Family Of 4 "Road Schooling" - Gorgeous Bus Conversion - Full Of Live Edge & Reclaimed Wood

[Music] [Applause] [Music] all right what's up I'm Seth with urban lumber and Road School of Life this is my bus check it out it's a 1989 International on a bluebird body all right so we've just finished a five month trip and what we call alpha the bus from the Colfax school district just came down from Oregon through California into Baja Mexico for two and a half months back up into the southwest riding bikes and hiking all around Utah and Idaho back to Oregon again with my family my wife and two kids doing road school for the five months so this is kind of the living room in the bus is the part where we hang out most probably got our bar here which was great for meals and doing homework for the kids we're doing home school on the road or Road schools we like to call it it's pretty cool to be able to pull up to a new place and have a new view whether it's Beach or mountains or something fresh that's one of the cool things about a bus - all these windows we left there's 20-some windows so it's had a great view and a nice breeze coming through on this side is our sofa it's just a good spot to hang out whether we're hosting friends for a little dinner party or just chilling out here we could watch a movie on the couch this is also where the rest the family usually Road I put seat belts mounted through the floor into the frame that come out in the couch here so this is where they were riding most of the time I put in USB charging ports and drink holders here so this was kind of comfy going down the road yeah big storage underneath everything's got big deep drawers so we put in a ton of storage not not only in this place but the whole rest of the kitchen behind me I've got like 19 hours and five cabinets which turns out to be just a little more storage that I have in my house at home this doesn't pull out into a bed we've slept people on it in a pinch but we didn't want to have to convert things back and forth all the time and be picking up our blankets every morning I made the kids their own bunk spaces so that could be their room and they could keep it the way they like and this way we just keep this open and clean so this part of the bus I wanted to make as big as possible or feel as big as possible since I knew we'd be hanging out here a lot didn't want it to get cluttered right off the bat this bar is a live edge black walnut this is some wood that I milled from a locally salvaged city tree that's part of my business at urban Lumber Company used the same type of material for the barstools even leaving a little bit of the live edge here and there taught my 12 year old son how to weld and he actually did a lot of the welding on the frames of these barstools so that was pretty cool got the curtains up here which are nice they're double insulated I broke out my sewing machine and sewed those up kind of last minute gives it that kind of camp roll vibe and they work really well when the sunny or cold out and we can roll those down and helps insulate the bus since these old-school single pane windows aren't the most efficient yeah I've got a TV up here so we would use my phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot and would be watching Netflix and Comfort on the couch and hanging out which was pretty cool that's all part of the electrical system that I put in the solar system so it was pretty cool to be able to have like efficient LED 12 volt lighting and different gear but also 120 volt AC household power for the TV the refrigerator the coffeemaker appliances like that which all runs off solar yeah so being a woodworker I wanted to highlight some cool wood in here I was trying not to overdo it but I used this pretty neat old reclaimed spruce snow fencing from Colorado and it's got that just cool patina that only years of weather can provide there's some gray and some brown and pretty rough but I tried to randomly mix it all in looks cool complements the the floor and contrasts well with the rest of the the white walls and white cabinetry making our way into the kitchen that was a huge huge part for us was to have a nice comfortable kitchen with lots of space we like to cook and eat a lot and being out on the road for a long time we were on a budget so we were cooking most of our own food so I've got lots of counter space which was one thing the bar was good for nice three burner cooktop decided to go without an oven just for space we really don't use our oven at home that much we like to barbecue so I did a lot of that outside but that was great for the cooking area on this side one of the things that made it super comfortable was having a full size sink everybody's got it washed dishes and it's nice to have a real size sink not necessarily an RV sink also put in a apartment size fridge which is a household size fridge and that was great had a big freezer were able to really stock up and kept us out longer to go way out under the beach and hang out where we could have fresh food and cold ice and ice cream and occasionally even stock up our freezer with fresh fish so that's the kitchen also underneath we've got the microwave over here and right below it is a propane fired instant hot water heater a tankless water heater which was super cool we have hot water in about two or three seconds never runs out as long as we have water and we have a hundred gallon storage tank underneath for fresh water so we could make that last for as long as a month that's all of our drinking cooking all of our water for washing so that was pretty cool to have the hot water heater both for kitchen dishes and stuff but showers and it was really nice yeah so here in the kitchen you could see our our solar controller it's a monitor for our battery charger slash inverter so I can see