The Most Unique School Bus Conversion - Tiny Home / Metal & Art Fab Studio

[Music] everybody Chris here from the off-grid Schooley and tiny home tours right now you're actually in my school II right now today's video features Wes Wes is one of the OGS of the roof raise my particular roof rage was modeled off his design as well as many others out there doing roof raises on YouTube Wes actually this full time on the road right now traveling the u.s. doing roof raises for different people's schoolies he has skills on the road that's how he's able to be on the road and be able to make an income just like me I have online skills if you are looking to develop some skills of your own if this lifestyle is something that you are seriously considering I highly suggest you check out today's sponsor Skillshare they're an online platform that has over 16,000 different courses that you can take I personally have been on Skillshare learning how to do different Sketchup drawings different CAD drawings I actually have in the link down below a model of my bus as well as the first half of wes is bus the first 500 people that sign up with the link down below with skill share will get skill share for two months free thanks for watching we'll catch you next week everyone my name is Wes Lewis this is my bus transcendence come on in for the tour built this with a few friends help you know if you follow my videos definitely not on my own for sure we require friends to do a lot of this stuff cabinet builders and whatnot so my buddy Randy helped me with a lot of cabinet work in here I had some help from some friends down in Texas with my solar and I know I'm probably missing somebody here there but yeah so mostly all done by my hands but I definitely had some work help out some help they all work in on different subjects on here um this is my wood-burning stove I picked this up off a Craigslist about 400 bucks I handed up having to put some new glass in it that was about another hundred dollars just for that but these things are like seven seven hundred to a thousand dollars if you find them brand new so Craigslist is a great resource to find in this stuff it was pretty rusty and pretty pitted up but I just cleaned it up with wire brush and it fits my theme in here well it's a pretty rustic in here so I didn't mind the kind of the rusty you know appeal to it so the stove works really good for keeping this place warm as you can tell it's a little bigger than most of them you know like the cubic Minnie and stuff like that that people use those do work good but you have to feed those the fire little more often than this so this will hold a bigger coal for a longer period of time so middle of the night you just get this thing going or before the middle and now you get this thing going before bed and in the middle night you don't have to wake up to to stoke the fire or anything it's pretty cool too I've got their smashes in here I didn't clean it up for this interview but I can open this up and I get some good coals going in here and I've got this cool little great system and I can put this in here set a couple logs on each side and cook some nice steaks and stuff like that in here Chris and I actually did some of this not too long ago couple few days ago it's some nice days in there but it's really great you can get in here and cook in the middle of winter time or whatever you know you're still kind of grill outdoor so it kind of brings the outdoors indoors it's pretty neat so that's that this is where I put all my wood storage when this thing's full there's it'll last depending how cold it is of course but usually about two to three weeks is about how long this will last for the wood storage and then underneath here I've got this is basically just all the you know kindling and smaller stuff little paper and stuff to get the fire going so that's how that's pretty much operates and I built this with a entire metal frame just to keep it good and sturdy for holding this big away and this thing's bolted down into the metal structure of the framework here so this is a nice little altar space I'm a lot of this stuff on here I've had most of my life so there's a lot of symbolism and a lot of true meaning behind it a lot of this stuff on here so it's kind of my place that I can go to reflect on my life and and future things my pup passed away about a month and a half ago so I've got her you know collar up here and a footprint of hers and everything so it's kind of a sacred space of mine in the bus it's very personal and I love it burn some sage and all that kind of good stuff so I think we all need that spiritually you know - well we all need that stuff so I've been an artist my entire life I've done some really wild and wacky and crazy and cool things but this is some of the stuff that I do this is a old vacuum cleaner body from about the 1940s 1950s I'm not sure and it for me I just kind of modeled after like a Papua New Guinea spirit mask so it's kind of a post-apocalyptic Papua News New Guinea spear mask yeah just made it out of all kinds of different parts vacuum cleaner body these are bicycle hubs spokes you know when here some hem cord this is