Family of 8 LIVING in a Two Story RV! | DOUBLE DECKER BUS TOUR

what's up fellow journeyers you're in for a treat today and I'm just as excited like have you ever seen the inside of a double decker bus remodeled to live in as an RV like living in it living in a double decker bus with a rooftop with six kids I'm pumped to see inside of this because I've never seen this before I've never seen anyone living and traveling in a double decker bus okay I need a door that does this even though even the entrance is cool well hey friends come on a pardon anything that is a mess we live here and you have five six six kids six kids so me and my wife and our six kids that's uh that's how we roll yep hence why you need two levels two levels hey that's unique and we're short right so this is fine for me okay uh you might have to duck you might have to duck but for me I mean I'm good this is our driver's area slash my office this is where I do my work and not sit here sure okay it's like super low to the ground okay it actually sits lower than the transit van that we pull behind oh does she drive behind you or do you tow it we tow the van okay yep everybody rides in here everybody rides in here that's right or all these this height this is pretty much if you get a double decker that's what you're gonna get is this height yeah pretty much this is this is it right in order to make the 13-6 legal limits in the US this is gonna be okay so same height as our fifth wheel would you drive this um it doesn't seem intimidating as long as you don't know what's around you as you're driving I guess because the ceiling I don't know what's up about no it's definitely wait I'm does the air bring it up at all once you start going yeah about three and a half inches it's still not nearly as much as a Class A doesn't seem like no it's not near as high as a Class A okay yeah it doesn't seem as intimidating because you're not as high off the grounds I love and I love this it's physical everything's physical buttons what year is this this is a 2009 okay van Hool TD 925 Astro Mega double decker wow that's impressive it is yeah if you say that people get out of the way yeah yeah well uh how many miles the the bus itself has about 220 000 miles on it the engine has about 20 000 miles okay okay this is super it's good we Cruise along at about 69 miles an hour usually and we feel like that's a pretty comfortable place to be what is the height I'm five nine so what is this so yeah so I'm five nine also and so we're we're right at about five nine and a half yeah like getting five nine and a half ish in here yeah I'm five ten yeah so now upstairs is about an inch shorter okay okay so that's uh your warning there do it we come back this way now it is narrow that some people always say it's like super narrow well that's because we've got these wheel wells we don't have an axle that goes all the way through we just have these wheel wells for our independent tires this was kind of going to be like a just a wasted space we knew we needed fridge and freezer so we put fridge and freezer uh fridge on one side freezer on the other I don't know if anybody cares to see what's in our fridge and freezer but uh that's the fridge yeah all right we really do live here there really is stuff in these that's a lot of freezer space yeah so now they're both the same size and they're yeah they're pretty big that's awesome family of eight and that that works for us gotta eat that's right Gotta Eat gotta eat this is our kitchen big butcher block countertop over here like prepped area and just all the storage for anything underneath it you just turn the stove on or the oven don't worry so my oldest daughter she does it all the time because she stands and eats her cereal in the morning she's always turning on the oven so you have an oven you have yep induction stove two burner and you know we get a lot of questions like how do we get away with two burners with eight people a lot of people are used to seeing the five burner stoves in a you know a home I'm the six of eight kids my wife's a six of seven kids five burners on a stove my mom never used all five of them except on Thanksgiving right other than that two of those two of those burners were covered up by yesterday's food then you really got the two you cook on we've said that same thing oh I've turned that on too but yeah it's all right no it's we've talked in the RV in the world like they're all it's a number three which is the worst you've got double the amount of space just for three burners we also use air fryer yeah yeah we we do a lot in the air fryer this is like a residential sized sink a lot of RVs have this like really not very deep sink and and things like that we got this residential size sink it works really well for us these windows are great yeah I'm all about light and windows and look at that I mean it's just like a wrap around with yeah it's wonderful sometimes it's really beneficial yeah yeah sometimes it's bad right like uh you get sun and we got to figure out ways to cover that up yeah if you notice there aren't any visible curtains here so we get creative with how we cover that but it's also like living in a fishbowl that's what we say in our RV and I like having little Shades up so worth it yeah worth the view plenty of times other people outside might not think that About Us close your eyes that's absolutely true yeah you know one of the things we found about this that we really like is from the outside you can't really see in here during the day yeah at night time you can see all the way through and we can't see out yeah but daytime you can't really see in it so we can see all the people as they walk by and stare at the bus [Laughter] yes so he's sitting on her pants you're sitting on the pantry oh look at that so here we've got our our Keurig which we use for hot cocoa um if you've watched any of our videos I actually I've done some videos about not loving the pumpkin spice stuff I'm I'm a big Christmas guy so that goes all the way down one thing people ask a lot is like what the heck is up with this step and that's just that our our air tanks that raise the bus so that's kind of got to be where it's at couldn't we didn't really have an option to move that when you park can you level with air at all or is it basically just raise lowers it's mostly raising lower and and we we typically will try to level a little bit when we first get in because I can let this side out because it's a lean it's a annealing bus okay okay so we can let this side out but then turn it off and this side will you know lose air in the next you know 24 hours right it'll slowly drop down we're tilted right