Gorgeous DIY Skoolie W/ Chef Designed Kitchen, Full Bathroom & Office

hey what's up my name is matthew this is my bus lucy it's a 1987 bluebird s1700 it's got a 69 navistar engine in there so no chips no boards just a straight up diesel engine it's uh not the fastest bus but uh it'll get up to maybe about 55-60 miles an hour when we're going down the road i've had the bus for about three years and i've been living in it full-time for the last six months all right welcome inside we're in the living room dining room area of the bus right now so it's kind of broken up into two sides right side here is the couch slash napping area so uh strict had to have something to lay on to take naps in the afternoon i don't know why that was so important to me but i didn't want to put a uh a bar up there or another set of table uh or desk or anything so i wanted to have a couch somewhere to hang out watch tv and uh you know be able to hang out a little bit on the left hand side we actually went ahead and put in a folding table here it can fold down if you need extra room in the living room but honestly most the time it stays up kind of stays the dining room table desk area this is where i do a little bit of uh work and planning for the restaurant and stuff like that underneath each uh section we have uh book storage and then art supplies and things like that are all down there underneath the large bench in the living room area is the electronics so we have about 600 amp hours of lithium batteries right there aims 2500 uh inverter charger our 12 volt fuse block and main main breaker panel in there we left a little bit of room because still planning on upgrading to solar on the roof so enough room to have a charge controller and to be able to get all of our wires in there for solar when we get to there so got the batteries have the generator outside enough power and a 30 amp hookup but eventually want to get you know some solar on the roof and try to go fully off grid that would be ideal favorite part about this area probably has to be the the dining room desk area for me it's where i sit and eat breakfast and hang out if i have anybody over we can still sit down and have a nice dinner together and also it functions as my desk a lot of the time in the mornings so i'll get up i'll you know journal i'll do my to-do lists uh things like that just to get ready for work and it's kind of my my use all area so i'm always here i was going back and forth on what i wanted to do and i was looking at actually getting the industrial uh drain pipe with the normal like flange fittings and everything like that and then i came across of course something on amazon that is basically the same exact thing it's it's just made it plastic though so it looks like the the normal steel uh piping and drain bars and everything but it's just plastic you can get the whole set for like 25 bucks or something so just pop those on there and uh i want to say some walmart or amazon curtains the the holders here were leftover fabric from uh certain things so there's some that were from the kitchen there were some that were from cutting up old curtains so i kind of just used what i could and tried to match the ones that were on the same side these lights actually were uh in the bus when i bought them that was one of the things that the guy before me had installed and we didn't want to rip out the roof and and do uh full rework and installation and everything i would have liked to thinking back on it now just a little pricey at the time when i was first building out the bus i was trying to get by a little more affordably and that was just something i didn't want to do so we were going to leave everything we weren't going to install any lights in the ceiling and this actually worked really well so i've kept it i haven't touched it and it's worked great since we had it so [Music] and i converted it with my father it took us a little over two years i wasn't living where the bus was located so i was kind of taking trips on the weekends to go work on the bus took a little bit of time uh got a little frustrating at some time but uh it's been it's been great and the past six months has been awesome living in the in the bus i can't i can't say anything bad about it so far i came across just tiny houses in general you know probably five years ago something like that came across youtube pages and uh van life you know was i feel like starting to get pretty big then and i was looking into tiny houses on wheels and airstreams and vans and boats and just kind of all the possibilities of living a little more affordably a little more sustainably and not making as big of a footprint as as i feel we do in in bigger houses nowadays i also feel like i didn't need that much space i wanted something that was my own and i came across the school bus conversions and they were starting to take off i remember seeing i think mike from navigation nowhere his bus was kind of the big thing on youtube and on the internet and it was really inspiring to see a a really nice built out bus and how kind of cozy it can feel how large it is on the inside if it's built out properly and how it can be a nice traveling home that you can take out and explore in and also just park and hopefully live live a little more affordably so i didn't want to go the traditional route that uh friends and and people that i saw my age that were getting a mortgage and settling down and getting a house and settling down in one area and i was still wanting to travel i still wanted to explore so i wanted the ability to live a little more affordably so i figured if i could build something out and find a good parking situation i could save on on my rent and save up that money and travel a little bit and do what i want with it so a little more a little more freedom a little less debt and trying to uh you know enjoy traveling so we're in the kitchen area of the bus right now i work full-time as a cook in a restaurant right now so having a big kitchen was a priority for me i i could have made a bigger living room area or you know had more storage for certain things but i really wanted two large counters on both sides of the bus to be able to actually really play stuff out and cook i i