DIY Elevator Bed - Raised Roof School Bus Conversion - This Family's Solution To Bay Area Rent

[Music] hi my name is Jeremy castle and this is I'm Krista the Saracen RJ we are in Gori California and this is our school Lea that we built so we live in the Bay Area and with that comes a lot of expensive housing situation and we just really wanted more for our family and didn't want our all our money to be going towards nothing with rent so we were looking into different living situations and I was on Craigslist one day and someone had posted a bus about how they wanted to convert it into a school E and that was kind of like the black hole of that whole world of that and I sent Jeremy a picture and I was like hey you want to live in a bus and that was on a Wednesday and we had a bus by that Sunday so in less than a week we decided to do this lifestyle and it's been crazy but it works for us in our family I know it's not for everyone but it definitely works with our spirit of adventure and wanting again like I said more for our family and being able to travel but I always have our home with us and we know this isn't a lifestyle fest for us forever but for now it works for us with small kids and with our remote jobs we both have remote jobs so we thought if there's any time to do this it's now before our kids are grown and in school and who knows where we'll be then you know we didn't buy the bus you know it was it was yellow it wasn't this tall just on Craigslist we found it up in Oregon and I bought a plane ticket one-way ticket and christos actually in the Philippines on a missions trip and I didn't tell her that I bought it but we were in agreeance it wasn't just like he decided on a so I ended up dropping Krista off at the airport driving home and dropping him off with my parents and then driving back to the airport and the guy that sold me the school bus picked me up from the airport drove me to the bus and I started having drove it back 12 hours 12 hours whole way up for Morrigan and yeah it was it was an adventure the dining area is working out super well for us we wanted a dinette situation that was convertible to a bed but also was able to be a little bit more open when we weren't all sitting here eating together so both of our benches are completely removable they're not like lashed out or anything because they're storage in each of them so they're really weighted down but as you can see this bench is already turned out so it's a little bit more open instead of an aisle way and then both of the back pads of them come off and we can turn it into a bed for someone to sleep on and obviously it's completely custom-made so Jeremy made the table he made the benches he made it open so we could have storage in there things like that so first storage if we need to get in here we just lift these up and they completely come off and then for the back pad their own guides and the whole thing comes off so they can shift into place right here for the bedding if we turn it all together we have extra blankets first people are sleeping on the bed we have some baby clothes right now that are in storage for now since we don't need them we have pillows we have games we have movies just kind of stuff that we're not using every day but we'll need eventually type of stuff and we don't need a media access to where as our baskets and things right here is easier for us to get to so it's so funny because we live minimal but we still have like a junk drawer stuff which is funny to me but then we just have a little bit of extra storage for like grocery bags and stuff under this area because it's super small so you can't fit too much in there but it just gives us a little bit more counter space so we have like a lamp here and we just it was a dead area so we're like might as well put another small cabinet since we got our cabinets from our friends that happen to be wrong remodeling their house they like hey if you want them you can have them so we mixed and matched all of our cabinets to fit in here specifically so Jeremy how to chop and ski them but it in a park it out really well so of course we need a more seating area if we have people over we like to entertain and so this bench can completely go outside if we want it to we can push it against here if with someone wanting a little extra space while they're sleeping and then I just wanted it to be open so it's not so closed off in here in this area I'm just having an open storage space makes the room feel a little bit bigger so that's why we did it open on this side as opposed to the same kind of storage on this side and yeah again custom-made Jeremy had to make it for the bus and it's nice to have just like extra bench space so we can have you know more than three or four people sitting in here we can have an additional two to three people just are these toys and stuff over there we have a bunch of games if we have game nights we like to have game nights with friends I'm a photographer so I just have my camera bag here that I can just grab with all my gear and it's super easy and quick and then my laptop for working and just a notebook if I need it kind of just forever if you like working it does work if our days in the back playing or he's laying down for a nap or I sit here I can use it as like a little daybed area I move the pillows around and we also just like to sit on our bed we also have another day bed back there that we can also sit at we've talked about adding maybe like a flip-up desk for a more permanent spot to work out back there one day but it doesn't seem like we really need it at this point so we don't didn't think about it why do it if you don't need it but we also I mean Jeremy can work anywhere there's internet so he can work at coffee shops he can work that it's apparent to us he can work here he can kind he doesn't have to stay here to work which is nice and neither do I so if we have someone to hang out without you for a few hours go somewhere else get out and bless if we want again I like to do things as open as possible especially with being in a bus everything can get really tight really fast and we had the luxury of having higher ceilings since we raised that roof and so I was like we can put some up there we can put some I got my polaroid are juicy philately stuff like that and as we grow into the bus more we just have a little more extra storage space I guess for things that we need to just be able to grab grab kind of quick so we wanted it to be open but we still needed it to be secure while we're driving so Jeremy had this really cool design with the the pipes and they've worked super well so we don't have to move anything off of these bookshelves while we're driving which is really convenient less work for us when we're moving so yeah just wanting it to be open as open as possible really so with our kitchen we wanted to do something not galley-style not I always style which is why our whole entire bus the beers down a side hallway so our kitchen was fundamental for that and I wanted to have as much counter space as possible and I wanted to be able to have open storage but also regular cabinet space and then I still wanted to have a big sink so there's some stuff I wasn't really willing to compromise on and by doing this l-shaped style we were able to make that all happen so it's worked super well for us it's super open and I think with our dinette situation it helps with that and we still have that big sink which will be great when we have the baby since we don't need to have we don't have a bathtub situation so this Rjay fits in there now and it's two-and-a-half so it's a big sink and it keeps me from having to constantly do dishes all the time but still keeps them nice and hidden since it's a deeper sink but yeah we really want you to have that side aisle or the yeah the side aisle hallway but with that l-shaped kitchen and it's given us I'm Way more space than we thought we would have so for our fridge we wanted to have it under the counter but we might go to a bigger fridge eventually maybe as our family grows but for now it's definitely getting the job done it's we got it I think I want to say we got it from Craigslist it was like 40 bucks and it was from an office so it's barely used again trying to save Plenty's here and there if we could it doesn't take a lot of energy at all I do not love the freezer situation just because I mean you can't really keep stuff in there for