Family Of 5 Sold Everything & Built A DIY School Bus Conversion - Off Grid Solar Powered Bus

[Music] so i have a habit of taking these like leaps of faith and just kind of moving trying something new i really enjoy that and we decided that we were going to sell everything transfer jobs and move to the oregon coast and as you know a lot of schoolies go to the oregon coast and we were just kind of driving around one day and we saw a school bus and i thought what the heck you know a school bus what is that and we asked some guy hey can we look at your school bus and i was sold i realized that my home could go with me i didn't have to keep moving keep packing up my stuff and from that instant i was sold hi i'm jack and this is our bus we are the barefoot bandits and we decided to take life on the road and we bought a bus we worked on it for about a year we sanded everything down we painted it white we threw these the siding on we actually put a real door instead of the bus store i wasn't a big fan of the bus store because it let just so much heat in and just a lot of stuff and then we added this side table that way in the evenings when we wanted to make dinner outside we could have everybody over and this thing up here is actually our shower my husband is kind of tall and it just wasn't working on the curvature of the bus so we decided to cut out the top of it and kind of add about two feet that way he could stand in the shower and just be comfortable so this is our home on wheels i really love like the natural look and just the hominess of wood and it worked out really great we just kind of went with wood accents everywhere and it really does feel homier most people come in and they're like you know your house feels inviting it makes me want to sit down and kind of relax with you it's actually been really great i really enjoy plants and i've had them since my kids were really young and that was one thing that i didn't want to give up was my plants so i decided to kind of incorporate them into the bus and so i decided to build this really long shelf so i can plant everything up here and if i want to add more i can add more and that way when we're traveling most of these heavy ones can stay these little ones do we have to break down but most of the time they do stay up there and i thought it was really important to bring a piece of our home into the bus and that's always been something that me and my children have shared together is just planting plants or taking care of plants so it's really important to me to bring it in here this couch right here i actually built myself i'm very proud of it and we decided that with so many kids we have three children and we needed space for school for crafts for cooking for baking that we really wanted to extend the whole counter all the way to the front and it really has served its perfect purpose our kids have been able to do whatever they want without fighting over space so we actually went with the butcher block because it just seemed sturdier um and i was a bit worried about it getting stained but my favorite part about it actually being stained is that i get to keep those memories with me of my children it's kind of sentimental but it's silly but i get to see crayon marks and you know when we're done with the bus eventually they get to grow up and kind of hang out in it with their friends and stuff and i think that's really unique this is where we keep our clothes it's just easier we keep it in totes and just kind of take it off take the clothes out put them back it works really great my husband keeps his clothes in here and this is actually our dry food storage down there so our canned canned food anything that we need over here in this corner is where the kids spend most of time reading doing school playing just whatever makes them happy and this is our little tiny kitchen in here we actually carry everything like our um our cook top and stuff it just kind of slides out when we put it up on top when we need it so everything we have in our kitchen is everything that you would have in a home in here we have our silverware just like snacks for the kids and then all of our baking stuff and then in here we actually have you know just our our glassware um you can see down here we do have a little bit more storage and then our cooktop which we pull out and put up there when it is time to cook this is our sink and it actually our water tank is underneath the bed and we actually have 300 gallons of water that way we can go off grid for up to two weeks it has the pressure system so it just kind of runs through here our gray water tank is actually underneath of here we do have our water heater so we have hot water instant hot water we have a tankless water heater and a propane water heater just depends on if we're staying at a campground or somewhere we can plug in if not for using our solar we'll use the propane our fridge is actually electric um it runs off the solar power that we have everything in here runs off the solar our lights um the fridge sometimes we have a fan in here um our ac runs off the solar [Music] that's pretty much it honestly we really don't consume a lot of energy in here so the floor we actually happened to be just kind of scouring the internet one day and some guy had posted that he tore up his floor in his house and we decided you know what this is kind of the color we were looking for and we actually paid a hundred dollars for everything to do front to back which is really really great and it's all real hardwood floor i want to say that it's oak i want to say i'm not really 100 sure my favorite part about the bus is actually