now just a little bit for us that basically just means we're putting our head on the other side of the bed this is our dining area uh storage underneath both of these these both also slide together in case we have a guest that needs to sleep somewhere so my dad has come and visited just to see what life is like on the bus this was for him a lot of people have mentioned before about the bus and any of the tours that they've seen these come up the back of these chairs come up to create a dining room table and everybody says that's wonderful like they really like that idea we really liked that idea it's why we built it in and it doesn't function the way you want it to the RV World it's like you know the United looks really cool but you fight over who has to sit in the back of the you've done it because nobody wants to crawl back in there we use the storage underneath more than anything I think Nathan approached me about a double decker years ago way started and was like would you ever do this I'm like uh that looks really intimidating so the fact that we're like standing inside wanted yeah well and I I had never stepped foot in an RV when designing it uh some of this which you know it's just out of the top of my head a little bit and I'd never been to an RV Show to just even get an idea yeah and now that's like I look back and I'm like oh should have gone to the RV shows like at least two or three times yeah to get or at least once to just walk through RVs and see what they're like yeah at the same time like if you wait till you know everything you ever think you need to know you'll never go so we say get to 95 and leave like make a plan do a little bit but don't wait till Perfection or you'll just you'll never do it we designed it and then we sent it off to a builder the Builder botched a ton of stuff that we wanted and a whole bunch of stuff on this bus you get close-ups of things you can see where it's just not built properly and that's from the Builder well we took it back from the Builder and then we spent about six months working on it ourselves and putting things together the way they should be done if I wait until it's perfect we're never going to get on the road so we said is it livable can we get in it now can we get going so that's we we kind of made the plan we said okay at the end of the school year June 1st we're gonna hit the road tell us your vision for this what what are you trying to do with your family how long do you plan to be I mean ultimately I'm kind of a keep it simple math kind of guy and I looked at it and said I'd like to take all my my kids to 48 lower States and we can fly to Alaska and Hawaii so I thought okay 48 states divide that among two two years like we get two weeks in each state we're good right we're gonna get you hooked though that's what everybody everybody says they're hitting the road for a certain amount they usually it's a one-year plan you added an extra year I think it's important that the kids have a big say in what we're doing absolutely we went and said you know look we're gonna get on the road we'll reevaluate this point at this point and we'll just keep reevaluating it if that means we're on the road for two years we're on the road it means we're on the road for six months or eight months and that's it yeah but if it means we're on the road for eight years then great bathroom this is our downstairs bathroom downstairs bathroom that's right there's fancy fancy there's an upstairs and a downstairs bathroom it's small you'll mention the uh the height of that toilet very very small very low that that was because the Builder couldn't figure out how to make this a sliding door had to be an opening door one of the unique things about this is that because it sits lower than our black tank it actually pumps up and so it's got a macerating toilet or a macerator in there okay it's a pump we got more Pantry storage back here these these two uh closets originally where the the ramps and things for the Ada accessible stuff was so that's what was here and we just put in some shelves and put our canned foods a couple little bit of canned foods in there and we have our our back door here that's the other downstairs part that the kids really love because they can wake up and go straight downstairs yeah so let's go on upstairs I mean I might not normally tell you to film as we walk upstairs our shower is actually halfway up our stairs it's in the stairwell the reason we have the shower in the stairwell is because this is five nine upstairs is five eight and I didn't want a shower that was hitting me in the shoulder and so we actually cut our shower into the storage area of the bus with access from here in the stairs so the shower is actually a full seven foot and it's a cedar shower that sounds nice that's pretty genius that's awesome I wish this video was scratch and sniff so you could smell that cedar yeah smells great yeah it's great you turn the hot water on now and it really like a sauna kind of like that sauna smell yeah this is a whole new experience being on a second level yeah I know uh it's uh yeah this is crazy I feel like I'm on a boat a little bit maybe a little bit when we get upstairs right we come towards the front of the bus if you're turned around at all this is the front of the bus we have our washer and dryer it's a all-in-one unit ventless and right underneath it uh unique thing about our bus is that is our vacuum and so we could sweep things to it and vacuum a lot of people haven't seen that so it's like a back system right there yeah so we can just sweep ing it uh just vacuum and then it's also got a cord that like a vacuum cord that we can just attached to it and run that vacuum all over the house this is uh this is our main living area uh frankly I don't I don't come up here much because I I am too tall to stand up here these are much more functional than the ones downstairs they're the same thing where the backs come up but the kids use these as their school desks so we do a lot of homeschool while we're on the roads those come up kids use that as as their their desks we intentionally do not have a TV hanging on our wall that's just again so that the kids can focus on school work when they're when they're up here and when we're up here as a family we do our nighttime routine and stuff up here a lot and we want to spend time together so we intentionally didn't go with the TV in this bus at all you know the whole point of doing this and living in this maybe crammed lifestyle is so that we can be together I was working a decent job a good job and I was starting my own company at the same time and I was putting in just a lot of