Tour of Couple Living in a Shuttle Bus

video today we're meeting eric and robin hi bob hey bob and they are in this really nice shuttle bus uh so my kind of my standard question to ask uh in uh at all window videos is how'd you end up in the desert in the middle of nowhere in the shuttle bus i mean that a little odd yeah yeah most definitely um especially coming from wisconsin yeah yeah well we uh we well we traveled a couple years ago we took a nice trip to france and uh discovered that uh working 40 hours a week and grinding it out day after day and with the same old same old just wasn't working and uh so we were trying to think of a different way to go and we were thinking about tiny houses and things like that and we thought well why not have a tiny house that we can take with us and travel around the country and so um when we watch some bob ball's videos it happens and find out quite a few as a matter of fact a lot about a lot of information on how to do it and i mean really honestly yeah you learned a lot about you know how he can do this and how it's possible and um yeah and we started looking uh super crazy and yeah looking online for different things and spotted this on craigslist got a really good deal on it and uh last winter and worked this last spring and summer to get it uh remodeled and set up and on on the road as of labor day uh 2018. yep so newbies that's real newbies a lot of newbies out here now and you're young uh you're not uh on pensions no no no not yet and how are you supporting yourself uh well doing work on the side uh remodeling vans as a matter of fact as we talked about and uh um also using a little bit of ira money that we're having to dig into a little bit but uh yeah but uh you know until we get all situated and get proven and kind of get our budget worked out for typical months we'll uh we're you know going pretty good and we're hoping to you know i'm hoping to find it my job doesn't really didn't really translate to the road very well or digital but i'm i'm hoping that i will uh um get some new skills going and you know be doing some other stuff and be able to make some money also on the road maybe in a creative way as well yeah yeah she does floral design and graphic design and all kinds of great designs so uh yeah it's gonna see if you can use some of those a long time ago but maybe it'll maybe it'll come back so you're supporting yourself on the road and what was your job uh before well i was yeah i was a remodeling carpenter for uh almost 30 years uh doing uh residential remodels and uh uh got a chance to uh learn a lot of good skills that translate nicely into doing work in vans and buses and cars and things so uh seeing if we can translate all that into uh you know helping people create nice comfortable little uh vans and uh buses to live in and of course it's you've got supporting yourself on here on the road just like we all are and so you're charging yeah uh can you give us an idea of what it would cost roughly i mean i know it's impossible to answer right right well we do i do a time and material and just 50 an hour typically is uh the general rate for folks uh at a little you know sliding scale occasionally if people are in a little bit tougher you know situation i'm not you know totally set on that that number but uh uh that's kind of the typical number that we've decided that works out for covering all of our expenses and everything we need to do so um and again we don't usually charge for a markup on material or anything like that so it's just just the labor and uh you know hopefully you get again some nice designs for people and help people uh you know get a nice comfortable space to live in and how can they contact you uh the easiest way is email is mubridnav gmail.com uh you know yeah that's a weird one m-o-o-b-r-e-d-n-a-v gmail.com it's vanderboom backwards that's right my name is vanderbilt this is his name of the tree vanderboom so yep we just easy one go backward with it very easy yes and then our youtube is wanderboom which is just vanderboom and with a w instead of a b so that's right yeah wonderboom okay very good well uh so you uh do van builds and you're a lifetime uh finished carpenter i bet you look your van looks pretty nice i think so i i like it uh we you know we really wanted to make something that was comfortable all the time you know you see a lot of people that um you know they real cramped tight spaces and we wanted it so that we could if you know if we have three four days of rain or you know whatever we can actually hang out in there and be comfortable and and then i had materials uh some cedar and some walnut that i had from years and years ago from an auction that i had been dragging around with us forever and uh finally had an opportunity to to put it to some good views so uh right i think we did well why don't we go inside and take a look all right sounds good okay okay so tell us a little bit about your van okay uh it is a 2005 ford e350 super duty um it's a six liter diesel engine um we got a really good deal on it was only three thousand dollars and it was only 118 000 miles on on that diesel so i know some people have issues with the six liter but uh i know as long as you keep it clear keep the coolant good everything should be fine and we're gonna keep uh keep a close eye on it it's been great so far yeah we've had a powerful engine minor issues but uh but more tires and a couple other things that we've missed yeah on our short journey so far but not too bad yeah it's been really nice all been solvable and a good size you know the from the driver's seat to the back inside is about 13 feet and it's almost seven feet across on the inside as well so it gives us a uh the ability to put our bed um perpendicular across the back so we got plenty of room and i'm six foot two and robin's almost six feet tall so um we wanted to be able to to have our bed going the across the back rather than taking up so much space coming forward into the into the van it's also so high that there's no space issue with eric's being too tall or we feel like you know there's a lot of head space in there yeah and the way that eric designed it and we the the material that we used i think made the ceiling seem even lighter than um than it could have been so yeah okay let's go on inside all right well the first thing you think is how wonderful the uh the wood is really wonderful wood man this is just some really fine fine carpentry here so go ahead and give us the nickel tour okay well um again uh two counters countertops um this is uh some of the walnut i was talking about i had these great big walnut slabs that we had dragged around for over 25 years from an auction and i kept asking why are we dragging those