too long you have to kind of use it pretty fast but it's good because then it keeps us from wasting food which is really nice actually but yeah it's working well for us I mean spec wise geremy would probably know a little bit more on it but I don't really know it just is small but I'm surprised that we've been able to use it for as long as we have I thought we'd need a bigger one right away like an RV sized one at least I mean it works it works so yeah more of the cabinets are the hand-me-down situation and I just standard them down and painted them put new hardware on them and they've been working as good as new things like that and they we wanted to have some upper storage but still wanted to have lower storage and again I said I wanted to have open storage space so I wanted open shelving which a lot of people don't want to do in a Schooley but I knew that we weren't going to be travelling full-time so I knew that we could have an option like this and pretty much the only thing that's glass is our dishes and our glasses and so the that's pretty much all we have to put away when we travel and it's really just kind of wrapping them up in blankets and we could put them in our storage bunches and everything else is fine nothing really shifts around in general on the bus which I wasn't expecting but it worked out well if I need to replace them later down the road maybe I'll do like a Correll or something like that if I just get over putting them away all the time but they work well for us they're from our wedding so save money they're not having to buy dishes and it's stuff that we just use you know every day again just the plates the bowls they like coffee and tea in here and our wine glasses and our coffee situation which obviously we're friends of coffee so we have to have our options stuff like that but nothing too crazy and then other than that we have just some more glasses and plates and storage over here we got some dry food here pots and pans here some lids for pots and pans down there our garbage and cleaning supplies and all of our appliances fit in this one drawer which is great and then just utensils and glassware for storing stuff food and things like that so it all fits I was surprised I didn't think and I think it was gonna fit but we didn't really have to get rid of too much kitchenware yeah so actually with our countertop we got it from a Habitat for Humanity which we try to do with a lot of stuff it was originally just like a door and it was $40 and it was like a ten foot tall doors a huge door and I told you I was like we could probably get away with using this for a while because we didn't know what we were gonna use for the countertop but later on we got some sweet I think it's called Ironwood or something which is what our table is made of and but it was kind of last minute to our deadline so we had already made this so this is temporary for the meantime which is good because it's not it's you know it's water treated but it's not holding up the best so if I were to do something like this style again maybe like a butcher block style I'd probably do more of like a vinyl or laminate because this isn't holding up super well but it does get the job done and easy to clean easy to treat it was really cheap so it's not like we're losing a ton of money on it it'll just be more work of you know getting it out and redoing it and that's done Jeremy said so oh we left it and when he's ready the backsplash here is not a hand-me-down but the backsplash in our bathroom most of it is a hand-me-down that you'll see later this is just from Lowe's I did it after I had tiled our whole bathroom which was a feat in itself so this was no problem I think this was the ah this was mosaic style so you know he just laid on their tile it and get the grout in there that was super fast and but yeah we just need something you know keep the walls getting dirty and gross so and I didn't want to go all the way up by any means this was plenty after tiling the bathroom I was like I don't really want to do any more this is good it's a panther stove and it's obviously gonna be a little bit smaller because it is made for RVs but what I really loved about this was that it had the cover so you can just cover it and have extra counter space like I said I wanted as much kind of space as possible it is gas so our propane runs on it but I mean it's a free burner which is actually pretty good we do just have to ignite it with like a mat to our lighter every time but other than that it's been working great for us we made like a whole sized pizza in here yesterday so it even though it's smaller it works well yeah it was more of a splurge but because I had that top and that's really what I wanted and they definitely have options where you don't need the glass top cover but and most people think it's electric when they see this there look how nice you know so it was something I was again wasn't really willing to compromise on it is like I said it's more of a splurge but if it's something that you need constantly you're gonna be using it you know because we don't have a microwave which is kind of convenient and a big deal use it all the time so having a stove that's gonna be reliable and working was a big deal for us because it's just this and like our toaster you know for hot stuff so I feel like I'm not in people's way and people aren't in my way if I have friends over or are Jews running around I'm just in this specific area and people aren't running into me and I just feel like I'm still you know I still have space it's been working really really well for us and if all three of us are in here I don't feel crammed I don't feel claustrophobic and it makes it feel so much less like a bus because it is a side kitchen rather clean out most of the time you go in and they're all just to side aisle stove or counter tops and look I love how it looks but I just didn't I want this to feel as less as a bus as possible so that was kind of also a reason we went with this and then with the roof raised everyone's like oh man I forget I'm in a bus and like guess that is what I want so leaving the kitchen you go into our bathroom which was a big labor of love on my side I mean the whole bus was we're loved but this was my situation like I said earlier the tile that's the white subway tile was 98 percent all from Habitat for Humanity which was $50 so that was huge saving on that side and then when we ran out we just got a couple pieces that needed to be filled in from like a Lowe's again but we started from the ground up everything was red guarded mega because this is kind of like a wet room situation when you see our shower so just did mosaic tiles on the floor did hand by hand one by one subway tiles on the wall and then we just did like an accent side of different tile on this side and then they each have inset shelving so for like our shampoos and things like that so it stays out of the way but we still still have easy access to it and we had to do it also around the wheel well which was a maneuvering situation so because we wanted that side aisle we had to work around our wheel wells which was kind of hard to do but we made happen and I'm super happy with how it's turned out so we decided to put our vanity on top of the wheel well and then our toilet on the side just a regular foot pedal toilet it's not compost or anything so which is nice with a potty training child but other than that we just did some storage up top with some more piping so that it's still out of our way but we can still get to it no problem and we just have extra towels so cleaning supplies anything you really need in your bathroom that would it fit at our vanity or in our medicine cabinet mirror and we have this medicine cabinet mirror and the same one in our bedroom which again how taught from community so they're big mirrors but they have a lot of storage inside and then we could put all of our stuff without getting too cluttered in here but because we had a side aisle we couldn't do a toilet and a shower situation like most people do or they do like a super super tiny bathroom because we knew we had a kid and we knew we were going to have another kid in this bus eventually so we needed it to be a decent size so we put our showerhead over here with our removable shower curtain it just hides away in the corner and we just pull the shower curtain over across the vanity basically and this is all down to a drain