exactly what's going on with how the battery is charging I can turn off both 12 volts and 120 volt circuits here if I need to this little control helps me dial in the amps that I would draw if I wanted to plug in anywhere the inverter would make up the difference right below here we've got the battery monitor as well and this also pairs with the bluetooth capability so I can monitor it on my phone with an app so I can see exactly how much solar is coming in how long we have at that rate what the temperature is like all the information about the solar and the batteries which was super cool that all came from AM solar and Springfield which is a cool local company doing a RV solar specialists and it was awesome they helped me out a bunch yeah so another another thing we put in was a propane furnace out of an RV which I rigged up on a thermostat so that was really nice we didn't use it much because we were mostly in warm weather on our trip over the last six months but a couple cold nights up in the mountains it was sweet to turn that on at a certain temperature and have it come on and off over the night keep us warm just another one of the little creature comforts make us want I'll stay in here as long as possible here in the kitchen all of our drawers have soft clothes really nice drawer slide hardware that pulls it in I put in these upper storage mounts to we're really nice to have the extra space up here this was like deep storage for us it's a live-edge walnut you can see the grain runs all the way through on each side backed with hot rolled steel which is magnetic so we can able to latch it it was cool to have this space and one of the reasons I was able to do that was with the roof raised that I did has raised the whole roof of the bus 16 inches which was a pretty pretty big job but it was worth it makes it feel way bigger in here it gives us more storage also brought the windows up 16 inches so now we they're at eye level we can see out and helps with the view so yeah storage was key fitting all of our stuff in here and the upper mounts were another way for me to kind of show off the woodwork and tie it in with the counters and some of the other trim yeah yeah you don't see a microwave much in a tiny house or a bus and it's pretty cool that it's off solar we can't run it a ton of time but our inverter and our battery set up is big enough where when we're fully charged and we have Sun that we could run the microwave so it was really nice to be able to reheat something on the go fast one of the crazy things about living in your bus is you know we could be driving somewhere and it happens to be lunch time and we could pull off and just make a bunch of food and clean up and just be on the road still fast and not have to stop and have a good meal so yeah the microwave toaster coffeemaker some of those appliances are super nice to just plug into an outlet just like at home and use not too much and again I can monitor it with that that in real time with that blue set up so I could literally be microwaving something and looking at my batteries and seeing what that's gonna do and how long I could do it for I would be able to run the microwave all day but to heat up a quesadilla or something it was no big deal same thing with the fridge the fridge runs off 120 volt just regular household power it's a household fridge and that was probably our biggest draw but the solar kept up with it the whole time one of the things we would do is keep a milk jug full of frozen water in the freezer and at night we would take that out of the freezer and put it in the fridge turn down the temperature control just a little bit so the fridge wasn't really running at all and night when we didn't have solar and that helped a bunch you know stay help us keep pretty charged overnight yeah just one of those little hacks it helps out help save power we didn't do it all the time if we had long hot sunny days and were fully charged it didn't really make a difference but sometimes after had been cloudy for a couple days or we'd been using a lot of extra power we would do that and it helped yeah so these self closing hinges worked really well for the most part but when we got down into Baja with fully loaded drawers bumping around on washboard roads and down dry creek beds and stuff occasionally they come apart so we had to kind of do this on the road fix I made these little snap locks which really worked pretty well compared to even like child locks or some of the little magnetic catches that don't really hold these worked really well and it ties in with our same theme as our curtains appear that I made those as well all right so this is a kid's bedroom area their bunks which was probably one of the more challenging things about the bus just trying to figure out the layout in the space that I had a lot to do with how much I raised the roof and how much space they would each have I wanted my kids to feel like they had their own kind of rooms so I wanted to I want it to be important that they could sit up and they had enough room lengthwise to have some of their extra stuff in here I set them up with they each have a reading light nightlight that's like touch to turn on which is pretty cool that's up here they also each have their own USB charging stations which I placed around throughout the bus so they felt pretty at home here they had their curtains they can close up and have some privacy each decorated it with stickers and artwork and some of their own thanks putting these climbing holds for my son to get up to his bunk and he helped place them so he kept climbing and he'd tell me where to go and then him and I mounted him in here so that was a big feature that everybody likes I can climb it there's their heavy duty I don't know but they're they're legit climbing holds bolted through with