SKOOLIE TOUR: Self build skoolie into gorgeous TINY HOME without experience

hi everyone we're shutter speed the schooly my name is naomi and i'm kyle and welcome to the full official tour [Music] [Music] shoulder [Music] all right guys so welcome to the outside of shutter speed the schooly i'll just give you a quick run around and point out things that we've done throughout the build i'll start off by we have brand new bridgestone tires we got these from a friend of ours in tennessee and he was able to get us a great deal on him so thank you buddy i won't name you but you know who you are we also have a rv door that we installed that has a window here that can slide up and if you can look closely there's trip right there hey buddy we have a dog named trip inside up top we have security cameras that we wanted to make sure that we were protected on the road so we have four security cameras one on each side and then one on the front and one in the back that we use as well we have a beautiful paint job right now we are testing out colors in the very early stages but we'll eventually last step of this dust build is painting the bus and so we've decided on a color we think but we're still waiting to figure out exactly how we want to do it but we did a 25 inch roof raise and so me i'm 6'5 and we wanted to do a roof raise for the build so lifting that up and wrapping this in steel and then taking out all the bus windows as well and we also have four windows rv windows that we bought from ebay and one is a 48 inch two of them are 48 inch windows and then the back ones i believe are 15 inch windows so come with me so on the back we extended the bumper to get a a back deck built and also a ladder that goes up to the rooftop deck that i'll show you later but what we have here is a latch that opens up and it shows storage underneath so we have all of our black tank stuff here and then on the right side we have our freshwater hoses and things like that so we separate them because we don't want to cross-contaminate and they're also in and out of the bus which you don't want a black tank hose in your bus so we decided to do that and we have a latch here that when we're driving we'll keep that safe and sound we also have here another sunken built-in compartment that contains two propane tanks and so we have these here and then they hook up to our propane copper tube that goes through the the floor of the bus that we'll show you a little bit and that keeps our tankless water heater our propane stove um and our uh and our heat as well just to keep everything central than the bus also right here we have our 50 amp plug-in this goes up to 50 amps and we use that for our shore power that keeps our ac units up top working and then right here we also just have an outdoor plug just for the heck of it if we're out here and we want to listen to a speaker and plug it in or whatever we want to do we have an outdoor plug as well these are mistakes from plumbing that we made drilled holes for certain plumbing vents to go and it didn't end up working out from the design we had so that's just patched up also here but we look at it as an opportunity because there's a big hole here now behind this steel and if there's ever a problem in plumbing since it's underneath the floor we can actually look in there access it and things this is where our water inlet is this is where we take the hose and we put it in here to fill up our 110 gallon water tank and that keeps us with fresh water for however long we want really can last a week if we take long showers it can last up to a month if we're frugal with it down here is the black tank the black tank here also connects to the fresh and gray water so the 110 gallon fresh water tank that we have all the water from that goes into the the gray water and then dumps down in here in the black tanks here so what we do at the end of a trip or if we have a full tank we take out this uh this piece right here that i won't touch because i don't gloves on but that relieves the black tank and then we pull a lever back here that flushes out the gray water to flush out the tube and clean things out a little bit [Music] right here is our shore water so whenever we're plugged up to a full rv site one of the things that we're able to do is instead of using the gray and freshwater tanks we just plug directly into here and that way it has its own sewage system but that's just strictly for short water this is our tankless water heater when you have a water heater there's a lot of steam it has to go somewhere so this is a vent that is attached underneath the sink that we'll show later that actually relieves that and relieves the heat and stuff like that this is just our battery for the bus that is stock from the actual school bus itself this is also just stock that we have uh that is all the electrical for the uh the main components of the bus that we had uh when it's built so that's for lights a lot of it actually isn't used anymore you'll find that out when you build your own bus there's tripp hey bubba tripp why don't you say hi hey buddy anything to say to him all right i'm gonna get you back in just for a sec i should mention that this is a 2001 thomas international school bus with a dt466 engine and allison trans it's got 160 000 miles on it so we're optimistic that this guy if well maintained throughout our our time with the bus that it'll get us where we need to go safely here we have with the rv door it is keypad protected and it also has a deadlock so for safety reasons we wanted to have something that was secure with a bolt and now we're going to show you some of the inside with our dock trap all right so right here we have our stairs but we also have a platform here for when we are driving um so my jump seat is to the left um so my feet don't hang angle so they don't dangle down into the stairwell um so we have this nice platform so once he gets off okay [Music] back up so here is our entryway uh we still have to do the stairs and get that finished out but that's probably one of our last things since we do have this so this just comes down lays flat