so it just kind of like works as a wet room and just squeeze you down the walls and it's great actually um it's a pretty big shower I think it's the biggest shower we've had out of all the places we've lived in since we were married which is sad but true so I'm super super happy about this bathroom and we have the RV vent on top so we can get some ventilation and then another window in here just to get it all that all that steam out as much as possible we needed to figure out a way that was gonna make it work where you didn't have to rip out these pipe shelving but it needed to bend to our will so one of our friends I guess bends pipes and he saw our bathroom and bent it for us he made it fit perfectly and then with our rain showerhead yeah it's a really luxurious space actually for the most part so yeah so with our towel I didn't know a single thing about tiling and I mean my father-in-law had some idea he you know gave me some pointers here and there but originally I started in this corner doing our subway tile and I had no pattern I didn't I didn't know any better so I got about halfway up the wall and halfway up the other wall and Jeremy said you're gonna have to redo that that looks bad and I was like great I've been in here for six days doing this and I guess I'm gonna redo it it took me three weeks to tell the bathroom because it was and it was in the middle of summer so so so hot which is great as well but I mean it was a learning lesson and now I can tile pretty decently I definitely wouldn't want to do it again but I'm happy I did it I'm super it's like one of those satisfying feelings you know you did it yourself you can be proud of it when you walk in and when people tell me like hey that is an amazing back I'm like it was worth it you know we used liquid nails to have the towel stick on and then I believe it was just regular grout that we used and I had a lot of people ask me if the grout cracked if it didn't hold up when we were driving and it's done great so far maybe over time it won't who knows we won't know until we get there but we haven't had any problems with the grouting situation people are saying use like a flexible grout we didn't even do that and it's been fine and none of the tiles have cracked or broken since we've driven as well nothing's fallen off so yeah look at what liquid nails held up really well I'd say just don't get super careless and messy with them because it once it's dry even if it is on the towel it is harder to scrape off so that's not as enjoyable but they yeah they're good good alternative for sure yeah and Jeremy's like hey hopefully you just don't have any mould situation if anything it might be like the wood up here the shiplap on the ceiling would be fine but other than that I mean that's easy to replace the wood wasn't anything crazy like installed at all so so we decided to do a barn door just because we didn't want a door swinging into the hallway to take space while people were walking through and just make said space we just didn't want that so Jeremy just bought the supplies to make one it was way cheaper for him to be able to just build one rather than buy one I know that they can be a couple hundred dollars he just got some wood from Home Depot or Lowe's just got the railing got some wood iron that we liked and he just made it however we wanted to and it was perfect since we had a door frame he knew the sizes and the dimensions for that also it took on I think maybe $70 to make the whole door and when we drive he just has a pin that he puts in here so it stays locked so it's not slightly back and forth and it's worked out super well I'm super happy with it it keeps this area open when we're home and kids are running around and people are walking through so and it just keeps the water also from coming out we do have the lip from the bathroom but it also just you know another preventer keeps it like that way so yeah super easy I definitely recommend barn doors just being handmade by you know if you have anyone that knows what they're doing at all you could do it I could probably do it and I'd you know I don't know too much but I could probably do so again because we did that side aisle we knew we'd have to work with the wheel wells and we solved their problem in the bathroom had to figure out what we were going to do here and I suggested doing a step since again that luxury of having the raised roof we weren't going to be hitting our heads and we're also not super tall people even if that was a problem but so yeah we just did a step originally I wanted to do some storage to bring out this step this way all the way to the edge of RJ's room over here but I'm kind of glad we did it it's just a natural flow that we walk through here so I don't even notice it Arthur doesn't notice it during its it just makes sense it's the easiest thing that we could have done in yeah it works out well it's not inconvenient it doesn't feel unnatural to and you're walking powder so so when we built our days room we built with knowing that we were gonna probably have another kid in the bus so originally when we did it we did it with bunk beds and Jeremy welded them together he knows how to weld so he made two frames for toddler size mattresses which we still have the second one but we just took out four now since we don't have the second kit here yet we just were like you know what we don't need it taking up space right now so might as well just take it out which is great since we have that perk since we built the bus we know everything about it and another thing awesome about it is that we made the Murphy style so when RJ wants to just play in here during the day if we don't need his bed out we can just take off the side railings and fold the butt up against the wall and this has another little space where if I'm in the kitchen and we have some people over and we're like hey like go to your room he can and he could play in there and we just have storage there for him as well which I feel like as the baby comes and we need to make room for her and stuff like that we can change this up really easily because it's nothing super super permanent we can knock down this whole storage area we can keep it the same and give some bins and give him some bins but other than that we have his nice little hanging rod for jackets and flannels and things like that and then we have all of his shirts and pants all in different bins with his diapers and then some books for him to read which he loves he just grabs them it's at his height so that's also really nice and yeah it's just another convertible area and because we couldn't make the wall go all the way up to the ceilings since we have our emergency exit doors functional there was one right here in the middle so we just cut it off and made it a storage space up top and just pull whatever stuff we need up there junk extra stuff yeah gotta have that space for whatever we kind of really need we keep like our travel luggage if we do go fine we have bags up there we have extra lights we have the rails for the beds and that we put up there during the day normally we have extra diapers and stuff any of that good stuff and then we can close off his whole room just with the curtain which is also nice because since there's a window right across from his room it keeps that sunlight out and keeps it nice and dark for him and also just gives them and us a little bit more privacy so it just creates more of a space for him all right so leaving from our Z's room we come straight to our area our bedroom our sitting area dresser closet whatever you want to call it but we have an elevator rise in bed so this was another thing we knew we were gonna want pretty much from the very beginning because we knew again we didn't want dead space just for our bed and because we have a dog nose bust we didn't have to have our bed lofted high because of you know all the engine and everything so we're like we should utilize that and see what we can do we talked about doing a Murphy bed we talked about doing the elevator bed and that's ended up working best for us because we could still have store storage without having to have dead space from a Murphy bed of having that bed go up to the wall type of thing so there's a lot of physics that I'm sure Jeremy can touch on that he had to figure out with this it is bluetooth so it's like a to our phone which you know if we were boondocking we do have solar so