the appropriate hardware so I think they could hold just about anybody yeah so they they also each had a big super deep drawer down here hold all their stuff pulls all the way out they also had each two drawers over here this is kind of our pantry area where we keep all of our food stuff and it's big and deep goes floor-to-ceiling so we had a lot of food we could hold in these big deep drawers same thing with a self-closing hardware just a little touch makes it nice yeah they've got just a little bit of storage at the foot of their beds they've got their own shelving unit so they could keep their books and maps and a few toys you know it's pretty easy to tell who's who my son's got his baseball glove and it's handmade ukulele in there and my daughter's got her Legos and her stuffed animals and stuff to color with so it's just personalized and they liked it yeah I've got their own windows this was the one area in the bus where I left one window low and one window high as opposed to bringing them all up with the roof raised so that my daughter could have her own window down there yeah it's a lot like people compared to like a train car bunk or maybe like a snow bunk and a ship it's it's kind of small but it's personalized and cozy for them so moving down getting to the bathroom area I separated the bathroom on both sides of the hallway part of that was because of where the wheel wells lie in the bus and we had to work around those and that's another one of the things about building a bus or any kind of vehicle compared to just straight building a house you have to think about all the mechanical systems that you have to work around and the wheel wells are on this portion of the bus so on this side the shower floor goes over the wheel well and this side it goes kind of right underneath the bottom of this bunk into the into the toilet area got my shower over here we used to have a camp trailer that had a tiny little shower that for me was tough the showerhead was really low and was so small it was like degrading for me to take a shower I'd do it in a pinch but it wasn't a great experience so being a big guy and again having a whole family in here I wanted to have a nice comfortable big shower and with that instant hot water heater and also I put in a 14 gallon pressure tank into my water system that keeps constant even pressure the shower works awesome so I put in a full 32 by 32 sized shower pan custom-made a galvanized shower surround line the walls in the ceiling with old reclaimed red cedar that I milled up from some old some old school salvaged utility poles and the shower is really nice it's got its own max air fan on a remote control so that's really nice we can dial that in for exhaust or cooling it closes up with these sliding pocket doors that I built this kind of barn style doors they're framed out in burly silver maple with hot rolled steel panels so that's pretty nice for those across the hall on the other side is the water closet room with our separate composting toilet so that's a waterless toilet it's made in Sweden worked amazing we love it no smell really easy maintenance really easy to take care of helped us save a ton of water and again that's on its own its own door over here each each bathroom area has got a vanity with the mirror this one's got its own window in the toilet area we've got a really cool corner sink which is nice for hand-washing and a little storage and really dig the look of that and it was just kind of a custom little installation I was cursing it at the time because I'm a professional woodworker I build all kinds of crazy stuff and this little tiny corner sink vanity was a challenge I spent way too much time on it but it came out cool I wouldn't change too much why I kind of made everything here is narrow as possible just because the nature of the size of the bunks and the size of the shower pan makes this our our narrowest spot and the whole bus and I didn't want it to get any narrower in the middle but that meant that this side had to be kind of narrow too so it's fine it's it works I guess I'm kind of limited by how big a bus is but it would be nice if I had a little more space in here otherwise it worked really well and it was really nice to have the separate rooms we would use this area as when we weren't using it as a shower it's kind of a catch-all and also a changing room so this is an area where the kids could go to have a little privacy to change their clothes and do their thing in here so that worked out really well a huge shower forever as long as though you have water the water heater will keep pumping it out it never runs out like a traditional heater so 100 gallons of water with a fresh full tank you could shower and shower when we would get on the road and out between water stops we'd have to take you know conservative showers but it was nice to have okay so back here is the master suite we've got a queen bed back here so my wife a nice room another one of these pocket doors that pulls out of the wall here that match these two this is a great space back here just windows all the way around to emergency exit doors back here which were really great we could throw open and let the breeze flow through on a nice warm night more of that red cedar paneling on the ceiling inside the bedroom here on each side we kind of have his and hers closet space with hanging areas for for clothes hangers to hang some cubbies for stacking clothes and then big deep drawers again under the bed this was this is a cool spot back here because we'd always kind of back up and line it up over the water or up against sometimes over a canyon with this big overhang we have behind her tires and we could be out just looking like we're floating out in space which is cool waking up to the sunrise or seeing the sunset this is always kind of