actually from an erector set you know there's bicycle and motorcycle chains up here just different things I just like to create and do cool stuff so so when I enter the bus I like to be able to take my shoes off you know throw some stuff up in the cabinet there so I create a nice little shoe space here I've got to finish a little false front here of course still so it matches the drawers here but so shoe storage there these are my drawers and everything we did all dovetail joints on everything this is all maple and they've got self closed door slides so that kind of has a little friction to keep them from flying open while you're driving they works really nice so my bus is built on pretty much about 85% repurposed materials the wood down here on the cabinets and everything is basically just cedar fencing hold privacy fencing that I've just tickled nails out and screws and just pressure wash and clean it up and then milled out to whatever we needed my countertops are black walnut countertops that a friend of mine actually harvested the tree out of a river about 25 years ago and slabbed it out so this is air dried black walnut that's been sitting in his father's barn attic for 25 years now so super happy I was able to use this stuff it's all live edge black walnut real pretty so on the coating on these countertops I've used an epoxy coat on it so I coated him in like a bar top epoxy bar top foxy is very shiny so it didn't quite fit my theme in here real well so I went ahead and sanded the epoxy down and I sprayed three coats of satin polyurethane on top of it just to kind of dole it down a little bit and it fits the the rustic feel in here much better that way so move them back into the bus a little bit this is my workspace basically here and I get on the computer video edit I'm just listening to music eat my breakfast you know this is just kind of the the general area for hanging out looking at beautiful views out this window here but it does fold down and you spin the chairs around and create more space in here for you know hanging out with other friends and family and whatnot this is my couch over here and it actually folds out into a bed that can sleep two people it's just really easy I I got this frame out of them like an 80s RV and I've got a hotrod buddy of mine that isn't a poster and I gave him the frame and he remade the cushions for me and reupholstered it for me so it's great I can have a couple couple guests hang out with me every now and then up here is basically just more storage and I've got my bookshelf up here so just a nice collection of you know books that I like to read some of the things that people come in and notice in my bus are the skulls that I have around here everywhere for some reason I've just always been attracted skulls I think they're really cool they house our brain and who we are inside they protect us from you know everything the environments and whatnot so I think they're pretty special but these are actually there was a cat skull that ivory sculpted and I filled in all the voids all the holes in the skull basically and I make silicone molds of these things and then I can pour him in a urethane resin pop him out clean him up you know Santa make him smooth so then I airbrush him and I paint him to look real as realistic as possible so they're vegan friendly skulls now so again this is my upper storage on the passenger side and again that's all repurposed materials this metal that's on these are from a metal recycling yard that I have my hometown in Kansas and they allow you to walk through and just kind of pick up any old metal and whatnot for pennies on the dollar so I like to repurpose a bunch of stuff um so these actually hinge up this way and I've used the Kreg jig to screw everything together to create the doors and then just screw these metal panels in place and I've got these little deals from a company called rebel lock and they're pretty cool so this little red handle here or goes down it engages the lock but then you can use this magnet to touch it and it disengages so you so when I hit the road I'm able just to close this and then it can't come open at all until I come over here and disengage that with with this and then it opens up so they work really well so when I'm driving or when I'm sitting still I just disengage it and then it works on this other little you know attachment point over here locks them in place so I didn't really want to put a TV in this space I don't watch much TV and to me they're just a little unsightly and in a space this small you know personal preference of course but for me I did opted to just put a projector up here I hang a projector up on these bars underneath this fan and it projects on a movie screen that's up front here alright so the entryway is right here so this is up in the front of the bus drivers chair of course is right here and what I've done is I built this cool little box up here that I actually just used a window blind just a cheap level or window blind for my movie screen so it folds down just like that and then I'm able to project the movies up onto the screen as you know I'm just hanging out on the couch I'll fold it down into