we can make it happen still we don't have to do old school chain or anything like that and it's just some parts that he picked up from like a home depot or lowes and just roller system with the pulleys we have four pulleys one for every corner of the bed pretty much yeah yeah one for every corner and they're just mounted to the ceiling so they stay out of the way and it's nice because obviously we don't need her to our bed all day long so we can get into our dressers no problem we can fit under here we can get to our hanging stuff that's here our hamper we can get ready over here or we have another medicine cabinet mirror and these dressers hold a ton of clothes so but we also still have shelving too which is nice we kind of use it as like our end tables if you will put our phones there put some candles there post whatever kind of whatever we want there so it still makes it customized to us and still super functional I can easily do this from my phone I just turn on my bluetooth and there's an app that goes with the pulleys that we use and they just all connect and sync up and then once they're sucked basically just move the pillows down and we have a stool to be able to get on the bed since I'm Oh since I'm pregnant and we do a little support leg just because this core needs a little bit more support we love it I think this is people's favorite thing when they see the bus so whenever they see everybody like what not that it goes up and down yeah so I want to say it was my idea it probably was just like the bus was but uh yeah this is probably the best decision that we made was this because now I feel like we have so much more living space and I can like I said I can sit and work on that daybed we can just hang out back here another area for our day to just be able to run around and get a get out of our hair for a second but and then we can also access the store is up there too which is nice and if there wasn't anything up there for stores we could also go through the the emergency exit door but it also just keeps this store functional to which we wanted to keep functional so we have a back deck that is connected and we can just walk straight out there it's not connected right now but normally it is and then it leads to our ladder which goes to our rooftop deck so we have access on both sides of our bus to get any now however we want so have good lighting in here with our windows and yeah I think we got them from the website um called my lifter I'm pretty sure that's where we got them they are a little hefty in price that's the only thing someone was asking us about it if we had used some other brand I guess was really really expensive but this was a better alternative because you can buy them single I'm pretty sure that they are like two hundred dollars a piece but again it was one of those things we weren't really willing to compromise on and because we were saving money in other areas like hitting up the Habitat for Humanity a huge thing was our ceiling was all donated material which is shiplap which super super nice we you know saved money there and which was oh gosh Jeremy could tell you that was a feat in itself but it yeah it was something that you know we knew we were gonna utilize and use every single day so we kind of took the plunge on that but it is also something because you're going to be using it constantly need something reliable and that last and these have lasted and not giving us any problems so yeah it's just learning the physics with our situation learning the physics of how it was gonna work was the biggest thing I think but other than that yeah they've been great so the fridge we have we got it from Lowe's it's really simple it's just it's just a small fridge that we bought I don't think it's the most energy-efficient we have solar and so it's been powering it totally fine with our battery bank and the entire system but eventually what I don't know if Christa said but we want to do a fridge that also runs off of propane which those are really awesome and resourceful and more efficient but yeah I don't know if she open it's our mess it's small and there's no freezer space but we don't mind going to the grocery store one or two times a week and that's totally fine but yeah this is our dinette area our kitchen and the technical side of it speaking I built everything by hand I took six months out of my life and I learned a lot I spent a lot of time on YouTube I used to be a welder full-time and that was an incredible help and resource but we had a lot of things donated like all the metal for the benches was all donated and it was all cut out and we actually when I when I built the benches it was like the second to last week before our bus warming party and the finish due date and the benches actually came out to like here and they were this hall I was like ah like that's a bummer and so I spent like three or four hours cutting them and squaring them up again and making them smaller and that was really nice making that bench obviously Christa likes things open-concept and I think I think my vision for the bus was basically babe whatever whatever you want um let me try and make make this happen so this is this is all Christa everything that looks good is Christa everything that's like functional and you can't break it's probably mine yeah I'm moving forward to the kitchen I believe krysta touched on this this was a door and it was we found it a Habitat for Humanity was like 30 bucks and we're like hey we'll buy that put some polyurethane on it and sand it and it's working out so far can I eventually change it all of the cabinets were donations from a family friend who ripped out their kitchen and Christa said we missed mixed and matched them which was awesome Christa picked up colors again everything beautiful is from her so we do have with residential windows um that's not everyone's choice we get questions constantly on like hey you want with house windows are those gonna break while you're driving they haven't yet um but I mean one of the best things about building it yourself you can rip them out and put in new ones so they're all dual paint which is really nice so it keeps it really warm in here or cool in the summer and we heavily insulated the entire thing we didn't use spray foam which I might have gone with but there's a little it was just a choice just to go with our 13 insulation so windows are all really nice the sink right here that goes directly to the gray water tank underneath we have a lot of storage underneath our bus we have two gray water tanks and one black water tank so essentially we have two grey water tanks that are forty and fifty gallons and then one black water tank that's a 30 gallon tank and those are fine they last about a month until we have to dump them and we've hookups here and that's really nice the grey water it fills up pretty quick because of the shower and that's that we have to dump more often but this side this side has all the fresh water underneath right here before the wheel well and then this side has all the black water and gray water and the fresh water I think we have like 97 gallons of fresh and with a pump and everything and that's not hooked up yet fun for me I get to do that we're just on shore water inshore power right now so that's fine but we made sure if you're building a school we make sure that you have less freshwater storage than you do have black water storage so it doesn't just fill up if you move all the water from one side to the other there's a tip for you that one's free uh-huh so moving on the stove is awesome this was expensive that was kind of a bummer but I think if you're building a home you want to you want to go with what this company you're comfortable with Craigslist and Salvation Army and goodwill those things are awesome resources for saving money essentially Krista I wanted something nice and we're gonna keep this for a long time I don't think I'll ever sell the bus I love it this is our home we'll end up if we get a property someday and maybe a real house or build a real house well we'll say like hey if there's a young couple then they need a place to stay and or Airbnb it out I don't know but this is this is something that we want to give back about this stuff this the ovens pretty great it's got all the pizza crumbs from last night so it does hold a regular sized DiGiorno pizza yeah so going into the bathroom now straight down to the plumbing