have a pet peeve of working in tiny kitchens because i'm used to working in restaurant kitchens they're so they're so big and so uh so i wanted nice cutting board area a good amount of prep space and then a full normal size stove it's actually maybe 28 inches or something like that's a couple inches shorter than a full-size i think 33-inch stove but it's been converted over to propane we have a big 100-pound propane tank under the bus that feeds the stove here and the water heater that's under uh the other side the idea was originally to just put in standard uh butcher black countertops and maybe a subway tile backsplash or something which you just see a lot and my father actually recommended looking for some live edge slabs that we could find and there was actually a local guy near my parents that was selling uh live edge two inch thick uh slabs like this so he had oak and um sycamore and things like that so we actually used those cut those down and did a epoxy resin pour on the countertops the backsplash was honestly just us having leftover wood pieces from the cuts that we were making here so what we ended up doing was cutting it down flipping it up using it as a backsplash and honestly that might be one of my favorite things i love the live edge on the on the edge and sealing on the bark and actually keeping that uh part of the piece but the backsplashes with a little bit of wave to it and stuff is probably actually my favorite part of the kitchen and it turned out really good it was just leftovers so we were just trying not to throw stuff away so we basically took the storage from above the same concept of the live edge we just changed it up we did some oak boards that we bought from the same guy uh this is just industrial plumbing pipe still has the lettering and all that sort of stuff on it i think this only cost three dollars when you went to the the plumbing supply shop as opposed to the amazon one that was actually 30. so if you actually buy the piping it's a little bit heavier but it's also a lot cheaper um up top just some storage baskets this helps to actually hold everything in when we're driving uh coffee coffee mugs you know teas all that sort of stuff just lives up here and um and we did same thing just a little bit of epoxy resin pour on the edge of the bark just to help hold it to the wood so it doesn't want to chip off or anything if we do knock into it so on this side i wanted to go like restaurant style 30 something inches you know restaurant style uh faucet with a single basin really large sink it's it still gets filled up when i cook so there's but there's still plenty of room to put stuff in there if i want to wait for it uh later uh if i want to let it soak you know put it in this thing and let it soak uh otherwise the sink actually becomes my storage spot for when i take everything and we go for a drive so lots of the plants and anything loose the teapot all that stuff actually goes into the sink and i just put a pillow on top and then that's that's where everything goes when we travel i put a couple things in the shower a couple of the bigger plants in the shower but yeah just about everything goes in the sink and it makes it really easy because as soon as i'm ready to pack up and drive away just everything in the sink and then i'm out of here so drawers in here for all the excess kitchen stuff mixing bowls and strainers and and little crocks and then bar bar wear stuff i got a pasta roller i just have so much random cooking stuff i even had to downsize a lot of that when i moved in the bus but you know strainers and potato racers and mortar and pestle i a lot of different stuff but there's all room for it in there same thing with here except i just went with one single large one and that's where all the uh the large equipment is so i have the blender the rice cooker kitchenaid stand mixer those things don't come out as often but when they when they do they're all just living down there this was actually a false drawer before when the guy before me was building it so we actually put uh drawer slides on it and made it into a true drawer true drawer and uh so this is all just utensils and and then the one behind it is just my plates i have some uh my stones for sharpening the knives and stuff like that that all lives in here as well and then underneath the sink area we uh my neighbor next to us where we were building out the bus he was actually a carpenter and he built this one out for us we gave him the exact measurements when i first had bought the bus there was like a a gallant mini fridge the retro style fridges in there he wanted that fridge for his man cave that he was building out so we we did like a trade of that mini fridge for him to to build out the the cabinet if i just bought some of the wood and the labor was taken in exchange for that so uh we did deep drawers all the way to the back uh of course you got to have the the junk drawer you know batteries and uh fuses for the electrical you know tape measures there's a little bit of everything uh all my tools kind of live down here for the bus multimeter and and just little tools when i'm working inside the bus we put the locks on here for when we're driving so nothing goes swinging open and at the bottom i have more tools i have seeds for the garden uh power cord and that's about it so just lots of miscellaneous stuff kind of living in the drawers underneath is a little pull out double uh trash can and then on the left side is the just cleaning chemicals and trash bags and all that sort of stuff i went with a full-size fridge i looked into some of the under counter ones that i had seen they have like under counter fridge and freezers a lot of those are really expensive um i know the the dometic propane ones are really nice because they can switch back and forth between 12 volt and propane but when i found out that they were like a thousand dollars new i just decided to go with a a regular house fridge uh so yeah pretty much full size as you can see it's completely crammed full of food right now but i much rather do grocery shopping every like couple of weeks instead of having to go every couple of days i just personally don't have the time for it right now so i much rather get