Beautifully Renovated Self Built 40 Ft. School Bus

[Music] hey i'm allison this is my husband nick and we've been living on the road for about six months now [Music] the first thing you'll notice when you come into our bus is our kitchen we wanted our bus to have a lot of separate rooms and to feel like an actual house so that's what inspired the somewhat l-shaped layout that you see here a big inspiration behind our build was nature so we have a quartz counter top some other pearl tile we have porcelain tile right here acacia flooring pine so yeah it's very much inspired by nature so we have a furion stove and oven our stove is almost big enough for a pizza unfortunately our freezer does not fit a full-size digiorno so that's the only complaint we have there so behind the stove we have about three feet of prep space for cooking meals it was important to have a really big sink since we don't have a dishwasher anymore we have our berkey right above our sink and we use our nozzle to fill that up across from our countertop we have our cabinet so this is all food storage right here and then an rca side-by-side fridge and freezer we have a ton of storage on our bus more than enough we built uh cabinets up above that you see here and we have those on the gas struts so that it's not annoying when you open them when we first moved into our build we didn't have the gas struts and i was constantly holding it up with my head so that was a nice little addition it's those little things you realize after you've been living in a small space across from our kitchen we have our wood burning stove this is probably my favorite feature in the bus i'll notice that when i'm watching tv at night my eyes will divert over to the stove just because it's so beautiful to look at this is our main source of heat we also have a propane burning stove over here as well but that thing is ventless so it does create a lot of condensation and we prefer this for the dry heat so we don't get that condensation build up one of the first things that we put into our bus was this tile for the wood burning stove it was a really big pain to install it was very hard to match up that pattern but overall we're really satisfied with how that turned out we have a fireball right here and this is just for added protection if our fire ever got out of hand this would combust and instantly put out the fire or you can even throw it in this gives us peace of mind if we're not in the bus [Music] after you step through our kitchen we you'll come to our living room so the first thing you'll see when you come into this room is nick's desk he is a huge gamer so he wanted to have a really unique setup he has a black walnut live edge desk it's about three feet of space across from nick's desk is my desk so this is a ikea table that we found on facebook marketplace for a really good deal it has two folding leaves on the side so we can pull that out and have our meals here we can host game night we can actually move it and put it right here three people can sit on this side and then three people can sit on the couch and we can host game night or dinners whatever it might be across from the table we have our couch this is another one of my favorite features in our bus it was important for us to have a couch that felt very comfortable so we have two layers inside this couch that i made myself it's a high density foam and then on top of that is a down cushion so i took a drop cloth and sewed those both together sandwiched them together so it's a very comfortable couch under our couch we have a custom panel that we had created in thailand we love the aesthetic of that all right so underneath our couch is our water tank we have 55 gallons under here and then we can easily change the water filter out here right behind this panel is where the pump is and where the where the water accumulator is where the water filter is or excuse me where all the other systems are going into the tank so this has been an easy way to kind of tuck it out of the way it's actually been really nice for us because all our plumbing's inside the bus and we want to make sure it was inside because the freezing temperatures we can keep the fire going and just keep that tank at room temperature and run a little bit of water through the pipes and it we haven't had an issue yet another feature that we have in our bus is the samsung frame frame tv and we love this tv because we can display our own artwork on it since this is a tiny house we didn't typically have a lot of space a lot of wall space for artwork so this tv allows you to change out the artwork on a regular basis which is pretty cool so you'll notice we kept the majority of our windows in our bus i think we kept a little over half it was very important for us to have natural light and have the nature outside speak for itself so we want it to feel like an actual house so nick trimmed out the windows and then i went back sanded them and painted them we love how they turned out [Music] we decided we wanted to buy a school bus after looking a bunch of tiny homes and we just considered a bunch of different options and then we we watched the video and kind of inspired us to go the school bus route and haven't looked back since so yeah bought a bus but 2018 in november off ebay for five thousand dollars and we flew to indiana from denver to go and pick it up so we bought it sight unseen but lucky for us we we did buy from an honest buyer we bought a really good bus that was ended up having good components after the fact we had no clue and we ended up having you know getting a good bus um and so that's been nice we should have done some more research but we were a little spontaneous on what we we bought and we just kind of went for it and then we drove it back to denver no problems got home it barely fit in our driveway it was exactly 40 feet long so that also worked out we've been very lucky with the whole process i've got to say yeah i know and we converted it in our be in our driveway behind our house for two and a half years so it took us about two years and four months just on weekends and when we could and working full time and then when we stepped away from our jobs in june it took us two more months a full-time building to complete it and i think overall it's about 45 000 invested just in materials and the things we