Family Of 8 Downsizes To A DIY Bus Conversion For A More Fulfilling Life On The Road

[Music] [Music] all right so we are eight people three dogs and a sink on a bus this is our bus it's a 1986 MCI [Music] so this is our living room slash craft room / dining room slash home school space we have two tables that fold out to the sides that are just actually the back of the couch and storage inside we have all the kids games and toys and art supplies sewing supplies as well as home school supplies under here so we have a ton of storage in our couches which has been really nice and one thing we do a lot when we're driving is put one side of the table up so that the kids can be doing art projects or working on schoolwork or whatever while we're driving we do have four seat belts on each side of the couch and it's actually one of my favorite features a table space for the sewing machine or the kids art supplies or whatever is happening at the time that's Hudson he's really excited to show you his room like I said this is where we do all of our school work our family meals are in here we're very much an eat at the table kind of family and that was part of our family culture we didn't want to sacrifice for tiny living we knew we wouldn't always have like a picnic table or maybe rainy days or whatever we wouldn't always be able to eat outside although we do a lot and so it was really important to us to have a table that all of us could fit in we've actually had a lot of people request the plans for these that are building buses and and we're happy to share those with whoever whoever thinks they could make something like this work because doesn't need to be on this biggest scale it can be a smaller you know table something you know just for a couple people even but still a table that tucks away really easily and doesn't take up very much space so we are pretty musical family that was another part of our family culture we wanted to bring along on the road our daughter writes a lot of music and plays ukulele and my husband plays a guitar so we have it up on the wall and then my son plays the drums and obviously we couldn't fit a drum kit in the bus so we got in this little box drum and it actually serves as extra seating or a stool so we found really multi-purpose yeah the walks Trump [Music] [Music] we've been on the road for seven months now the first few weeks were really difficult we had sold everything and made this leap and so when we will have these first couple of weeks that were really difficult we just would like lock eyes across the room like what have we done like so that's like the one thing I would tell people that are starting out is like the first little bit is hard and it kind of catches you by surprise and so we had watched a lot of videos and talked to a lot of people and we had flown out to a tiny home festival and and kind of done a lot of homework and so we kind of felt well prepared but then there was still some things that just surprised us you know dealing with water finding a place to stay or you know the the composting toilet or we're just having all of us in such a small space right on top of each other yeah you know there was just a learning curve but now I feel like we're over that and obviously there are hard days still like any lifestyle but where it's good yeah roots of our choice you know [Music] the dog likes to rest here so you can look out the window while we're parked we keep all our backpacks or hiking gear jackets dog leashes yoga mats some vacuums it's our utility closet really when we're driving we just take down all the jackets and backpacks and things and move into a bed or something and then hit the road with this floor it's just a sticky back vinyl tile and it's worked out pretty well it's worked out pretty well but the nice thing is is if any tiles get damaged at any time then you know we can we can easily peel one up and replace it we get a lot of compliments on the floor you know a lot of rigs you go on to and and they're very very thin walls very thin glass but I really like the noise reduction that happens when we close the windows in our bus it makes it makes it easier to sleep in areas that may may have a little bit higher traffic or you know things going on around you like here at school we Palooza there's a lot of activity even at night we wanted to make sure we had plenty of light and so we put in quite a few LED lights into the ceiling and they've worked out great so it's it's always bright in here if we want it to be and I think it helps a lot because like we said we spend a lot of time at the table playing games or or you know eating or whatever so it works out really well we knew we wanted a lot of white to open up the space and make it feel a little big and light and airy but we also wanted some color and so we brought that in in the cabinets and then the warmth of the wooden countertops which we actually really loved so we went with full-size appliances in the kitchen just because we have so many mouths to feed and we do so much of our cooking from scratch and so we went with a full-size gas oven and range the stove an oven both run off of propane we can usually fit about two weeks worth of food and between our cabinets and our refrigerator for family