so we now have a platform for when we're driving so we have my jump seat here um with a seat belt and we also have trip seat belt we wanted him to be safe as well so he's in his harness and leashed so this is another one of the projects that we have yet to finish we would like to have a cabinet on here we're going to put our wi-fi and all of our extra components in here so we're just finishing off the cabinet at this time we also have our tv and just because it is on a swivel we have connectors in the back so it is also secure while we're driving so this is where i spend most of my time driver's seat we have the engine because it's a flat nose the engine's inside here and we put this felt over the top just to give it some decor and also to keep it a little quieter when we're driving this is tripp's water bowl and food station so this is where he's at and this fabric also is kind of nice because when he's swishing the water around everywhere it actually just catches on there and not the hardwood floor for the most part we have our security system that shows all four monitors at once a phone holder for when i'm we're driving somewhere that i don't have the i don't know the directions very well and then all just stock uh buttons and things like that that we used for the uh bus so a lot of them are just capped off but we do save a few of them for the necessities like the lights windshield wipers the brightness of the monitors things like that here we have storage we have a wheel well that's underneath this storage right here so one of the things that we want to do since i am a videographer is that i have a lot of equipment that needs charging so underneath here we actually still needs to be built out another one of the projects but we have shelves right here that actually if you look down here we have six outlets and so with the shelves that i'm going to have in here this will be able to charge the drone cameras lights all those things at once and that way while they're charging for hours on end they are not out in the open uh you know taking up space on the counter right now we use this counter as kind of like a catch-all uh when we walk in we throw our keys there we're probably going to have some kind of bowl or something here just to catch all things and then just more storage on the left side here same deal here is my office so to speak i love that it's one one of the things i really love about this is that i can just as i'm sitting down get something out of the fridge so if it's been a long day and i need a beverage it's right there for me but laptops here we actually have an hdmi cord that is hidden behind here so when i'm done with the video project i can actually just plug into my laptop here and the cord runs through the wall to the tv so when i want to watch a bigger project something that's a little more important i will watch it on there so i can actually see what the viewer will see on their tv screen the chair here that we bought we got it from overstock.com i love it because it's it's small enough to go for a office chair but it also has storage in here that we keep remotes and different things and so big perk on that love it then our couch we got our couch online we got one of those click clack uh click clack uh futons and so the only issue with that is that it cannot go back because of the wall right we're in a tight space so we did what most people do is we built the slats um for the couch and that pulls out enough to where we can clack it down to a full bed for guests to stay if we'd like so this is our avanti fridge and freezer on this right side we have all of our fridge products and then we also have our freezer we also put all of our spices magnetically on here and they're all individually labeled we have it like that because i accidentally put some dents in it in our building process um so those actually hide the dents but they're also decorative and functional so that was my mistake a big thing about when we were making our build was space obviously um so we ended up choosing an under-the-counter fridge and freezer just for space saving we figured that most of our products are going to be a little bit more dry so we wanted to make sure that we still had the aspect of the freezer but we wanted to make sure that we were being as functional as possible with our fridge and freezer underneath the cabinet so this is our propane tank stovetop we decided to forego an oven just for space purposes and this has done very very well for us we probably will still be building a heat protector on this back just for safety purposes but this has been very crucial to what we've been doing so we do have overhead cabinets and we've already installed these clasps so we don't have anything flying open as we're driving but this is a pantry area for us we also have all of our cups our glasses all of that in this cabinet we have one just for our dog trip and we also have our pots and pans up here so every certain cabinet does have a purpose so we also installed puck lights for extra lighting while we're cooking and then overhead we also have some led lights just for ambiance and a little bit of extra right there we have all of our silverware and everything else tucked back in here we decided to get the microwave not mounted just so if we need extra space we can move the microwave and then we also have the magnet strip for all of our heavy knives so the sink was my favorite feature i really wanted a big farmhouse type of sink we got this off of amazon and thankfully it has been probably my favorite feature of the entire bus we also have this drying rack for all of our dishes while they're kind of sitting out and drying we decided to do some decorations we have this shelving unit but we also wanted to make sure our bar was there so while we're driving things didn't fly around this has been really great for us so far and obviously it also holds our towel so this is peel and stick wallpaper we went through about four different designs before we settled on this just because it was a little bit more neutral it's very easy to install has been great for just