these windows right here they are the emergency windows but they actually flip out instead of like a normal window that goes down like this these guys flip out and we have i want to say four of them so you just kind of lift the handle push them out and it is actually really important because on hot days when we don't want to run the ac we kind of just open multiple windows and it gets the airflow going it's also nice in the evening when it's cool it kind of lets that cool in really fast so in the beginning we weren't planning on putting bunks just because we thought it would take up a lot of space but as time went on we realized like how important it was for each kid to have their own space on the bus and i'm really glad that we did because i actually find our kids spending a lot of time in their bunk sometimes i have to tell them hey you got to get out of your bunks go outside and it's really nice they have their own lights and they have their own little reading nooks in here and just little things that they they enjoy you know kind of gives them a space to keep their their own stuff which is it's important you know as a human you have your stuff that you don't want anybody to touch and yeah so i we do have three kids uh birdie goes on the top and rogue is on the bottom and rebel gray who happens to only be two she's obsessed with me and still sleeps in my bed and this is actually where we sleep so this is our bed we do have i want to say it's a queen we actually had a king size bed but it didn't fit quite the way we wanted it to so we chopped it up and we made it fit and then we added this little side thing on on the side of the bed that way we could have a little bit extra storage and this is where we keep you know like our our own necessities that we have our bathroom stuff my husband's work stuff just little things that you wouldn't think need a spot they definitely do in a bus and you have to kind of get creative with your storage underneath our bed we do carry our batteries for our solar our tv some extra blankets you know just like stuff that needs to be put out of the way when we're traveling or when we just don't need it during the day so we just kind of slide everything underneath there so that big box that i was showing you guys outside this is the big box this is the shower that my husband built it was very nerve-wracking we decided that because he was so tall it just wasn't convenient to stand underneath the arch of the bus so we decided that we were just gonna cut out the top of the bus and add about two feet of height that way we could take a comfortable shower and it's actually really nice because at night when you're taking a shower you can see the stars we do have a composting toilet in here we did put that in and decided to go with the nature's head so that's something that we will be installing here in the next week or two so we normally do have a shower curtain it's just really bulky so when we're traveling we kind of break it down that way we don't have to worry about it falling or anything like that yeah i'm big on breaking things down that way we don't have to worry about them when we're traveling so i can sit down and relax because that is really nice so with the skylights we actually decided that these actually used to be emergency exits and they were just kind of plasticky and flimsy we didn't really love them so we decided to cut them out and we cut out all around the edges and then reframed everything and then added this skylight and it's actually um plexiglas is what it is and it works out really nice because in the evenings you can just kind of hop up on the bed go sit on the roof and you know watch the sunset and that's probably my favorite part of the bus is just going up there in the evenings and relaxing we do have another skylight up in the front and then the skylight in the shower like i said it was really important that the natural light came in i really love that and i think it just makes it homier and just not so like stuffy in here just makes it feel bigger and airier and that's that's probably my favorite part i feel like once you're here your mindset just kind of changes you know you realize you don't need a lot of things to make you happy money really isn't that important this is life you know i get to travel with my kids i get to teach them real life experiences rather than going to school they get to see the world it's just it's been a big eye-opener for us our school isn't here our school is outside and something that we live by is not all classrooms have four walls that truly is what their life is about and i feel really gracious because i i want to cry because i've really created um this lifestyle over what six years and we're there we did it and it's it's a good feeling so this is rogue and this is rebel gray and and this is renny bird um rent six and rubble's two and rogue is four yeah and huh can you say hi guys these are the barefoot these are the barefoot bandits that we were talking about

Channel: Tiny Home Tours

Views: 657,784

Rating: 4.9203625 out of 5

Keywords: tiny house, tiny house on wheels, living big in a tiny house, tiny house movement, tiny home, small house, small house design, alternative living, architecture, affordable home, off the grid, small space living, tiny house life, diy tiny house, diy home, school bus conversion, skoolie conversion, van life, bus conversion, skoolie tour, skoolie build, bus life, camper van, diy skoolie, family travel, diy bus conversion, exploring alternatives, skoolie family, skoolie

Id: -TBht8zdAqo

Length: 10min 22sec (622 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 01 2020