utilized in the bus itself um we've added some things since you know like a wee boost tower and a couple you know the wine elements the wine rack so but we want to do a deck on the back eventually to just have something to step out on from the bedroom and have coffee on um a couple upgrades over time but it's never finished yeah everybody says that and it's true you're never finished with your build things constantly break and you adjust and yeah you've got to be a very innovative person i think to live this lifestyle yeah [Music] once you come through our hallway the first thing that you'll notice is our bathroom so we created this uh bathroom door we found the old door at a local antique shop and then we also found the saints the stained glass separate we cut out a hole and then inserted the glass and absolutely love how this turned out it's probably another one of our favorite features in the bus behind the store is our bathroom so it was important for us to have a very large bathroom really wanted it to feel as much like a home as we possibly could so we have a sink and vanity we have our nature's head composting toilet and my favorite part which nick would disagree with is the bathtub this is a 100 gallon stock tank that we got from a farm store and i painted that and then coated the inside with flex seal to insulate it a little bit better but when i fill up that tub it takes about 20 to 30 gallons so baths aren't typically the most ideal thing in the bus but they are a special treat when i can take a bath so besides our bathtub we also have the nebia 2.0 shower head so this is great for life on the road since we don't have a ton of fresh water this actually miss out on you and it feels very much like a spa and i believe it only takes 0.7 gallons of water a minute so it's very efficient we like that a lot so you'll notice that we have our sink and vanity right here we decided to go with the bowl shape sink to save on countertop space we don't have a ton of countertop space in the bathroom but it's more than enough for us we put a quartz countertop on top of this vanity and this was actually a in table that we customized and then turned into the bathroom vanity [Music] so at the back of our bust the first thing you'll notice is our skylight up above we love that this allows a lot of natural light to come in but it does have a leak seems like everyone that does have a skylight seems to have a leak and we cannot find that leak so we might replace that at some point it is a little warm back here sometimes we may actually replace that with a max air fan you'll also notice all of our closet space so this is nick's closet on this side and then i have the much larger closet over here which is great it hosts all of my clothes haven't had a problem downsizing we got these from ikea and then all we had to do after we put them together was just trim out the top of them so that they would fit the curvature of our ceiling at the very back of the bus is our bedroom we have a queen size bed it was very important to keep all of the windows back here we have a 360 view which is awesome we're able to look out at all of the beautiful views under our bed we have more storage we have baskets down below and then we have a wall about right down the middle of the bed underneath and so this back area which we'll show you outside is our garage area so that hosts all of our weights and things of that nature so we don't have a ton of storage in the back bedroom we didn't want to enclose it entirely we want to be able to sit up in bed when we want to but we do have two cabinets up above so we have all of our books extra games things of that nature so we have curtains we have the same curtains throughout the entire bus these are blackout curtains that i believe i found at walmart for less than two dollars per curtain so it was a very easy way i didn't have to customize them or do any sewing of that nature [Music] our motto is the plan is not to have a plan yeah um so we didn't even have a plan to come here until like five days before the event right people would ask us on social media are you going to the schoolies forum we're like maybe we'll see where we are yeah we didn't know where we were we live by that on a daily basis yeah we're planning to like a couple days out maybe yep um you know sometimes it works most of the time it's worked but sometimes you'll meet someone in a home depot parking lot and they're super cool and you hit it off and you go into their bus and that happened one time and it completely diverted that day's plan and yeah he went somewhere else yeah he went somewhere else that you know you got recommended and yeah um you're not committed to anything so you're like you know that's been the best experience i didn't want to plan just because that's what you live by when the corporate world is a grind in a deadlines and milestones and you know doing that just grinding all the time and always having to hit them bringing its own level anxiety and you know yet to some extent having that responsibility is you know good but just it wears down on you a lot you know and so now it's like you want to be responsible for kind of things you choose responsible for right uh and time you want to make for other things you do yeah pretty cool you know so if you find something to do while on the road just divert into two or three days somewhere you never thought you would you never really promised anybody a day that you're gonna be there you're like ah april and so you just kind of say general month like maybe give or take a week or two or you know or might be on the other side of the country by then be like uh sorry can you meet us here uh that's kind of a been a cool way to live for a while i love it um uh it's new still new for sure but a long hopefully a long road ahead of us [Music] so let me show you the electrical cabinet um we have any normal house panel just like you know any other house would we have six ac circuits and a dc side as well we use a 3000 watt inverter converter to convert our powered ac as we need it from six battleborn batteries we have 600 amp hours of battleborn batteries and this is a 12 volt system we have a dc to dc charger which allows us to charge our solar batteries from our bus engine being on and then we have our obviously our smart solar so it just controls our solar