adding a little bit of something extra to this and makes it a nice accent wall okay to talk about the mechanics and some of the functionality of the bus for the stovetop when we're making meals we did a max air fan right above that way it takes the smoke from cooking right out of the bus probably one of the features that we screwed up on was having the fire and monoxide alarm next to the fan so when it's uh when it's taking the smoke up sometimes that goes off but uh probably not what my mom would suggest but we can just take that off when we're cooking put it back on you live and you learn if you're doing a build uh try and put the smoke detector in a very smart spot not anywhere near the stove but it's hard 200 square feet so underneath this counter uh we have our utensils like naomi showed but this cabinet is nothing but um stuff that we're going to use for bus mechanical purposes and so still some junk in here but what we have is we have a diesel heater the diesel heater actually is fed through the actual diesel tank of the bus so uh we actually drilled a hole into the diesel tank of our bus ran a line underneath the floor that connects to the diesel heater that way we don't have to have a separate uh container of fuel in the bus that's unsafe and so we tried to go the safest routes possible we also have ductwork that's been ran throughout so this diesel heater doesn't just pump heat out from here but it actually goes into the bathroom the bedroom and into the living room so when it does get cold we have the opportunity to stay warm in every area of the bus we also have here which is our copper tube this takes our propane from the back like i showed you on the back deck and that runs to our propane stove our water heater which is right here it within about three seconds our water is warm for showers and whatnot to conserve on uh to conserve on our water consumption so this cabinet's actually really good for us because it's all in one storage so if there's anything wrong with propane plumbing our water heater our diesel heater everything is right here in this easy cabinet to access and so we really love that feature of it underneath here is trash your basic kitchen appliances but we also can access plumbing through here if there's ever an emergency where we have issues with the plumbing we can access the shut off valves and everything in here and we also chose to have plumbing in the sink location right here again everything everything on this bus is done for a purpose so where do you put things how effective can you be in your small tight space and so we chose the sink to be here and the plumbing to be right here because on the other side of this wall is actually the shower and so for ease of use and plumbing in this middle wall everything conjoins into one central location over here is our control panel so this everything the stuff that we were just talking about everything is controlled from this wall we chose this wall because it's out of the way nobody ever sits here it's not really a space that people notice and so so we have our renegy inverter controls we have our battery consumption so this lights up when it's charging we're doing shore power right now so that is uh at full 200 amps this is our water heater it tells us how high we want the water temp to be or how low we want it to be this is the diesel heater this is the water pump and this is our breaker box for all of our electrical and so the fuse is here if something goes out or if we plug into a wrong outlet we can easily switch out the chips and this just controls shore power this is off grid power and it's all in one easy location so as you come through the hallway leaving the kitchen in the living room we have actually what we like to call an upstairs it's raised about a foot and a half and the reason why we did that is because underneath this entire back half of the bus the floor there are two 110 gallon water tanks that go along the frame and so that left us one really good water storage so we don't have to worry about our water freezing in cold places since it's inside the bus and insulated uh but we also had an opportunity on the sides of the water tanks for storage at this long hallway so what we decided to do was underneath here is where all of our battery components are so we have a renergie inverter that takes all of our solar and power that we have in the bus and converts it into usable energy with standard outlets we also have two 200 amp hour batteries but one thing that you guys will have to know when building a bus is that unless you get lithium batteries that battery amp actually gets cut in half and so although there's 400 amp hours there because they're not lithium it actually is only 200 amp hours will we need more we don't know so far we've been happy with it for the most part we're in rv parks that were plugged in anyway uh but i would imagine that if we're doing long stints and say a cloudy area like seattle or something we might have to conserve on our usage but so far so good so this is our bathroom we've installed a vent and fan just for all of the steam so steam purposes we have that we also have an ikea sink and storage under here for all of our toothbrushes and whatnot extra toilet paper um then we also have our toilet and the day over here so this is a dometic toilet system this connects to our black tank right underneath and then we also have a tiny shower that we've insulated we chose an rv shower head that was from amazon as well very cheap very nice and it works perfectly we chose this design these towels are super absorbent and we can reuse them very often so we have two towels for kyle and i each and then we wanted a decorative light up here i wanted a decorative light up there we also have the outlet make sure that you have your outlets turned upside down much like hospitals that's where a lot of accidents happen so make sure that the prong is facing up with that so to start us off this is our bedroom here is our dometic air conditioner unit we have two of those one in the front and one in the back as well and that has been wonderful off of