hours chasing dollars right and the hope is always that those dollars then I can spend on time with my kids and I was like well I can just give up those dollars and get all the time with the kids and my wife that I need I would almost literally like go to bed when the kids were were getting up for school in the morning yeah and then after doing that for like three months they're just we said you know we're happiest when we're together we were on a road trip just in our van we had taken a road trip we passed the Great Sand Dunes I was really upset that we were like rushing home to a desk job when we were all happy together like I had that it was like the really the first time in my life where I felt like we have happiness whatever we're chasing it's right here in this van and I'm not stopping to see the Great Sand Dunes like that's just ridiculous right so I looked at my wife and I said I don't care what the next roadside thing is we're stopping I think that what you said is really beautiful and like when that light bulb goes off and you're like what am I doing what's really the most important you will make sacrifices in your in your space to experience more with your family and it really bonds your family being in a small space like it's so bonding absolutely you realize what's really important and you appreciate things in life I know for us living in an RV we've really appreciated the small things more yes all you have to do is just I can almost do it I could almost do it under these two benches that's just more storage we have about a hundred board games in this one and then a bunch of school stuff in there books and whatnot I also have this little bench behind you that's just above the stairwell that's where the kids keep their book bags and most their school stuff right there basically this folds down and then it's a platform so it's over over my wife and I we sleep on this bed basically gives the kids a more play room during the day and then we've got the headboard footboard and this just you know creates an entire closed door scenario right so we've got our own room now we're experimenting with these with this I put this up just in the last day or two we want some sort of curtain system around this so we end up getting dressed right here on the stairs we ought to tend to have good balance so nobody's falling down too much yet so I put these up just kind of as a uh how do we want to do this so this is just kind of a temporary curtain system going on look at this this is cool so here we are at the back of the bus um we've just got like closet space back here there is a there is a window back there and a seat uh sometimes I will sit here on this seat just sing the kids there you know nighttime songs or something like that we have the seat belt there kind of a function that way they each kind of have their own bed their own bedding to kind of personalize their space we intend at some point to replace their their blackout curtains with something that they like you know he he loves Batman so we'll probably get something Batman here but he also loves all his stickers um so he's been stickering up his walls which is totally fine with us this is this is his space right so he gets to do with it what he wants we don't have any kill ventilation fans but that uh bathroom number two to the roof to the roof this is where it's at oh my goodness hello [Music] people way down there oh thank God I just saw you because you never could have walked right into your GoPro oh it's been filming forever it's okay amazing we need one of these right we need uh I do too I would say this is one of the coolest perks of the double decker bus for sure this is really cool yeah so what time do you spend up here not as much as we'd like the problem with that was just as you saw like people walk by yeah and then they're like trying to talk and and I I feel bad like like literally talking down to people and and we wanted to build relationships with people in RV parks we go to more or less now this is an area for my kids yeah right they love coming up here they bring their friends up here they got their toys I set up their hammocks and and uh you know they can kind of get away we put down this boat decking that looks like wood it's super soft that's uh that just makes it so they don't slip as much we'd seen a lot of schooly builds a lot of those have a deck up top and so we were like oh that'd be cool and it rides like this going down the road no no no no it has to go down when we're going down the road I take the the front and back rails I set set them they go down so they're underneath this and then this all folds down can't ride down the road being over 16 feet we've got two solar panels up there two solar panels back there and that gives us a good amount of solar for traveling so we can we can manage off-grid for about four days foreign six kids and five and a half years I mean we had um ours are five years apart and I feel like I'm drowning sometimes I can't imagine yeah six in five and a half years so our our oldest just turned 10 and on the youngest are twins and they're four yeah so six kids five I love it I love it though I love big families I come from a family of seven and it's special wow that is massive yeah so it goes all the way through but also all our water tanks back here well lots of good stuff that is a massive garage that's awesome yeah one of the things people are halfway interested in is uh some of this just battery setup this is our eight Safari UT 1300 Lion energy batter yes we use mostly victron components um and then we have like our circuit breaker and our our water heater in here residential water here just like you'd have in your standard house not what you would typically find in a motorhome if you want more content about the double decker bus check out double decker fam if you want to see more tours with people living in their RVs we're gonna link to that definitely check it out well that is our adventure for today until next week's video we'll catch you guys later

Channel: Less Junk, More Journey

Views: 4,326,489

Keywords: full time rv, rv, rv living, rving, how to rv, camping, camper, full time rving, rv life, rving with kids, travel vlog, 5th wheel, fifth wheel, less junk more journey, less junk more travel, best rv youtube channel, rv living with kids, double decker bus conversion, bus conversion to rv, bus house tour, bus living, rv tour, skoolie conversion, tiny house tour, family of nomads, rv living full time, bus conversion, bus rv conversion tour, bus rv build, RV remodel

Id: nemEAYyKaZ0

Length: 18min 38sec (1118 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 03 2023