a lot of groceries get in there and not have to worry about grocery shopping for a little bit yeah i cook full time and professional cooks and people that do it for a living they know you can almost never have too many knives it's kind of a you know if you're a skateboarder you can't have too many decks if you're you know if you start buying house plants you can't buy enough houseplants it's one of those things you can't have enough knives so these are all the ones i usually use at work and then i even have more in my knife case i've got i got them everywhere so but there's always room for one more so that's kind of how it goes um so pantry storage here same thing uh had the neighbor help us out with uh installing and making these little pull out drawers i think that was another trade with something in the bus it worked out really good because he wanted a couple things out of the bus when we first got it and i just traded them for a little bit of work in exchange so uh six drawers it's actually more than enough storage for all my dry goods and and bags and uh pantry items so it's been perfect more than enough [Music] transition wasn't wasn't too difficult near the end selling off a lot of the leftovers and the the stuff that you realize you start to accumulate when you live in a house it was i filled up an entire room spare room that we had at the old house with all these things all these kitchen things and plate wares i used to do like some dinner party things so i had tables and and plates and glasses and and just so much stuff clothes and shoes and you start to realize just how much we we naturally accumulate even when you're not thinking about it and i really wanted to just kind of burden myself or unburden myself excuse me of a lot of the the material possessions and just kind of pare down to what i really needed what was necessary and you know stop wasting money at the same time on on stuff that just kind of sits around and and accumulates in the house so um transitioning into the bus i was for the last few months before i moved in i was so eager and i was so ready and i had already kind of played it through my mind of where everything was gonna go and the parents were a little nervous like you're not gonna fit everything in the bus like and i had already kind of played it through of you know i knew what was going to go where so when i kindly when i finally paired everything down and sold a lot of the leftovers that i didn't want everything pretty much had a place there was there's still occasionally a couple things that you know if you just had one big closet it would be easy to shove those soccer chairs and and just random things like that you could shove it in but you just gotta think uh creatively and i heard someone say that you know you don't have to get rid of stuff uh all your stuff when you live in a tiny house you just have to find somewhere to hide it which is a pretty good mantra if you can keep it out of view which is what i want it looks kind of clean when you're looking at it but you know there's uh you know stuff everywhere it still works out so it's uh it looks clean but i still have all my stuff there all right so we're in the bathroom area of the bus right now the bathroom area was basically just built out once we figured out where we wanted to place the bed and we just started working forward we we never actually did any blueprints or sketches of the bus it was just uh just looking at it and planning and just thinking what what would work and what wouldn't so the shower went in first went with a standard uh 36 by 36 shower base or is it 32 by 32 i'm not sure went with the metal roofing material for the inside that was actually seems to be a good good choice so far i know some people said that they had have had issues with it rusting or starting to get a little bit of build up but i've been in here full time six months so far and nothing building up yet seems to be doing good i'll occasionally squeegee it clean but it's doing really well composting toilet has been working really well i know some people are a little squeamish and a little uneasy about composting toilets if you just kind of do your research and understand you know your materials that you want to mix in and you know that's honestly one of the big things just making sure your material base that you're mixing in is good and then separating out your uh the liquids and everything's pretty pretty easy from there the toilet was actually a a birthday present from my father you know that's how you know you're growing up when you get excited for a toilet for a birthday present it was uh i think the first year when we were building it and i was looking into the nature's head toilets and when i showed that to my father he's like you're going to spend a thousand dollars on a toilet and he was not he was i guess he just wanted to steer me he's like you can do something else with a thousand dollars so he uh paid for our neighbor to actually build this out and just has a an add-on uh urine diverter uh attacked on there and everything so yeah that was actually a birthday present so thank you thank you pops for that um so in the back here is just in a little storage bin so i keep some of the composting material in there i also keep my gray water hose for when i need to dump the gray water it actually lives in here and then up top is medicine cabinet as you can see it's kind of crammed full with just about everything uh i need to work on a latch for the medicine cabinet because last time i went driving i lost a lot of stuff on the floor so i know everybody that gets a school bus or van or anything like that they always have really good stories about the first couple of times they go driving and realizing exactly what you actually need to bolt down and which things you forgot about and stuff so uh medicine cabinet is on the list so this was some of the originals stuff that was in the bus so this just became the closet funny story was this was going to be a spice rack to fit inside the door with the pantry but one of those things you don't think about is how much clearance you have on your spice rack with the other drawers that were in the in the pantry so we we uh we got it built out and we