a bed and have a nice little place to lay down and relax and watch the movies and I Bluetooth it onto my speaker over here just this sound and everything works great behind this is I've got a window up here in my transition area that I pulled out of a 2000 Nissan Quest minivan and I've designed this in such a way I actually put it on upside down rather than right-side up I just matched the contour of the compound curves of this bus almost perfectly I've searched for three different salvage yards and this was the first window that I thought would work and I went back to the first salvage yard and grabbed this window and it had happened to be perfect so got really lucky there so I designed this window to actually open up and I put a a chalk cable here that I can just pull and that unlatches the latch up here and then I can just swing this thing wide open and it just dumps all the heat right out of here or let's a lot of fresh fresh air in I mean I can already fill it like crazy it just comes in so nicely so it's a pretty cool little thing that I think still opens zero leaks don't really have any problems with it no big deal all right we worked our way back into the kitchen now so pretty much the same as up front black walnut countertops is all repurposed wood and same metal I've got a three burner propane stove works really good and it's got an oven in it that's pretty nice just for baking smaller items make some cookies or whatever in there works really good I love to cook on cast iron so my cast iron is always up here I made a nice little spice rack up here it's I think it's really nice to have your spices in one area you know your as well as your cooking your stuff spices in so spice rack there more storage for canned items this one here will be a pull out pantry at some point I just need to get this done seems like these busses are never completely done but we're getting close and then on this side I've got the kitchen sink and I wanted a deep sink in here so I could wash dishes and that sort of stuff very easily and also being on the road not that I can't do in the bathtub but sometimes those little clothes in there and rinse them off and clean them up good and wring them out up here you know in just in emergency situations I can't find a laundromat or what not works pretty good I love the size of the sink it works really good I wanted to make sure when I built this I had plenty counter space for like prepping food chopping vegetables all that sort of stuff so I've got a little space here that works good there's some out here it's kind of a little wide area but it's great for you know set dishes as you wash or whatever and then of course over here I've got a nice counter space for chopping veggies and preparing food and then of course my workstation doubles is that as well so I can just you know overflow can go right over there no problem so that was the main thing I wanted a lot of a lot of counter space here so I like finding old wacky rusty objects for things and so this here is actually from a case tractor it was the toolbox from a cold case tractor and just put it up here for my soap storage and stuff like that really made the latches and it's got these little straps on it and everything still just old vintage stuff turn it you know just repurpose things into something else pretty nice I like the faucet here as well it pulls out and has a spray or just a regular stream on here as well so that's really nice for and things off and I like the the streamline look of this one it's a little little thinner so I've got a refrigerator here it's a pretty good size I don't remember the exact square footage but it's made by a company called eco solar cool and this fridge runs completely off of 12 or 24 volts only it's pretty spacious I believe it's like seven cubic foot or something but it's pretty spacious I wish it open the other way but it doesn't have the availability to switch the hinges on this one so you just deal with it but it's been a great fridge it keeps things really cold ice cream stays frozen you know no big deal and I like how the freezer is compartmentalized rather than just regular shelves for everything so it keeps everything kind of separated and in its place Express or while you're driving down the road it holds everything together so the floor in here is also repurpose I used 3/4 inch plywood from aircraft pallets and so I just disassembled them and took out all the staples and screws and whatnot and clean them up and I put those on the floor here and then I did a floor covering of just little vinyl sticky tiles it works pretty good I know they'll probably wear out over time just a little bit but I think they got a nice look to it and you can actually use a vinyl grout and grout between them so they really almost look like real you know ceramic tile they're pretty nice the nice thing about it is if I do say something falls down there I put it you know scratching it or whatever I can pull each individual tile out and just pop another tile in so I saved some spare tiles for that so it makes a nice way to just fix things really easily alright so this is my solar setup down here pretty much the brains