this was like such a mind-boggling thing of how do you set up your plumbing how do you how you get it all on the right spaces and I think I think the hardest part for the bus is that the drive train goes right here and the rear axles her right here obviously because the wheel well and so I couldn't put the shower drain back more towards the shower there's a big old I beam right here and that was really difficult to get around and so I stuck it here there's a p-trap underneath it and that goes over to the gray water and man it's it was just kind of hard to figure out how that all worked and again I'm not a plumber I'm an electrician and it's it's something that I was really good that I learned and I'm happy to learn it I'm excited that I have more knowledge and I can redo it if I need the sink is awesome we we picked out a bunch of stuff on Amazon be careful with that one of the main problems was the shower we picked out it was Japanese and after I put all the hookups in for the normal shower and I went to fasten the the shower we bought on on Amazon nothing fit and none of the threads were actually the right size and I took it to Home Depot and Lowe's and I was just trying to figure out like why are these threads just off like there is no size that will actually fit this and I'm like babe I'm sorry like we this cannot work here on and then you just go and read all the reviews on that shower and you're like everyone's saying like it worked for two minutes and then blew apart so make sure you read the reviews guys yeah sync it goes straight through you can actually see the pipe where the gray water goes underneath all that all the drawers on this vanity pop out Lowe's does not sell these vanities with the legs chopped off that was custom so if you need that done just call me I'll come chop off all the legs of your vanity uh-huh so yeah that's that was our creative way of using the wheel well as you can see some of the tiles started to kind of split while we were driving and that's fine we were we're learning we aren't weird by no means perfect and homebuilding this is all Charl and air I love all the wood aesthetic we used stained and we sanded the heck out of this as you can see that wasn't sanded which I mean a little character there the piping of taut so I mean for any builder I feel like you get really really into using one material and it was right after I built the bookshelves and they're all these like creative pipes of how to like hold the books in place so they don't fall out and I was like hey I can probably build a shower rack out of this and this was pretty I'm pretty difficult to get in actually I wish I were used flanges on the insides here so I could just pull it out but because it's actually stuck into the wall on both sides which you'll probably get a shot of that it it won't come out which is funny I'll probably I just have to use a cut-off wheel and and pull it out that way if I ever have to move it but again after we put this in we've thought about the shower curtain and I was like man we didn't even think about this and there's a big pipe right here that's in the way and I had a my cousin come over and he was working on electrical with me because the lights have been an interesting thing where I'm not electrician I'm learning and he said hey I can just bend a piece of conduit and maybe that'll fit and so he just took like 10 minutes and made this weird you and it's it's actually really spacious when you're showering in here so this is not a real home guys this is this is a school bus and so if you're in a school bus showering it's supposed to be small but yeah so that's the bathroom for you we love it there are no tie downs on these guys and so anytime we're driving it I actually just take off the handles and put a screw through so that's that's my way of getting around it it's fine the toilet that's from an RV supply store um and it's it works it's nice it's it's got water plugged into the back of it the whole box that I built on the back of the toilet it it's not to make it look like the tank of an actual toilet it's it's just for storage and then everything that on his water-related is plugged into the back of it so if I need to get into anything back there I just take a screw gun and pull off these guys right here and then I can reach it the reason we went with a RV toilet rather than a composting toilet was I mean it sounds a little selfish but just for the mere fact that I didn't want to have to look at my wife's poop constantly you know like once a month hey babe will you change out my poop um I'm not I'm not a germaphobe at all I actually got the chance to deliver her first child and that was an amazing experience but to think about having to do that like once a month or more often it just doesn't sound that fun I've used composting toilets before they work really well but I just I just didn't want to look at poop constantly so it's preference but people people that that's awesome that's so rad you use a composting toilet and it's energy-efficient in saves of water on and it was not for us right now so maybe in the future moving towards the back of the bus this is a barn door obviously we move these these pegs right here the forward and backwards with an allen wrench just to keep the the door in place while we're moving in it because obviously if you slam on the brakes the doors gonna go flying and that would be a bummer if it just slam there and maybe broke the window I don't know I think one of the dumbest questions though moving on that I get in the bus it's like hey what's under here what is this storage and I'm like that's a wheel well I can't do anything with that and they're like oh I thought it was just a fancy step that a step in and then another step and a half and I'm like that's that's dumb um so I mean yeah there was there was an aesthetic here of making this rate this angle easier to get in the bathroom because if it was if it was flat you'd have a less of a doorway and I don't know nothing's finished but it's it works for us and it's not a bummer getting a little bit of a calf workout you have to step up into the bus anyway this is our Jays room so far and the new baby I believe Krista covered that there are two Murphy beds so again I used to be a full-time welder and I love making things and fabricating with metal and yeah the the second bunk goes up top and it was a little bit of a challenge to figure out how we wanted to configure his room because you want you want space to be able to change a baby that's kind of that's kind of annoying if you you have to pull the baby out and change the baby on your own bed constantly or or not have enough room in here to work and those with kids no it is not always this clean we actually clean the bus pretty well before having this little tour so when the new baby comes I will hook up the second bed obviously put different rails on it and anything can be changed honestly the the clothes rack also matches the bookshelf iraq and yeah got a little storage up top but that's easy this beam right here this beam is probably one of the most important beams in the bus when you talk about just framing all of our walls and in two by threes that we use to build the bus it's all on this side and so basically if you didn't have this guy here the entire thing would want a rack back or forth and so this guy right here this tie is the entire right side of the bus passenger side of the bus in from from going back and forth so there's no way that it's going to go this way on because it's tied in to the ceiling and and it's it's not gonna fall this way obviously because it's tied in the bat wall but the living forward and backwards this this guy is amazing two days before two days before we were done with the bus we had this we were gonna get ready for this bus warming party and we had friends come and help work on the bus which if you're not careful about that you'll have hell I have holes in your walls and things that you just don't want and that's fine I love the heart of all my friends I don't know who it was we're gonna blame Christa right now this this beam right here and all of these guys they were all stained like this red ugly gunstock stain and I woke up in the morning and I at that point we were rushing to get it done I was getting up at like 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning working until 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. and