put it on the door and then we went to shut the door and we couldn't shut the door so it was either adjust all the drawers back or just move the spice rack somewhere else so the spice rack is now the sock rack and uh bandanas and scarves and whatever else so it works out fine and we were able to still use it um i downsized a little bit of clothes as you can see i have way too many clothes in here like i have three suits i don't even know why i have three suits i never wear suits but uh i downsized a little bit of the clothes everything else was able to go in here and uh i have a pretty full closet so it's nice to not have to worry about having clothes under the bed or pulling stuff out of suitcases it's all right here and easy to get at so [Music] i've had a lot of people ask me how long i plan on it and i currently don't have you know an end goal of you know how how far out i'm gonna do it and you know how long i need to do it i'm gonna do it as long as i can as long as it works out and i'm enjoying it and i don't see otherwise this was such a labor of love with myself and my father over two years and it was you know a big learning experience it was very difficult at times it was financially uh draining at times for sure and now that it's here and it turned out great and i'm getting to enjoy it i definitely don't want to let it go if i ever need to you know get into a a place or a you know an apartment or something like that it'll still stay my my rv my travel you know part-time uh bus that i can take out on trips and it'll still be perfect for that you know i could maybe rent it out as an airbnb and make a little money on the side if i need to but i definitely plan on riding out for the next several years for sure of you know enjoying the bus you know taking it out and traveling it and just uh having a good time so we're in the bedroom area of the bus right now uh on the bed we have a zenith memory foam mattress which actually turned out to be a great purchase i think only two 300 bucks and we got i got the 12-inch one the super fat one and it's been great uh no complaints on on that the desk area right now this can fold down flat and go flush against the wall if i need a little bit more room but being honest since i've bought this desk it has been folded up ever since and it kind of stays here a little chair underneath it's got some clothes on it right now but sit here if i want to do a little bit of computer work or a little bit of artwork or anything the dirty clothes i just have under the bed here in a big like rubbermaid style tote so whenever i need to i just kind of pull that out dirty clothes goes in and underneath and whenever i'm uh somewhere to do laundry i just pull out the tote slap the lid on there and take it to the laundromat or wherever i need to do it through a couple of uh just hanging cheapo storage baskets i want to say that was like a ross pickup you know tj maxx maybe i don't know i i saw him and it matched the uh the design i had down here so i figured it would tie in the bedroom a little bit threw those up there uh more books and i cook books and some other things over there so just miscellaneous storage above the bed a little fold out tv in the back for when i'm watching tv at night and i have a little vornado fan back there for when i'm not running ac or i just need to have a fan running through the night and that thing keeps up well so no complaints and actually those little vornado fans work really well so we're in the front of the bus right now the cockpit area and a little bit of extra storage area so we kept basically everything original on the bus uh didn't want to change anything and everything still worked which we were very happy about when we got the bus that was one of the things when we were shopping around a little bit my father and i is we want to make sure that the the engine itself and everything was in working order so that way we didn't end up having to uh do bodywork do engine work if it was rusted out we want to make sure it was a florida bus make sure there wasn't uh it wasn't driving up north in the snow and the salt and everything so bus had about 130 000 miles on it and everything works all the original uh bluebird stuff right now it's just set up since i'm parked you know i throw up the pictures with the family i've got all the plants out and everything uh my uh little spot for my grandmother who passed away last year unfortunately but um got her a little cross and she's kind of watching over me right there just went and bought a amazon shoe rack it actually fit perfectly under here i don't know how i uh got lucky i don't even know if i measured it to be honest but it'd end up working all the shoes live there i have some more underneath the uh the back of the bed yeah so in the front here just some books that i'm reading currently and then i've got my little uh squirrel figurine that i got here it's uh for smokey i had a squirrel that i fostered in when he fell out of a tree about a year ago so he lived with me for about a month and i raised him up and started training him to go up trees and find food on his own and then finally released him in the wild which was a sad day because i was hoping he was going to come back and we were going to get to hang out and play all the time but he went off and did his own thing so i got a little squirrel figuring to remember smokey because uh that guy was awesome and uh it was fun having a pet never really had a pet myself so i had a pet squirrel for a little bit and it was awesome highly recommended so up above the tv it pulls out we've got just a little bit more storage on the right-hand side so more books uh cookbooks whatever else is also in here as you can tell a lot of books i didn't really want to sell them all i got rid of some but it's kind of hard for me to to part with the books so i i just want to make sure i found them there's some uh just like reflectix that i have in there to help with the insulation in there but yeah just more cookbooks there's a baking cookbook and a couple of other things in there but um it's just more storage i actually haven't needed which has been cool it's good to know that everything's not maxed out and i still have some spots where