of the entire you know electric system of my bus I'm 100 percent off-grid I've got nineteen hundred and twenty five watts of solar on the roof and I've got a six thousand watt Ames inverter alright so I've got the midnight classic 150 and it basically just tends to my batteries from the panels up top and make sure my batteries are topped off and you know just is it's the brains of you know keeping the batteries in in good condition this is a combiner box over here by the midnight classic as well or by midnight solar and basically all my panels down and come into this so each panel has its own breaker so I can turn each individual breaker or each individual panel off right here on the breaker so I can check and make sure every panel is pretty much consistent so I've shut them all off turn one on you know see how many watts it's pulling turn it up put the next one on and they should be pretty comparable you know the whole way so it lets you know if you've got a real dirty panel or you know if one's just you know not functioning correctly up there so good way to check out your panels I'm on a 24 volt system I've got a 24 volt to 12 volt DC converter so it converts everything back to 12 volts so I can run all my lighting and that sort of stuff in here back on 12 and I've just got a standard blade fuse you know just like automotive or marine style blade fuse box here that you know each each of the lights and whatnots all wired into for the 12 volt setup so I've got 620 amps of AGM batteries I'm at 24 volts and it's pretty much powers me no problem I i weld I fabricate I grind I do all kinds of stuff on my solar setup so as mentioned earlier this is a 6000 watt inverter it does 110 and 220 and what I do is I've wired it up in a way so I can run my air conditioner I've got a mini split unit and I run that on 220 it's a more efficient use of power so it helps my batteries last longer so this is my mini split unit from AC and it does heat as well it's a Mitsubishi unit runs on 220 again on my solar basically this is the a coil side of things with a blower motor in it and the condensers mounted outside on the back deck so these lines run back to the condenser unit outside this wall is not quite done yet of course what I'm going to do is do a storage wall and it'll come out to this depth away from the wall and run all the way down the wall to where it steps back down and from ceiling to floor I'll have some Locker doors in here I'll have some little shelves kind of like my spice rack that I've got over here and I've got some framed artwork that I'm gonna go ahead and use and the framed art will be the doors over here you know some shelves behind them so that's what this walls going to be also this 2x4 that's up top here runs you know the length of my bus from front to back and the intention on that is to cover that up with this wood as well so it'll it'll have the wood covered up and then it'll overlap just a little bit and cover these LED bulbs so I'll get more of an ambient light rather than you know seeing the bulbs so just little projects that still need to happen on the bus that I haven't got quite done yet so one interesting thing about this bus that a lot of people comment on is this Western redcedar pillar that I have here on my bedpost I'm a didgeridoo crafter did reduce our wind instrument from Australia if you didn't know so I make concert quality digits to specific tunings and this was originally it was supposed to be a didgeridoo friend of mine got it for me brought it from his farm and gave it to me and after looking at it and stripping it down and I was gonna turn it into a ditch I started thinking wait a minute I'm gonna use this in my bus so become a permanent fixture in here right on my bedpost rather than a didgeridoo I just beautiful piece of wood nice red red cedar so working our way back in the bus this is my bedroom basically and I've raced it up high I've got my toolbox under here it's a snap-on toolbox I have every tool on my bus that I built the bus with other than a table saw so there's breakdowns on the road that sort of thing guys like me guys in general need some tools to fix some stuff so I've got every tool in here to do that so this kind of dictated the height that my bed was going to be I do have a step stool that I have to get on to jump up there I'm just making a little easier and then what what happens now is I was able since this was up high I utilized the entire underneath space of my bed for water tanks and my water pumps and just that sort of thing so I've also got the AC panel underneath the bed as well so it's right here and you know right here you can access it through this door here breakers and everything right there so just a utility space basically underneath my bed here and also this is where I've got eight AGM 155 amp hour batteries as well so they're stored under here also so complete utility area under the bed another little aspect I had to deal with on this us and minibuses is there's will Wells back here a lot of times up front and in the back so the way I negated getting over those will Wells was by raising this area here and creating just a little raised hallway basically