I came I woke up in the morning and these were like this ugly red color I say okay so I got to spend my morning hopefully trying to get that off now I didn't know like you can't sand stain and get it all the way off and so I actually just took a table saw and I took maybe like a maybe a sixteenth of an inch off every side of these guys and just pulled it all off and restain them slap them all back up there and it worked out so yeah those who have kids I will say if you're going to get it curtain you can get one that's a sound dampening curtain and those work really well we have a noise machine in his and he's not we're really blessed to not have a child that is that can't sleep without a noise machine but it's really nice to have that going like a lot of the time so yep moving on to our room I think this is the biggest question with the elevator bed and I wanted to make a really important note that when we were considering this it was really difficult because you have two options if you're building a school and you want to make a bed you can either have it on the ground and have your storage above with cabinets or I don't know any way to configure with shelving or you can have it lofted and and then have all your storage underneath and you have to climb into bed and maybe you don't have that much space because of the ceiling our ceilings are erased and we did a roof raised and we'll talk about that later but it really helps with the elevator bed if you commit to doing a Murphy bed which seems like the median between a lofted bed or a bed on the floor you're also committing to always putting the Murphy bed back up and if I'm honest I never make my bed it's a thing like you just wake it you wake up and you leave your bed you don't make it every day it's 2019 we don't do that very much anymore it's nice when we do I will give you that and it looks really nice but I personally do not make my bed every day and therefore I wouldn't commit to putting my Murphy bed up every day and if you commit to doing a Murphy bed you're committing to having the space under it all the time and so with that in mind we're like you know what I really want to do something different and I went to a I went to a garage door shop and I bought these rails that hold garage door rollers and I was asking the guy I'm like hey I wanna I want a big spring that I can I can hook onto my bed and put it above my bed so that so that you can just lift up the bed with one hand and have it tension to the right so they're right pounds and pressure so that it would just lift up and down with one hand it's like that's a really good idea one problem I'm like what is that and I'm all eager he's like you have giant spring on your bed that's pulling tension so I can pull the bed together imagine if that just came out of your ceiling while you're sleeping you're in a mousetrap basically and I'm like oh well that's dumb so anyway we basically I did so much searching and I found these garage door lifters they're called my lifter I don't know if I'm gonna get a plug from that and they're they're pretty expensive it's our home again we wanted to put more money into it you can do a schooling for a lot less than we did but my wife is pregnant I did not want a chain or a way that she would have to like turn a wheel and it'd be difficult on her and so obviously Krista showed you I believe it was bluetooth things that goes up and down totally fine I'm gonna change it a little bit I think in the future to make it go a little bit higher because I'm I'm five eight and I can stand under here fine but I do have to duck my head here and then I hit every other beam so uh moving forward got a nice little leg there that doesn't that's a funny part of the video so putting in the garage door rollers on each of the walls it didn't work first try we tried so many different configurations there's there's a ton of little holes in the bed because I actually put the the cables through the bed and put them on pulleys under here and I'm like hey you need two points of reference for a pulley to it for it to work really well and then again I didn't want these cables going alongside the bed and it would be yanking on the sheets and it would get stuck in the pulleys and that was I was just kind of a bummer and I said you know what like we're gonna we're gonna try all these different configurations and this one worked the best so far and it hides the wires the best and all of the all of the lifters are tied into the ribs of the bus if you are building your own Schooley the ribs of the bus are are the bones those are what you want to tie into for anchoring anything and and they work really really well so I don't know if Krista touched on the ceiling throughout the bus we have this really nice wood we had so many different families that just said hey like we were gonna donate and we're gonna donate wood we're gonna de meadow we're gonna donate our time and so many families came alongside us and supported us through this journey and actually my friend that works he owns a construction company he said hey I got all I got your ceiling because I was asking him like every week hey like do you have any extra wood that I can use for a ceiling he said hey I got your ceiling but it's summer and it's really hot so the things gonna warp really quickly so you need to get it up in the next two days and I hadn't wired any of the lights yet and so I googled like what's a complete circuit how do you get switches in and everything and I took like five or six hours and I just ran all the wires as fast as I could have got them all up and I said okay I think that works and I've hooked up power and I I ran it I tested every one of the connections and somehow it worked and I was like okay am i calm in my crown my my hot wires they're all they're all really good and all of the lights are 12 volt so it's not super and super hard to work with you work with those wires without getting shocked you don't get shocked a 12 volt and they're energy efficient so and then it was time to put up the ceiling which was an insane task all of the screws are in each one of the ribs so down the bus you have every 26 inches there's a rib except for the first part in the last part of the bus there it's about 36 inches so I had to drill with a steel bit and then put in a screw drove the steel bit put in a screw and your arms are up here for a week and it hurts and so that's it that took so long actually the hardest part was the very first two lines going all the way down the bus because even when we snapped a line and tried to find a perfect part of the bus the bus isn't square so so no matter what if we measured like from one wall to the other and tried to find the very middle it didn't matter because at the very other end it was different and I was like this is so frustrating and it's ridiculous and so it took it took me it must take me four to six hours to find a straight line with the first two lines up and down the bus that's how long it took everything's tongue and groove so it's it hooked in real nice but still it was a pain in the butt and it was really hard I'm happy with the outcome so you can do whatever ceiling you like it's awesome because it's your own home and it builds character in you and it looks good because there's a lot of character in it so now you've seen the inside a couple of fun stories have been told let's go to the outside alright welcome to the outside of the bus this is the outside of the bus so let's just walk through essentially what you're looking at if you're buying a bus this is an international 3800 is 2004 and so it it runs good big old engine inside this is something you really need to see it's a rat's nest if you buy a bus and the child safety check is installed that will be the most difficult thing as far as your wiring system to get undone there are tons of wires in here that are just like hey we wanted to put this in here so we did I don't know what it's for but the company that was using the bus before hand up and Oregon decided to install a bunch of garbage and then clip it off instead of just remove it and you have this speaker in here with a really nice lady that tells you that the back door is open so it took us seven months to get the bus started again for for one reason the relay was powered by an interlock switch with the back door being open it won't let the bus start or run at all and so when we gutted the thing