shore power so we also have two rv windows on either side for nice cross flow and then in our bedroom area we have a queen-size bed and this is mainly our area but we also wanted extra foot space we didn't want that crimp feeling kyle is a little bit taller but we also have our dog so his bed is down here and we also have extra blankets for extra cold areas because this is where i will be working the majority of the time we also have cabinet storage up head so i can store all of my work material my laptop up there also extra pillowcases and whatnot for those cold nights on either side we both have usb charging ports and outlets um just because we know that everybody has a his and her side and we didn't want to be jumbling over charging phones i also want to mention that making the bed is probably our least favorite task out of the entire bus it is a pain in the butt to try to get up there and do it but it's made for you today so underneath is where we're going to be storing a lot of things um so over here we have our camp chairs we also have my clothes and one bin kyle's going to have his clothes in another bin um at this weekend stage we don't have it all set up right now but we have our clothing situation here we also have extra storage way in the back for all of our off-season clothing and material then we are going to have one hamper for our dirty clothes so we can all keep that bonfire smell in one general location and then if you come to our back garage this is our extra space we're going to be having a roll of t-shirts and a roll of pants for each of us hanging off of this wall specifically for easy access just for day-to-day clothing options and then if you come back we have our two scooters this is for just getting around the park when we can't move the bus they go 19 miles per hour for 20 miles so the charging is great on that um and then from here we also are going to have our back deck entrance so we have another door here for getting outside and stepping out onto our back deck so now we're past the garage out onto the back deck and we're going to go up to the rooftop deck come join me oh i recommend wearing shoes when you do this so we are on the rooftop deck of our schooly build we just have standard two by sixes i believe that are on unistrut we bolted that to the ribs of the bus for secure deck inside here we have a cut out for our dometic ac unit and then and if we keep going along on our unistrut deck it stops and that's where we have our solar panels so we have eight 100 watt renegy solar panels that have been working great for us and they're all connected to the unit strut as well we have the max air fan the other dometic ac unit and then so this is what we use to enjoy happy hours morning yoga we don't do that but we might who knows we chose this lifestyle because we are newlyweds and we wanted to experience as much as we could in the first years of our marriage before having children we wanted to just explore travel get out there see as much as we could together right it's like before we're financially responsible for others and while we can still do this at a relatively young age we wanted to see all the national parks and and go to alaska and see all the states and see what really what this country has because i feel like we have such a big country that a lot of people don't actually get to see everything so we want to capitalize on that now while we're young we have our health and our youth before we get older and do it that way so another big reason for me personally is that i'm a photographer and videographer so traveling around and seeing these parks and taking landscape shots is a big part of what i do and so i'm really excited to go out there and see all the landscapes that this country has and there's a lot of them so we intend on being very busy in the bus but we also may make a film about our journey just to show everybody what bus life is like show the challenges show the perks of it but just be really real with with the film just to show exactly what it is and not be fake about it or too intentional or however you want to take it so far it's been great um i think during covid we were already forced in those close proximity together and this was just another testament that we felt very comfortable doing it of course there's going to be those small little things that we had to work out initially while we were trying to live together um you know the small little bickering and it really forces you to come together and communicate when you're in a tight space anyway um so there's no more misunderstanding about little things we're really good about communication and so far it's been great yeah yeah covered to what she's saying covered was a good proof of concept because when you're spending that much time together um you know you have to deal with with uh any issues that are going on so going from our house which is 2 000 square feet to 200 square feet communication has to be super on par so one of the big things about tiny house living though is that when you're going from a large amount of square feet to small amount of square feet is that you have to deal with your problems right then and there you can't get an argument and then just go down to the basement or hide you know up in your office or whatever it is you have to communicate because you are living right next to each other the whole time so we actually look at it as a perk and a uh and a nice thing for our relationship because it allows us to communicate more and it allows us to um you know work through things or discuss things that we want to do it doesn't have to be negative right right i think it's all positive that we're spending so much time together and really getting to know each other especially in these first stages of marriage it only solidifies what we already knew is that we are very compatible and we get along really well even in a tight space one of the things that we love about tiny house living especially being off grid we have solar we have water in here and so although we still have the diesel using using diesel for the the school bus for the