through this this section so my will well is basically right here and I figured rather than just one little hump over the well well only I just go ahead and extend that through here like I said you create a hallway and what that allowed me to do is have these cool little spaces here on each side of the wheel well in front and back of it for just storage you know I've got tools and screws and just all kind of stuff in here I imagine some of this will change up over time once I get to really organizing this thing well but nice little place to just add extra storage you really got to think about that way you're building small you know more storage you can have the better so from the bedroom area now moving back we get into my closet area and my bathroom space over here I've got it's a little tub that I pulled out of like an 80s RV as well I actually got it on the same RV that I got the couch out of the couch frame I've got a composting toilet works really great just about every two months I have to dump the poo side and the other one a lot of people divert these down into a tank but I didn't do that so I got a dump that one about every you know week or so it just depends on how much you use it of course so this is a nature set composting toilet I actually love this thing they don't smell they've got a little fan unit that keeps the you know the odors at bay pretty much but honestly it smells like fresh dirt when you're using it they're awesome they don't stink the worst thing of this is just the the p-side you know when you're dumping it that that smells worse than the poo side so I love it though I don't have to stop a hunt down a Blackwater or somewhere to dump my black water and all that sort of thing so you can dump this out anywhere toss the the compost area in a trash you know trash receptacle wherever you're at or if you know someone that's got a garden or whatever you can further compost it and they can actually use the compost in their garden it's a humidor is what they call it so it's pretty cool stuff so the bathtub in here it's kind a cool little mini bathtub I took it out of the same RV that I got the couch frame out of and I absolutely loved it I can actually take a little bath providing I have the water but I shower daily in here I've got 100 gallons of water source fresh water storage so I can use that usually if I if I stretch it out I can get you know two to three weeks out of it that works pretty good I enjoy a shower almost every day so sometimes it's only less than me you know week and a half to two weeks but I'm careful with it sometimes I can make it last this has been a real good test being out here on BLM land for sure and just checking it out and see how everything functions and operates so it's been a good good thing to do again that the tile work that's in this bathroom here my ex-girlfriend Delilah actually did that and she did a great job we actually found all the tile work and or all the tile in a dumpster in our hometown so check out dumpsters check out all kinds of places you never know what you're gonna find yeah a whole bunch of really good free tile so I've also got an instant hot water heater that I use it's a propane powered one and it works really good heats water up really nice just control the temperature with adding some cold water to it and it works no problem really efficient on the propane as well for cooking and heating water 120 pound tank lasts me about a month and a half or so sometimes even a bit longer so I'm really happy with the efficiency of the propane setup that I've got here moving back a little bit I built these little little cabinets I guess and they just store you know q-tips and just bathroom accessories stuff down here I've got a trash can just kind of a stores all that sort of stuff and I've got my peat moss for my toilet as well down here so moving back a little bit from the storage here I've got closets and basically what I did is I I was gonna do built-ins like I did in my kitchen area you know just built in cabinet her built-in drawers with slides and everything I was kind of getting a little impatient per se and I wanted to get the bill done and I was about ready to hit the road so I made it a little simple and I just made some plywood doors and I just used some Sterilite plastic containers for all my clothes and everything and it's worked out really good I'm actually have I did it so these are both my closet areas I've got containers on the top and the bottom this one here as well so just nice ones locked but anyway that's best basically what I've what I've done here for my closet space and all four of these doors are exactly the same pretty much with set of these containers with three drawers so coming back from the bathroom area coming outside actually through this door now I've created a 5-foot deck back here it's a little oil on that door but create a nice little 5-foot deck back here it's five foot by about seven foot six or so and I've gotten these two ramps and I'm able to put the ramps in there and I've got a little motorcycle that I just parked my bike up here on it's a CM 400 T Honda highly modified built with Mesa Li like an enduro and so