of eight that's a lot of food our solar has been plenty to handle it and so that hasn't been a problem at all our cabinets are actually quite spacious and we we've just utilized a lot of vertical storage in those to be able to fit all of our baking pans and all of those kinds of things and these drawers also lock when we're on the move oh yeah we have a locking feature underneath there it's actually a patio door lock that I fitted underneath and it goes up through the bottom of the drawer to keep it locked so when we're moving we chose on our dishware ahead of time looking for something that would be really durable but also like take up a lot less space so this is ten plates and they don't take up much space so we just chose enamelware and then we once we had the dishware we were able to custom design this drawer to fit all of our dishware for 10 people this is the only furnace in the bus it's down here it keeps the front of the bus pretty warm back of the bus we've yeah we've had a couple of pretty cold nights down to 20 degrees or so and found that that things get a little chilly in the back of the bus so we just have some extra blankets back there but if we ever have kind of a prolonged stay in more in a chillier climate like that then we'll probably have to come up with a warming solution for the back of the bus he's also double as extra cutting boards which is really nice because somebody can be preparing dinner over here while somebody else is cutting vegetables or whatever over on this side one feature we have yet to take advantage of is our outside shower [Music] um we were studying a life of Abraham Lincoln and not even really connecting the dots realizing oh we're actually in an illinois we're in a little helpful ours wave so we literally just went to his house we went to the courthouse where he worked we went to you know where they held his funeral service and and it was like suddenly everything we've been reading about is my kids are stepping in those footsteps you know and so and so more to them than something they read in a book it would tomorrow more to all of us not just them know it's not just something that they read about it's something that they walked we have a storage closet here where we have some hanging storage for some clothes also kind of our command center for all the technical stuff hot-water heater battery levels inverter also at the bottom of this closet is the access to my oldest son's room so this being a tour bus there's some large storage base underneath and that middle storage bay we were actually to convert into our boys bedroom and he loves that they you know it's his mancave he just absolutely loves it and he can access it from here or he can access it from the storage bay door outside he can't open it from the inside but sometimes he'll just pop that open and hang out in his room that is also where our snake lives because that's our 13 year old boy snake so important part of the eight people three dogs and a snake on a bus and then as we come back farther we have the four bunk beds that we made so these two on this side are two six-foot bunk beds and these are two five-foot bunk beds because we have some younger kids that just don't need that amount of space and as the older kids get older and move out we can kind of just rotate people into the bigger bunks so we have our our 16 year old our 10 year old boy here our 10 year old girl down here and then our 4 year old we decided to live this lifestyle we obviously talked to our kids and we got their feedback but a lot of it you know was kind of beyond their control is what we felt was best for our family but this was completely in their control it gave them something to say okay this is my space it's my decision and I get to control what happens in here even though it was it was a hard kind of transition for and they still had this thing that was theirs this is kind of our closet area we have a washer dryer and we really don't use it a lot when we're boondocking because it takes it does take a lot of water and so if we have close access to water then we will use it and either air dry or if we are plugged into power to shore power then you will use the dryer feature and it's actually worked really well for us on our bus we really wanted to separate all the kind of bathroom facilities so we have the sink separated from the toilet separated from the shower so that again was our number of people everything kind of keeps coming back to the amount of people we have on the bus and how we had to design around that specific issue but it's worked really well so that we can kind of everybody can be doing their own thing and what they need to do so this is a stool that we designed for Hudson our youngest he's four and vertically challenged this folds down and he's able to stand up there and and brush his teeth or wash his hands after using the restroom or whatever so it really helps us because we don't have to lift him up to the sink all the time this is also where our hot water heater is at under here we have cleaning supplies and rags and some painting supplies so we can do paint touch-up stuff and then our hot water heater is under there I wanted that to be as close as I could to the bathroom and washer and shower you