the strategic spot where we place the bus when we pulled in a new place and it's pretty cool that's one of the great things about living nomadically and living on the road your scenery can change and you get to experience million-dollar views on a budget and so it's pretty cool this is a queen-size bed it's a regular full/queen mattress as opposed to like an RV size queen so it was really comfortable more storage space up above and below we could keep all kinds of gear back here underneath the bed from the outside you can get in through the emergency exit door back there and it's big vast space underneath so we would call that our garage and keep our lawn chairs and our paddleboard and motorcycle helmets and it's kind of big stuff that would fit under here yeah so back here another nice feature on each of our side of the bed I put in another one of those nice touch reading lights also we each have our own USB port so we could charge their devices and read and be comfortable back here cool so outside here has all my electrical gear I fit it in one of these under storage mount boxes that came standard on the bus so I've got two big deep-cycle AGM batteries they're 400 amp hours each at 6 volts the big Victor on two thousand watt inverter charger all the solar charge controllers the appropriate switches and fuses 120 volt sub panel and main breaker all the 12-volt stuff is under here so I put all my wiring through the bus before it was insulated and the walls were built out so everything ran through a big conduit into here it's all got a little bit of strain relief so it can come out on this big drawer slide that I built so I can bring it out to service it and it's backed it works amazing I'm super happy with this gear again like big shout out to AM solar in Springfield they help me out a ton they're super knowledgeable and helpful helped me get all this stuff set up and working awesome for the trip probably our our plumbing system and our electrical system just is what I'm most proud of even though you don't see it as much that it came out really sweet and made us really comfortable I have 360 watt solar panels on top so 480 watts which doesn't seem like a lot but with this battery combo and inverter setup it was plenty for us and it's also this stuff is size big enough to be able to add panels as needed later but for our trip in the southwest and down in Mexico worked really well I'm really happy with the solar system I think down the road I may end up adding panels to it and like I said it's all sized appropriately to be able to do that even the wire that I pulled and the spaces that are available and some of the converter boxes are there for more panels and I think that might help in the future yeah I've got an outdoor shower out here behind this little box that was really cool we didn't use it a ton but when we did it was nice cuz it's all plumbed into the hot water and the whole the whole water system so we could go surfing get out of the surf be all cold getting out of a wetsuit and take a nice hot shower get the sand and the salt off or even just you know rinsing off a muddy bike stuff like that it was really helpful to have that and also pretty cool to be in a totally wild spot and have the world as your shower stall it's pretty cool nothing particularly artwork just just kind of went freestyle on it one day we've got this big canvas as a bus you know and with the roof raised and some of these windows we filled in for the shower and the refrigerator in the closet space it just seemed like a big canvas that needed something so just kind of did some Mountain graphics was kind of our scenery it's kind of funny I just did this freehand one day and probably three or four weeks later we happen to be in Utah in Park City Utah and the bus was parked and I looked up at the hills behind it and it pretty much had the same outline with four peaks like that the staggered it was kind of weird so on the back of the bus here I stopped the roof raised in the back because I didn't want to have to cut through both my exit doors in this angle panel back here so to fill the space I put in a rooftop deck and that was a really cool spot it's got live-edge big wide cedar plank decking up there nice ladder to get up and so we could hang out up there and check out the sunset you know have some hors d'oeuvres and just chill out with a lawn chair awesome place to be and it's ten feet up there so we get a lot better view back underneath the bus back here there's this big storage section that goes all the way across to the other side that came with the bus it's kind of rare I think this was maybe a high school bus and I could picture like the football team throwing all their gear and stuff in there but we've got a full-size giant semi-truck spare tire in there all my spare parts and tools barbecues in there we've got a big gray water tank from the shower propane tank so all that stuff fits in there with extra storage space so that was pretty awesome so over here on this side another one of these big storage boxes happened to fit perfectly this hundred gallon water tank that I found and I fit it in here so we could lift this up to monitor it the filling is right over here on this side so we could put a hook up to city water or to a water purification plant in Mexico and get this filled up that's all tied in to like I said that pressure tank which is mounted up underneath that works really slick I wasn't sure when I built it if that was even gonna work if like the 12-volt pump and all that stuff would work together because it's really more of a household system that you'd find like in a well but it worked incredible and it gives us that even pressure the pump maybe comes on once a day its pumps also mounted up under here as opposed to in the bus so you can barely hear it in the bus