I can take it out on the dirt trails and all that good stuff street legal as well so this deck actually houses I have three military water containers back here you can see them better on the backside of course but extra water storage back here so I've got 15 gallons of extra water storage in case of emergency and then I've got my mini split condenser unit back here as well down in the corner here for the AC unit of course so basically I'm an artist fabricator I build high-end hot rods and worked in the aircraft industry but mainly I like to focus on a lot of art and stuff like that so this is the captain's chair and this is my little friend that kind of stares at me down the road all the time as I'm driving so yeah this is a baboon skull that I had laying around for about 15 years or so and I just kind of set it up on the shelf didn't really know what I was going to do with it of course a lot of you have probably seen the movie Mad Max so this was definitely inspired by the the Mad Max movie I just love skulls I love creating art and so I did kind of a steampunk ish post-apocalyptic styled steering wheel for my rig here I also do a lot of other found object art as well that will will show you here in a bit so anyway yeah this is where I head down the road so this area works really good for me I've got a Kenworth seat that I got from a Kenworth reseller I put my GPS right here so it works really nice this has got a Cummins five nine in it with an eighty five four five transmission transmission it's not ideal it's not too bad but I am gonna do a 6-4-3 swap and possibly a Cummins eight three swap off I'll find out here before too long see how that goes but yeah mostly this area is really comfortable for driving down the road I've got I've got made these little um actually I'm a buddy mine made these curtains for me so put those down at night they're insulated they're made with painters tarp and there's a moving blanket inside of them so it sandwiches painters art and it creates a nice insulating factor you know at night time and it's a blackout as well so it works really good for sleeping and keeping out the street lights and whatnot if I'm in town this is my rear view camera and it's made by company called cool whoo it's working it works really good I've actually just reconfigured some of these switches to do different things that used to be for all the lights and stuff like that that was on the bus that I have taken off so I've just reconfigured in four different objects or different things on the bus so I can just pull this out and that turns on and that shows right behind me so I can back up no problem with this thing works really good getting yourself in tight situations and whatnot backup camera got to have one on them one of these big rigs for sure so up in the top up here I've basically took apart some school gym lockers and use them for doors up in this area this is a nice little area for storage you know I have merch is such as stickers and stuff like that so I most of that stuff is up here all my all my stickers and you know miscellaneous stuff that I give away to people or sell you know depending on where I'm at so it's just a great little place map storage here little little cubby for you know red bass and stuff like that and this is where of course I'm bald-headed so this is my beanie collection pretty much in here beanies and clubs just it's right by the front door so it's easy when I come in and just throw everything in there call it done and just some extra storage over here for miscellaneous you so thanks for watching the tour truly appreciate you guys and everyone on my channel you can find my channel at transcend existence it's also on Facebook and Instagram as well transcending existence what I'm basically doing is I'm travelling around the country now helping other people do their buses as well Chris and I are gonna team up with some projects here real soon and he'll probably be travelling around with me as well to do this stuff for other people but I'm really enjoyed it it's a it's a good time it's offered me to meet a lot of cool people explore the country as I'm doing it and bringing other people's dreams to fruition as well so it's been a fun project I'm hoping I can maybe settle down maybe in the summer months somewhere a little cooler you know and start doing a lot of my art work as you'll soon as you see in the video here and I'm hoping to have some of that up for sale as well along with my didgeridoos also I want to create those on the road and have those up for sale to help sustain my life on the road as well so yeah thanks for following guys keep doing what you're doing and and I'm good day [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Tiny Home Tours

Views: 714,219

Keywords: tiny home, tiny house, tiny home on wheels, van life, camper van, shipping container, design, tiny houses, tiny homes, tiny house tour, school bus conversion, skoolie, school bus tiny home, bus conversion, mci conversion, greyhound conversion, bus tiny home, bus tiny house, metal fab, metal fabrication

Id: IqwP9v4NEeU

Length: 31min 8sec (1868 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 08 2019