skoolie conversion build, skoolie bus conversion build, skoolie conversion tips, skoolie build ideas

Id: IJF6XtGViA8

Length: 11min 25sec (685 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2024