know we had a big four-bedroom four-bathroom house you know in the historic district you know beautiful historic home yeah job yeah great neighbors I had a fantastic job and you know it was just it was all really really good as far as you know what you're supposed to do it really opened up our time not just to spend with our kids but the rest of our family we spent way more family time with your parents with my parents with my brother with your siblings with extended family we haven't seen in years [Music] it's kind of our command center wall the kids like to know where we're gonna be coming up and so we have our calendar we like to know where we've been so we have our map and then just chore lists and our a lot of our time is spent at national parks museums things like that and so we kind of let our kids come up with this bucket list every quarter that they can choose just just for fun kind of stuff whipped cream fight is on for this month so so that's this month yeah okay I'll get ready for the whipped cream plan this is a composting toilet which we just made ourselves it's it's essentially a five-gallon bucket with a yearand diverter a really good friend of ours just 3d printed up a urine diverter with kind of some of the dimensions and what we needed and it's it's worked great I lined the whole inside of it with that like rubber plastic dip kind of stuff so that it's completely sealed so that if there is any spillage or anything like that then it's easily wiped up and disinfected and and it's it's worked out well so we have and then right next to it we have the peat moss which is what we've been using to cover the solids my wife says to me hey can you make a bathtub out of a whiskey barrel I said sure why not so we really like the idea of the exposed copper we were looking at shower heads and we really wanted a shower head that had a pause button on it so you can kind of set the temperature and then hit the pause button to stop it you know and kind of take the military shower you know soap up and then turn it back on to rinse off but they were way more expensive so we just built in a pause button I just put in a third valve so we got our hot and cold and then this is kind of our pause button valve and it works really really well this is a cool feature that we actually brought from our home this is the measuring board for all of our kids it has you know even our oldest kids from when they were one or so and this is actually our family motto our family motto is have fun be good learn Lots [Music] [Music] this is the master bedroom and the hangout spot and the TV room the movie room my office this is where I work I do graphic design and instructional design for a living while we're on the road which is nice because we can kind of do that from anywhere we have service this is kind of nice because then when we have the family in here for a family movie night on the computer it's like a sectional sofa and everyone will fit and this is the bed this folds down into a queen-size bed kind of futon soit's style yeah it kind of takes up the whole area so the whole thing becomes our bed at night [Music] this bus has a pretty large engine it has what's called an 8v 92 Detroit Diesel and it's a big boy when we bought the bus I had 225 thousand miles on it so we're really just kind of getting worn in three storage bays underneath it the first one is just storage it's just straight storage we keep sports equipment all that kind of stuff the middle Bay is our oldest son's room so in this third Bay we have kind of all of our mechanical stuff we've got our water hundred gallons of fresh water 100 gallon gray tank we have our battery bank which is six six volt batteries wired in parallel and series so we have a 12-volt system and then under here I have all of our charge controllers our inverter 330 pound propane tanks and then we start the generator up front and the other Bay we decided we wanted to be off-grid as much as we possibly could and a big part of that is figuring out a solution for power obviously so I used as much real estate as I possibly could and I put six three hundred watt panels up there so we have 1800 watts of solar power up there and really as long as we don't have a couple cloudy days in a row I never have to run this generator it it keeps up with everything [Music] you can find us on Instagram YouTube or Facebook eight people three dogs and a snake on a bus all one word no spaces and the numbers the numbers yes fill out the numbers if you're asking yourself the question can I do that can I live like that the answer is absolutely yes go for it good luck everybody thanks for watching

Channel: Tiny Home Tours

Views: 754,571

Keywords: tiny house, tiny house on wheels, living big in a tiny house, tiny house england, tiny house uk, tiny house movement, tiny home, small house, small spaces, small house design, alternative living, architecture, affordable home, off the grid, small space living, tiny house life, tiny home uk, diy tiny house, diy home, tiny house nation, tiny house hunters, tiny homes on wheels, tiny house movement 2020, skoolie, bus conversion, school bus conversion, family travel

Id: oN07qoFqksY

Length: 18min 48sec (1128 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 16 2020