intake on the top of the bus we have 1200 watts of solar and then for the 600 amp hours of battery that we have this serves us pretty well for everything we need i would like to have more batteries i think it comes down to budget at that point i'd like to do a 50 amp system but we're not going to be plugged in that much so it doesn't really matter on that a couple things i would upgrade but i really we got what we needed it lasts us for as long as we need it for and we haven't really ever run out of power as long as we have a little bit of sunlight and again if we don't we can always run the bus and we'll be able to charge up that way so we'll just head to another new destination [Music] so let me show you the garage area behind the bus underneath the back side of the bed so a little disorganized but you know it's a catch-all garage so we have our weight system in here uh we have some dung bells that we caught on the road we even have our all of our backpacking gear our camping gear if we want to take you know a back road or back camp and hike in and take a you know a couple days out of the bus we can carry our washer and dryer little barrel in here we actually have been using it a couple times now we have a washer barrel and it just allows us to clean clothes when we're out and don't want to go in a laundromat and as long as it's a nice day we just dry them out on the bus and so that stays and lives here there's a big old cavity underneath the bus that we were able to cut out and we had one of our friends that was a welder make us a big steel case at 11 foot by 2 foot deep now this is what i was talking originally about having for the batteries and was going to put the batteries out here and then use the other side for storage but we decided to move those up front and then we added obviously gave us more storage to put tools so i can carry all my tools in the toolbox we call it down here i have a power outlet too just to run any of my power tools pretty well and you can see it's got a lot of storage for the whole space so 11 foot long so we actually got a massive flame king under here it's it's a 100 pound propane tank it carries about 23 gallons of propane it's the larger one because the two smaller ones we wanted weren't available and so we just got what we could get our hands on we can probably last without filling up our propane six months we have a spigot out here just fresh water drain the tank it's one way to drain the tank but it's also one way we just wash your hands have some water running outside to wash down anything your feet off the beach wash down the dogs just have an outside source of water fill a bucket up it's actually been really convenient doesn't have any pressure it's just gravity fed but enough water comes out of here to do what you need to and then underneath we have 55 gallons of gray water and that's you know the only size we could fit under the bus if we could have done bigger we would have but we only have 55 gallons fresh so 55 gallon gray uh works out well for us so a lot of people ask what we do for internet and how we get internet reliably on the road well it's it's always a slight struggle but in order to help us we got a we boost destination uh it's this big 25 foot tower it's directional so we can point it at a tower you know it's not really much of a science behind it i kind of just guess where the tower might be and it actually has worked out really well for us we are able to get signal anywhere we are so far been able to find it and least boost it to have a usable signal on the bus that allows us really to work when we want to go back to work and have a reliable signal just kind of be working every day it allows us to be active on social media and just stay current so this was a great investment for us we've had it for about two months now in every location we've been since we've had no issues with internet [Music] some one of the things i found out be really cool about this lifestyle is the people that do it are all very like-minded um you're very you're you know become very close friends with a lot of people year-round and uh you know being able to have those relationships form is probably one of the most rewarding things about the life you have time for people you have time for yourself um you can uh you don't have that grind every day all day and exhaustion when you get home doing work the work grind um you know so there's a lot more free spirited you know and a lot more mindfulness of what's around you a lot of people that come here even these events don't even have bus yet or they haven't ever had one they are really inspired when they talk to people and see it done and it's cool to see people light up when they see what can be done with the bus and what you know what the experiences are with this lifestyle yeah um you know it's it's it's growing every day and it's pretty cool to see it grow just from when we bought our bus right um social media has been huge for us too a lot of people talk bad about social media such as it's such a bad thing but really it's opened up so many doors for us so many opportunities we've met some of the coolest people and we wouldn't have been able to do that if it wasn't for our social media platform our social media handle is rolling with ophelia it's not rolling up and it's for all three platforms that we use instagram and youtube yeah but building that up maybe that might lead to something one day we appreciate you guys taking a look at our bus you know i hope this inspires more people to uh see what's possible and what you can achieve even by doing it yourself uh i've never lifted a hammer before this in a little bit of creativity and hard work and commitment allowed us to have this that we're now living in and the dream has become real so i hope that other people can uh inspire to do this just you know and we inspire people to do that every day [Music] you

Channel: Tiny Home Tours

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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, van life, tiny house tour, remote work, bus life family, bus life story, off grid living, tiny house tour 2022, tiny house build, remote work setup, tiny house design, van tour van life, camper van camping

Id: VT2iKc4djvA

Length: 20min 24sec (1224 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 28 2022