I ripped out everything I just went to town I was probably listening at a heavy metal in my headset and I was just I was just pulling out wires left and right which is really a bummer because I had to rewire all the brake lights and turn signals and everything and that's difficult but yeah there was there wasn't all this rewiring we had to figure out and I had a couple automotive sky automotive people come out and mechanics and time after time there are people that would say yeah I'll get it started right up and they're like hey it's just you just got a prime it and you just got a prime it man he's got a prime it and but these little ions are probably empty he's got a prime it I'm like well that's garbage people would come out and spend 45 minutes kicking it trying to look at it and be like the old store I'll call you back and no one would call me back I finally found a trucking company and I didn't even tell him was a bus cuz I didn't want to tell him that I worked on it a guy came out barely spoke English he originally was from Mexico City barely wanted to talk to me got into the problem immediately and figured out that my ECM was actually shorted out because I welded on the bus and I didn't disconnect the battery so if you're welding on your bus disconnected I made a huge mistake there was a company out in Texas that rebuilt it I shipped it out to them they shipped it back a week later only cost like 600 bucks instead of buying a whole new ECM which is way cheaper moving on these buses are really awesome and they come with three batteries so it's all disconnected right now so my son doesn't turn on the headlights Wow where you don't notice and then drain the batteries we have storage I think one of the only things that I did not do in the bus and that was actually delegated out to my father was the solar hook-up he's he's really a geek into like hooking up all the electrical and the solar and he wanted to own her to hook up the battery bank and I was like yeah if you want to do that go ahead I have a lot to do and so he taught me everything that he did and I was really excited about it we have an inverter we have 48 volts coming out of that battery bank and this is our breaker box we got outlet power short power a ton of storage everything under here I welded so I'm welding these big L brackets and I bolted them to the i-beams which it says actually on the i-beams don't drill through I don't know if that's going to be a huge problem I got some pretty big bolts going through there to hold this whole thing up but there's no way this is going anywhere and then obviously you got to have some piece of wood or something here so the new rocks fly up or water if you go through a puddle so that I'm gonna get your whole system wet so yeah all the solar is coming down through the wall drilled a ton of holes in the ceiling and in in through the floor of my bus which just felt weird drilling a hole through your bus that you just purchased and then still what is left to do is I have to find a way to latch this up here so that I don't have to hold it right now we use a stick it's really modern it works and then I haven't bolted these guys down yet when we drove it they were just super heavy so nothing really broke yeah and then obviously you want a way to lock it so that you don't have people just posting hey this is a cool Schooley that I found and then they post where you live and your location and then you got I got a bunch of people saying oh we're gonna go steal all their batteries that'd be a bummer this is my battery bank I got eight batteries in there they're all six volt two in parallel and then all of them in series so if you do any research on that that's what you're gonna find is one of the best ways to do it where you can get 40 volt 48 volts out of it if you look under here that's where everything's connected in to the banks and my 12-volt so it's just converting it over cutting it down from 48 to 12 and that's also something that I just didn't know before but I learned and there's a lot of learning involved in schoolies so that's all my fresh water right here I've got a ton ton of gallons there we should be good if we're on the road right now we're permanently docked because we're expecting a new baby and that's a little bit of stress I don't want to have on my plate so we used all pecks for the plumbing it's really easy to work with it holds hot water on hot water heater you just basically do a ton of research on Amazon and say hey what is the best hot water heater out there and Google is your best friend obviously my my shurflo system for my my pump is not wired in which I will do that pretty soon here but everyone asks if this was like a kit that all came together and I said no I I built that and I you basically have to have a specific flow when using a pump you have to have a filter than your pump than your aerator so that you don't have that weird pressure that blows out air when you turn on a faucet and after that it goes right into my hot water heater and it comes out warm hopefully so the hot water heater is it's all powered by propane we just do the propane exchange right now it's really nice you can find them at any gas station and as long as you're not buying new propane tanks it's only like 20 bucks it's not it's not bad the typical 20 pound propane tank usually lasts us between like three to five weeks so depending on how long a showers we take so every time we have to wash our hair Krista it takes a little bit longer but that's fine the oven also it doesn't take a lot of propane it actually works really well if you are using a hot water here tankless hot water heater it takes a 9-volt battery it's not bad and then also you have to have some sort of panel up top to divert the hot exhaust coming out so it doesn't just melt all this stuff underneath your bus then it'll drip in there and just make a big old mess and that's that's not something you want to deal with so obviously the hose is our shore water and you need to get technically speaking you don't have to but you kind of want to make sure that the pressure that's going into your system isn't too high so then it'll pipes break or anything like that and that's obviously that's not a ton of storage but there's a few spaces that I can put the Rubbermaid bins in and we made sure to measure out for those specifically because husky makes a really good one and they last a long time last week I just hey I want more storage and so I just build your own school you can make your own storage I just put a couple rivets in and used a cut-off blade and cut myself a little hatch and that's where all my propane is sitting right now so we use just the Flex line and we have two propane tanks and so when the shower goes cold and my wife gets mad at me I say I'll just flip it over I walk out here switches in the next tank and that way I always have a tank that's recycling so I take the old tank stick it in my truck and while I'm out I'll grab a new one that way it's not we're not pressed to grab a new tank right away and then obviously under here you can slide back the Rubbermaid bends and I made sure to measure out for those and it's good storage so moving to the back this is the extra treks I believe it's called that was from the deck all of the deck was donated to us and we have really really awesome friends and just a bunch of people that supported us so I made a little deck I can sit on the back of the bus so that when you walk out of the back door from our bedroom you don't just fall onto the ground you can actually just sit out here it's really nice hook up the hammock because that's what my favorite places to sit with my son and it's really nice to sit in the hammock with your bus we will be to speak on the roof raise a lot of people have questions on the roof raise okay we can go up on the deck and check out our hangout spot welcome to our deck right now Krista cannot climb up here because she's six months pregnant so I get to hang out up here I put lawn chairs up here and then just it's my spot so it's really nice to have a deck that you can travel with wherever you want and Trek's is really really heavy and expensive the only way we were able to do that is by by someone donating it so I don't know if it's like too heavy for the top of the bus while we're driving a lot it it works fine everyone else's threw out weight ratio we actually took out 1,500 pounds worth of seats out of