if i need to put some things that there's there's still room so that's good to know [Music] as much as it seems very romantic and a lot of people had asked me when they saw me building the bus and when i was finishing that oh so you're just gonna dip out and travel and you know tour the u.s and just be gone forever and i wish it was maybe that easy for me and it would be nice to maybe take some extended trips on the bus but i cook full time in a restaurant five days a week for a living that's what i do and that's what i enjoy doing and it's what i feel like i'm good at so i i knew going into this the the bus would be parked definitely more full-time and it would be weekend trips you know trips maybe over the summer something like that and i would get to take it out occasionally i knew i was gonna be parked i knew i was gonna be working five days a week and i was going to be able to save up a little bit of money and take trips with the bus i've been with the same restaurant for the past three years in tallahassee i was going in the direction i was working at fsu in the food department there and i was kind of getting pushed in the direction of a corporate dining hall chef and there was good money in it and there was job security and it was just not the route i wanted to go i wanted to follow what uh kind of like where my heart was leading me which was a little more you know independent restaurants made from scratch a little more care into it i came from a big university so i was used to seeing three 400 plates go out and it was kind of a disconnect and uh you know a relationship of enjoying getting to feed people and i definitely get that more in the restaurant setting uh it's super exciting because we're working towards opening a restaurant with uh my current boss we're partnering up to to open something this august or september so i'll be updating stuff like that on my instagram uh if people are interested in seeing uh that take shape and that come to life i'm really excited i'm very nervous uh to take hold of a concept and be a head chef and really be in charge but i feel like it's the next step and i'm i'm ready for it so i know taking the bus out might become a little more on the uh the back foot a little bit and the restaurant's gonna definitely take uh the main role in my life and making sure that's successful and you know we're putting out good food and having a good time there so uh but the the bus will be perfect for you know if i need to take a weekend off and get out and head to the beach and just relax that's exactly what i'll do and you know take a day or two come back and get back to work and stay grinding so all right so we're on the left side of the bus outside this is where the generator rack is this was a project i did with my father that was me learning how to weld a little bit that was that was fun and interesting we've got a 30 amp on the same side there so whenever i'm boondocking currently and i'm not plugged into short power which currently i am which makes it nice and easy but whenever i'm not i have the generator and that will help run everything but also if i need to top off the batteries it'll do that as well until i get the solar panels so when uh when i get the solar hopefully that'll be doing most of the work and we'll just have the generator as backup but currently if i take it out anywhere it's usually the generator doing most of the work and uh yeah it's worked out really good just have the little lock brackets on the side whenever we're driving um propane tank is here we cut a little access door in same thing is welding some mounts and having that welded up to the frame of the bus a hundred pound tank and so far with the stove inside and the hot water heater which is right here it's a little seven gallon hot water uh tank heater it lasted me three and a half months four months so uh the only thing is gotta just obviously drive the bus somewhere to a propane fill place but it's not bad and it's also a good way to take the bus out for a little ride and go fill up the propane and go somewhere else while i'm doing it um back of the bus here is just the fresh water inlet uh just we're just hooked up right now to the hose off this well on this property currently there is 45 gallons of fresh water underneath the bed and then another 45 gallon gray water underneath the shower and also with the sink running into that the uh the 45 gallons honestly can get me i can stretch it to about a week comfortably it's you know four or five days but when i'm hooked up i don't have to worry about it and uh it's a little bit easier but in the future that's maybe one something i would upgrade a little bit is uh throw maybe 100 gallon tank under the bed and that way i could go off-grid for a couple of weeks you know even longer and not have to worry about filling up and you know could just hang out and i have to drive into town if i don't want to so uh i'm on instagram basically at uh swayze s-w-e-z-z-z-e-y um i posted the bus stuff on there food stuff on there things at the farm here with my garden and the animals and everything so basically what i'm what i'm doing now and what's what's keeping me happy and what's uh what's in my life right now so if you want to follow along you're more than welcome to if you want to look forward to the to the new restaurant concept in tallahassee that'll be on there as well so uh yeah check me out yeah no uh thank you tiny home tours for coming out and checking out the bus i love the videos and i'm super excited to be be a part of one and for people to check out the bus and if you guys want to follow along on instagram you can and uh thanks for coming checking out the bus now get out of here [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Tiny Home Tours

Views: 484,079

Keywords: tiny house, tiny house on wheels, living big in a tiny house, 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, diy tiny house, diy home, skoolie conversion, school bus conversion, skoolie tour, bus conversion, van life, diy skoolie, tiny home tour, bus conversion tour, tiny homes 2021, tiny house tours 2021, skoolie build, bus life

Id: FUcIHahiqhQ

Length: 32min 18sec (1938 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021