super quiet plumbing is awesome I put in half-inch pecks all throughout so it's a really durable really nice system this is our outlet for our propane furnace cutting out this section of the bus right here it said Colfax School District the section I happen to cut out here was OLF a Olfa which is where the name came from and the sign inside so that name kind of stuck was just kind of funny and by chance I didn't really plan it but it worked out back here tied into my electrical system is our is our Shore power hookup we pretty much didn't end up using that at all on our trip because the solar works so well and we were so off-grid and out there but it's nice to be able to do that if we need to so up front I built this rack to mount this XR 400 to this Honda it's a sweet dual sport and it's turned out to be like the perfect desert bike I had it out in the sand in the mountains crashing through the OHV parks and trails and beaches of Mexico and all over the place but I can still jump on here and run into town to get some groceries it's a great bike the rack worked out really great on the front since we were towing the car in the back I could see it up here and I mounted it straight through the bumper to the frame of the bus with two mounts so it's really sturdy and steady I had to get it just right to where my headlights would shine out between my fenders in my wheels so it didn't block anything and we still had enough airflow to the radiator but it worked great have a little folding ramp that I keep under the bus and it was easy to get on and off and I rode this bike a ton I probably did more dirt biking and motorcycle riding in the last five years than I have in the last ten years before that so it was great yeah all for the bus 1989 mechanical DT 466 diesel engine allison 643 automatic transmission with a transmission brake which is pretty cool but this bus specifically for the motor and transmission combo it was a good era when things were all mechanical right before they went to computers so easy to work on easy to find parts that was the main motivation for me one of the cool things about school buses is that their fleet maintained and they're well built for safety hauling kids around heavy-duty jassi's brakes motors all that stuff so we're able to build out a big house on the back and it can handle the weight and be safe going down the road I do all the driving yeah we just went 6,400 miles I think my wife drove maybe two miles in the background one time in Mexico but otherwise I do all the driving I got my dirt bike on the front and towing a little venture car in the back so it's a big rig going down the road miles per gallon and get about eight and a half towing the car fully loaded and get a little better if I'm not towing the car but it's not so bad for what we have here it's 26 thousand pounds fully loaded so it's pretty heavy we tried not to drive too far in one day part of the goal of the trip was to take our time and burnout driving but occasionally we did like a six or seven hour driving day the bus really only maxes out about 55 miles an hour so with a few stops and going that slow even a six or seven hour day is not that far probably you know 300 mile day is pretty big for us sure so on the front of the bus I I kind of left it all pretty stock and and standard it's got the old old-school gauges old-school panels over here even got the old tape deck still mounted in there that blares out of the loudspeaker that's under the hood got my young MC tape in there for special occasions we use some of the old switches for some lights and fans and backup camera and stuff like that but mostly it's all just simple and original so up here behind the og mirror where I can spy on my family while I'm driving got the kind of the yearbook wall the guest wall we call it so as we were going around Mexico and around the country we're meeting all kinds of cool folks some travelers and new friends from all over the place and showing off the bus a bunch so it was cool to have people come in and sign in and you know some left their contact info most people just marked where we were where they're from it's cool to see people's signatures from all over the world help us remember where we went and the people we've met so being the only driver this is kind of like my little area my little spot over here I've got my my water and my headphones got my little puffer fish collection that I found on the beach in Mexico a little uh- skunk he's always telling me no so this is just kinda was just my little area right up front here thanks again for checking it out I'm Seth from urban Lumber Company that's my business we build custom high-end furniture built this whole bus out there is kind of a showpiece for that we can be found there at urban lumber company comm and anyway and social media had urban Lumber Co also Road School of Life on social media is the page for this bus and my family's trip and travels so check that out see where we're up to next where we're headed find out more pictures and more information about the bus let us know if we can do anything for you or you guys want to connect I appreciate it thank you [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Tiny Home Tours

Views: 240,681

Keywords: tiny home, tiny house, tiny home on wheels, van life, camper van, shipping container, design, tiny houses, tiny homes, tiny house tour, reclaimed wood, live edge wood, live edge tiny home, live edge school bus, live edge skoolie, reclaimed wood tiny home, reclaimed wood tiny house, skoolie, school bus conversion, skoolie conversion, bus conversion, family travele, family skoolie, family school bus conversion, home school, travel school, travel schooling, un schooling

Id: xeRRY5kVLZQ

Length: 29min 36sec (1776 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 31 2019