the bus when we got it it and that's not even to mention all of the the panels for the ceiling those things are heavy and so everyone's like ah do you have too much weight on the bus and really it's supposed to hold 72 kids and 1,500 pounds worth of seats not mentioning everything else so we left the hatches we love those sometimes I'll climb any in and out of them that's right to the storage that's above our J's bed so I just grabbed things out of there or talked to Krista this is the hatch that is for the bathroom and then obviously all of our solar and so we have six panels right now and they work totally fine we get enough Sun we're coming out of winter right now and we're in spring and so it's a little bit cloudy and that's why it's really good to be on shore power it's a little bit harder to keep your solar and your battery bank up and running when you don't have Sun so yep obviously this is the deck there's a little fairing up front that keeps the wind coming over the top of the bus so each of these panels are 120 120 watts and you really have to race you out what Watts and what amps you want and how to like balance those out properly so you're not overloading your system and also you're just getting the best use out of the solar panels as possible so right now it's I mean it's 2019 you're paying about a dollar a watt and so we don't with those smaller panels and that's totally fine it works great for us it's just we don't like a lot of people knowing where we live because people like to steal solar panels and that's dumb so bolted those down with special bolts with a little key so that it doesn't don't come up very easily so that's really nice other than that this is the only part of the bus and underneath this right now that's still yellow so this is the passenger side of the bus we got a floodlight here which is really nice it's got a little switch on the inside that's 12 volt as well the outside shower is over here that is for me and RJ when we get kicked out of the house and on the very back of the bus I don't know if you saw there's a spigot and that's just for filling up buckets of water and I remember when I was first watching videos on schoolies we were getting ideas there's like an old man that had a bus and he's like this is a speaker for filling up buckets of water and I'm like I want one of those and so I put packs all the way to the back of the bus for filling up buckets of water for some reason so that's nice the roof raised that is a huge question it's honestly not that difficult to do we did it in eight hours me and a couple of buddies so basically what we did was I measured out the distance between the bus windows that were in in originally the distance between the windows and the frame and the bottom was 28 inches the pipe that I cut to fit inside of the C channel it was exactly the same size 2-inch and it fit perfectly inside of that C channel at 20 inches long that way no matter where you cut on the bus if you stuck that exact piece at 20 inches and then it would all raise the exact same height so like even if I cut one of the ribs we're really high at the top and the next one like more at the bottom it didn't matter because the entire thing was gonna raise up the exact same height so that way you didn't have to make sure you cut a perfect straight line because nothing is squaring the bus and so from there I made it basically looking like a toothpick that the pieces of metal that we stuffed into the C channel so there is two-inch and I'd stuck inside to inch on either side a piece of inch and 3/4 of steel and welded that together just on one side and then once we cut it we only had to we only had four corners left to cut so it was the entire roof was on the two front ones and the two back ones and we framed we framed the bus up and just two by fours we stuck it under there and then we added 20 inches on the another piece of framing and we had that sitting in the bus as well ready to go up when it was raised and what we did was we had a four by four and a car jack and we had one guy with a 4x4 in the very back of the bus hanging outside in the door just jacking up the thing and we had four guys one on each side of the the the Rufe and we cut it all and we all held a piece of the roof and then it was getting windy and so we were like holding it it was starting to move over and it was crazy because we thought the roof is just gonna fall off the side of the bus and so we ended up jacking it up with a carjack one side just the back of it we put up the the bigger frame was stuck it under there really quick and when they ran to the other side we jacked it up and we were all holding the corners while this was happening and then basically you me and my friend we had two welders I was welding one side and one on the other side just two MIG well there's running both sides on the bus and we stuck all of those pieces in and we just went to work and it it was eight hours and the thing was raised and then after that we just took those sheets of 16 gauge sheet metal and since it was 48 inches at that time 20 plus the 28 from the windows it's stuck right up under there and then we just riveted it and make sure another note that you go back to front so that you don't have openings that are overlapped with the bus in the wrong direction if that makes sense oh yeah that was the roof raised the transition was the hardest part if you look at our Instagram basically we had a friend that works at a metal shop and we took stencil after stencil with cardboard and just trying to fold it over and get the right angle and that was really really rough I actually know somebody with a bus they just put a little deck right up front and it's pert and so I mean that's probably not good on gas mileage but that's honestly the hardest part and what we did was we just bent those pieces of cardboard until we got the right shape we measured it all out and said okay it's time to cut off the metal and he bent all the metal he brought it over and he said here you go and then like okay and basically we just had two pieces and again that's on our Instagram and I spent hours with rivets and that's that's fine don't buy don't use a hand rivet gun I actually got that from Chris's video he used a hand rivet gun for a lot of his rivets and his forums must have been jacked but at the same time using an air tool and just using popper if it's super simple super simple and it was way faster so that's the roof area for you yeah thanks for touring our bus with us if you guys are curious to see more of it or if you have any questions for us you can follow our instagram at the castle on wheels the link will be down below if you guys were thinking about doing a school ii the school ii community is really welcoming we were welcomed in and we had a bunch of messages when we were doing the build and everyone's like hey like you guys doing great like keep going keep fighting for it and i gotta say like if you're planning on doing a school ii it's not a dream it's not pretty you have to really have to have the right reasons i would say go to now reese go to an RV store if you're not willing to pay the price and i'm not saying like money it really really costs you to to build a lot of character and i learned a lot specifically as a human i was also alone a lot of the time because it was only me working on the bus and being alone that many months is kind of difficult and i missed my family it's a commitment to live anise coulis its commitment to build a school ii i think it's really unique for our situation that we wanted it go out and take the adventure and take the chance and with my work being remote and christa doing amazing photography i anyway just just check out our instagram it's the castle on wheels you can follow myself my personal account Christa has multiple accounts for a photography plug or or her personal couch takes amazing photos by the way trigger [Music]

Channel: Tiny Home Tours

Views: 1,196,538

Keywords: tiny home, tiny house, tiny home on wheels, van life, camper van, shipping container, design, tiny houses, tiny homes, tiny house tour, school bus conversion, bus conversion, skoolie, raised roof bus, raised roof school bus, raised roof skoolie, full time rv, full time rv family, full time skoolie family, diy skoolie, diy school bus, diy bus conversion

Id: 8Qx8rmWSixo

Length: 72min 43sec (4363 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 02 2019