most part we're completely off grid and we're not causing much damage to the environment or taking up much space and so what we love the idea about this is that we can go out and boondock and be out in the open and not using resources from you know a grid of some sort so we love that idea we love being self-sustaining uh just because it gives you the freedom and you kind of feel empowered by doing it that you're not relying on anything but yourself it's the little things for me about you know taking a quicker shower not using as much resources not using your keurig or the keurig cups anymore and just really focusing on what's really important how we're getting our basics and trying to be as minimalistic and leave as little of an impact as possible so it is very important for us we want to go experience the entire us and canada and we really want to expand into all of these great areas and we shouldn't be harming what we're trying to see it's also kind of like a game you know like how much can you condense down how can how much can you get rid of and still live a comfortable life and so uh looking at how much water you have left looking at the wattage from your battery banks that's kind of like this big game is how how can how well can we be sustainable on the road how well can we maximize the utilities and the resources that we have and so i personally love it because it's kind of like a challenge and we're both competitive people and it's a it's a fun way to to look at life and to uh every day wake up knowing that you have a finite amount of things and how do you get the most out of that and then another thing for me is you start to realize all the blessings that you do have and how much a luxury everything else is so we are very blessed to have this type of setup and i know that people even survive off of less and less so for us it is really fulfilling just trying to live as much in the moment and not worry about materialistic things as much the building process oh gosh um it was daunting and intimidating and it was say it louder for the people it's frustrating at times and we had a lot of clashing initially when we were first trying to do our build just because we were trying to make our point and we were trying to get this and this and this done so it was challenging in all the right ways um but we wouldn't have had such a successful butt bus we probably wouldn't have had a successful bus build had we not had those challenges and gotten to learn from our mistakes along the way yeah so the bus bill took about two years we're coming up on two years here in a few months and i would say we're about 90 95 percent done still some small things that we'll probably point out in this tour but the building process took a very long time we had breaks in between there's times where we got super burn out and we needed to take a month or two off there's times that we hired help to help with things that are a little more technical like plumbing and electrical those are things that i really um don't want to do youtube's a great resource and there's tons of videos out there that teach people how to do those things but it's one of those things where it's like you can't screw that up you can't screw up 110 gallons of water on your bus you can't screw up faulty electrical wires um you know with the dog inside the bus while uh we go to the bathroom something like that right something bad could happen so we wanted to outsource for that but also we wanted to outsource because we just flat out didn't want to do it at times and so i look at it as you have to go into it being a team you have to know it's going to be really really hard you can't have this fake pipe dream that everything is just going to go right into place buses are not perfectly square everything's got to be custom you're going to do something you're going to rip it back out and do it again i think i lost some hair up here over the last two years building this with naomi and friends and people that we hired but overall once you get it done oh my goodness is it worth it um we absolutely love it we just we love being in here so the building process i guess if you guys were to ask us would we do it again the answer would be a very loud f no for me at least i don't think i'd build another bus just because um it takes a lot of time and i want to give credit to kyle here he had researched everything so much prior to our build we wanted to think about things like inertia and we wanted to think about how much our tanks could really hold and the weight of the bus and every little thing had to have a purpose or at least some type of reasoning behind it of why we were doing one way or another you have to make things even you have to make sure that it's not tilting one way or another because when you're going down a hill that matters so kyle had done his research for months prior to even buying a bus just because we wanted to make sure that we were thinking of every little thing going into it and of course things come up along the way but i have to give kyle credit where it's due he did a lot of the research for what we needed so i am not a very good designer and i really didn't know what i wanted so of course pinterest was a huge thing for us we already had picked out colors we had just gotten married so i really wanted to incorporate a lot of the things that we had done before but in going tiny we wanted to be a little bit more mental minimalistic so in going minimalistic kind of putting in the key touches that we wanted the grays the navies the coppers i had a couple of must-haves so i really wanted a big sink i really wanted a bathroom so little things just kind of came naturally after that just knowing what my must-haves were and what kyle's most tabs were and then we wanted to keep it as simple as we could from there yeah so in the beginning of looking for a bus right that's a big decision how long of a bus do you want do you want a roof raise you want a roof rack i mean there's a lot of decisions in the beginning that you have to make in order to get a good design plan going that fits your needs and so when we first started talking about this i kind of wanted just a short bus and i wanted it to be really really simple gravity-fed water basic electric and just kind of have this real rough lifestyle and as we talked about it naomi said okay i need a bathroom i'll get on board as long as i can shower yes so i said okay we'll we'll get that in there and then i was thinking all right if she gets a bathroom and a shower well i'm 6'5 and i was like well if i'm gonna be doing this especially with the shower head and everything else i need to roof raising so as we went on building this process and doing the layout and figuring things out we just started getting bigger and bigger and bigger with it and i wouldn't say that's for everybody definitely don't just go big especially if your lifestyles you want to navigate and be quick and stealth in parking lots and you want to go to campgrounds any of the campgrounds because our buses is uh really large and so there's a lot of campgrounds that we can't go go into because we're over 36 feet or whatever it is so make sure that you know what type of bus you want and the layout can come in second after that and you can get really creative because if you're watching this video you've probably watched dozens or hundreds of other schooly tour videos so um you'll get a good idea from there yeah and i think storage is the most important make sure that you know where you're going to be storing your winter clothes from your summer clothes make sure you know where you're keeping your dog's food to the pantry items that you keep every day storage is a huge thing and you want to make sure that you have a layout that also kind of gives to that yeah and with that get less stuff you don't need you know four pairs of jeans you don't need a lot of the things you think you do so when it comes to storage that's a huge stressful part of it how do we fit all of our stuff in here but just give it a shot start giving away things start selling things start figuring out how much you actually need and then the storage part which is a big stress factor especially in a small space because there's a stuff everywhere the less stuff you have the happier you'll be i can promise you that yeah i would say that uh the biggest advice that i could give right now off the top of my head is know what you're getting into i thought after months and months and months and months of research that i knew i was getting into and i still didn't it's a very overwhelming thing and unless you're a master carpenter a master electrician a master plumber you have to make sure that you have the funds for these type of things to outsource and so one of the things that i want to preach to everybody is that you don't have to do everything yourself um don't be afraid to ask for help and one of the things that i realized that was really important was that my skill set necessarily isn't the best in a lot of these areas but i am good at some things that earn me an income so instead of taking a lot of time trying to master everything i doubled down on what i was good at to try to make more money that i could pay for something for somebody that they're really good at and so i wasn't going to do plumbing i wasn't going to do electrical but i was able to shoot more videos i was able to get more gigs more clients and work on the weekends work at nights to be able to afford to pay for people to help us in the areas that we were weak in so biggest advice is know what you're getting into be very diligent about the process and know whether or not you're going to have the commitment to finish it another piece of advice while i'm thinking about off the top of my head is there are a lot of people that don't take the advice i just gave and give up on their schooly build halfway through or right in the beginning they just got the bus and then they try to sell it for ten thousand dollars more don't buy from those people but you can buy half built schoolies and so if you're trying to save time on on on the labor part of things you can find half builds and those people are usually just trying to dump it trying to get rid of it and trying to recoup some of their money for all of their money so just know what you're getting into do your research and have a very dedicated mindset going forward because it'll get tough and seeing things through can be a challenge at times but just stick with it it'll be worth it so my biggest piece of advice is don't look at instagram and pinterest and envision this wonderful life that you're going to be living get a little bit more realistic about it sometimes you're like it's just one of those things a light switch is going to be a little bit adjacent compared to what you want it to be and everything's going to be a mistake and it's okay to make mistakes but make it your own that's a whole process of building a schoolie is to customize it for what you want really put in a passion for what you want out of it because everything's going to be different everybody's going to have an opinion just stick to your guns do what you want out of your build and also be realistic about what your expectations are out of your build if you're going to be full time you're going to need different things than if you were just taking it for random weekend trips and are you going to be having it stationary are you going to be really traveling or doing much with it you have to be realistic about what you want out of it obviously if it's stationary you get a little bit more perks than you do if you're traveling all the time so just be realistic about what your expectations are for the actual purpose of the bus and to piggyback off of what she just said do things that make you comfortable don't do the things that look good on instagram don't do the things that you see on youtube that you think look pretty i know it's tempting to want to do that but there are a lot of things that you see on the internet that aren't actually that practical you have the custom built couches that are super small with the made cushions and now i'm not saying that those are all bad things or they don't work a lot of people don't mind it but for me when i get home from work or i get home from a hike or whatever it is i want to be able to sit on a couch that's comfortable i want to be able to lay on a bed that's comfortable that i actually fit in and so make sure that when you're building stuff make sure it's comfortable because if you're sitting in a perfect rectangular cube that looks amazing but nothing's comfortable to sit on it's going to get old really really fast so don't sacrifice comfort for the way things look because i feel personally that you'll regret it as i would have i think what we've learned also from other people is aesthetic is one thing obviously you want a great aesthetic but just living in the space gives you a different mentality of what you want out of it so ours was very functional and obviously we want to make things pretty and design things nice but we really wanted things to have a good functioning purpose throughout the entire bus so piece of advice is make sure that you're keeping that in mind when you're building one of the main questions that people ask on schooly pages and forums and things like that is insurance you're spending a lot of your own time money and resources putting into this future home that you're going to live in so naturally you want to protect it finding insurance for us personally was not that bad i think registering the the bus as an rv and going through that title process and things like that that was more cumbersome than doing the insurance but we went through uh allstate uh i called them i explained to our allstate agent exactly what we had and in the beginning since we weren't fully done with the build that's another one of those uh those scenarios where they were ensuring us for what it currently was but there's a lot of factors like uh are you currently living in it are you driving it is it drivable is it under a shelter while you're building it or you're just building out in your backyard all those things are factors when you're first doing your build so if you do get insured in the beginning which feel free to do we did that um but you want to get it reinsured at the end because it's worth more right you've spent more time putting things in there there's more functionality uh whatever it may be so we went through allstate it's a case-by-case situation that we found out especially just from reading the forums being a part of them for so long is that the best way to do things is to either find another school friend that has done it and try to go through the agent they went through or just ask around but facebook groups and forums are going to be your best resource even though people are tired of seeing that question who cares ask the question and get it done me personally we ended up going through coachnet for additional insurance just because we wanted to know that we were covered under towing and if we got a flat tire what we could do out of that so we do have that subscription through coachnet amazing service so far how much is it a month uh i believe it's 200 a year plus maybe around 300 a year and it's an annual renewal we really have enjoyed their service so far they've been extremely great on customer service i explained everything that we were hoping to do out of the bus and we get monthly newsletters for them they've been wonderful to work with so hopefully we never need them but yeah they're there so the technical specs of our bus uh we did it's a 2001 thomas international with the dt466 engine and an allison transmission there is a roof raise that we did which is 25 inches i use galvanized steel that went around the entire bus and we just basically extended the ribs of the bus when it comes to solar we have a roof rack up top that also connects to a rack full of solar panels which is 800 watts we did eight individual 100 watt panels all through renegy and then we also have a battery bank uh 400 amps that are is through renegy as well we have an inverter from a technical perspective the engine has a 160 000 ish miles on it which uh a diesel engine of that caliber if well maintained can go at least a half million miles so maintenance is really key but we're optimistic that for the trip that we want to do we won't even touch 100 000 miles i mean that's that's a lot of miles and it's a big country but you know you can do a couple laps and and some with that so we're hopeful uh by you know taking into account getting it tuned up before we leave that we'll be safe sound and it'll be reliable uh on the road knocking on wood and then we got bridgestone tires we actually got somewhat of a deal through a friend on that regard tires is a whole ball game i i did a ton of research on them and it is a pain in the butt to find safe tires uh that will keep you and your family safe but also that won't break the bank i mean sometimes they're three four five thousand dollars for a set so we were lucky that we had a friend that was able to help us out in that regard but i would recommend not i would recommend not sacrificing quality on the on the tires because that is a massive part especially when you're lugging around twenty thousand thirty thousand pounds uh of material on a road you wanna have good tires it's just a smart thing to do don't don't budge on that all right guys we are on the rooftop deck finishing up the schoolie tour we really appreciate you watching hope you guys have fun on your schooly builds and we can't wait to see you and follow along as well see you later [Music] you

Channel: Alternative House

Views: 295,795

Keywords: skoolie, bus conversion, school bus tiny house, school bus house, school bus conversion, skoolie conversion, skoolie family, house hacking, school bus, diy tiny house, diy rv, rv family, buslife, life in a school bus, family lives in a school bus, mobile dwellings, skoolie tour, bus conversion tour, inside a skoolie, skoolie walkthrough, house tour, architecture, diy building, diy carpenter, vanlife, alternative home, alternative dwellings, alternative house

Id: 8oP5HxA-YGQ

Length: 42min 51sec (2571 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 14 2021