around for 25 years and we put the the two-part epoxy resin on there that gives it that really beautiful depth and the globe to it it is stunning yeah it's not amazing and then eric also made this table too which is the same thing and then this is some reclaimed uh redwood that we had that's really stunning as well yeah and so just really nice on the edges there and then this this is all of the cedar and it's it's actually a clear select cedar and it's what they call five quarter so it's over an inch thick and uh i got all of these all of the cedar for all of this at an auction years ago so this is actually one board running across here so the grain continues across and same with these three here um and then all the drawer fronts as well are one board each one has a continuous board running across each one so and you have more of the stunning uh counter top here yeah i love that corner over there with the uh [Music] and more of the cedar running one direction on the counter yeah yep drawers yep just gorgeous and there's here's our hidden fridge oh look at that yeah yeah the winter 65 court fridge freezer oh yeah so we have two compartments yeah once you can you pop those open people can see what uh it's actually a fridge and a freezer yep it's got the deeper side we're using it as two of two fridges right now because that's how we need it you know so you can change you can have the bigger one as the freezer if you want you can do whatever you want so uh separate thermostats yep separate compressors so we can you can make ice in these we've done it it's um it's great it works wonderful we love it it's been great yeah and then plenty of plenty of room too yeah plenty of space i was surprised we were a little worried but it's been fantastic for we just have locks that we put on so when we travel and then we can go and it goes away nice and you know a lot of people have issues about keeping drawers closed you know and and i we're there's all the different mechanisms and and the different devices people can come up with and i i just wanted something a little more simple and so i had this paracord that i bought and i made these poles from the same walnut that i had from here and i just designed them so that there's a space there and then i just use small pieces of paracord and that basically just snaps right in place there and just keeps them from flying open when we're driving around i think it has kind of a nice elegant little look to it i agree completely looks really nice nice so your bed is you said it's crossed so it must be back here yeah yep this is the lounge area right now as we keep it uh when we have the table all up and everything and uh a lot of people do a higher bed and because they want more garage space um but i just i just did not want a high bed because i don't like the feeling of having your feeling like your way like your head like right by the ceiling when you're sleeping so as well as the fact that with again with this shuttle bus having all these windows we really wanted to have the ability to be able to sit and look out and you know be able to go to gorgeous national parks and all the beautiful places in this country and be able to see what we're where we are you know and really get a good look at what's going on out there but um we have this great lagoon table leg that um a lot of people have let me get back there so that just swings completely in and out of your way yeah maneuvers really nice really nicely so it's great for a space like this it comes off super easy so all we do is take it off it comes so it has this that and then it has the thing that it comes on and so when we come to go to bed we have a whole thing we just put it in the front seat of the van and an interesting little detail on that too if you notice the plate on it is actually not centered uh on the middle of it you know you naturally assumed you'd want to put it right in the middle right but offsetting it makes it so that when we spin it around there's times when it'll be closer one way or another and it gives us actually more flexibility when we spin it to make it work in different ways for us cool so a nice little uh detail and that thing just pops right off and goes away yeah it has a nice little plate a little just a loosening lock mechanism kind of and it you buy the arm just exactly like that yeah you buy the arm it comes with this plate you can get a second plate if you want to be able to mount it into it into another circle yeah nice but these are great but they're just really nice tables yeah i think we got this on ebay for like 189 so which was a good deal about 180 yeah okay so you have uh uh your bed must come down and and become uh your couch must pull down and become the best yeah so it's really easy actually just come across like this so it's kind of a standard tongue and i don't know how to describe it but finger yep finger slap so just alternating slats that slide in and out let me show you it's very simple yeah and we can open it up you know a lot of these are very fixed but then you can't you know it's hard to access underneath so what i did was um yeah this guy around that one over there the big one comes all the way off as well but i put a piano hinge at the back of it when it's all the way closed like this there's a little wooden slat on the bottom down here and then there's a piano hinge here at the back so the entire thing called mine that way oh that is very sharp and that's where we keep working and that's our blanket our sheets and our backup clothes and all kinds of other our main stuff that we uh the stuff we aren't typically wearing or needing easy access to but even though it's super easy so we're getting it yeah okay but that's a just a handy way but then since it drops down but then the whole thing can still slide out so let me swing over this way here that sets right on that nice little ledge there and then we've got two of the cushions one goes like that see is this the longer one on there no the other one this one some reason the whole thing is better but they fit very snugly and did you make the cushions we did yeah yeah we bought a king size memory foam mattress and it's good they're super tight because i don't feel the creases at all when i'm sleeping on it and then it gives us basically we we cut the king size 16 inches off of it to give us the size of a queen size and and then that gave us two of the cushions for the back and then we cut the other pieces in the same size so that they fit as the back rests but then also drop right in like this and then you can kind of see too we keep our our sheet typically right on the back of the bed we just kind of pull it off here and just stick it and just sort of push it back and that way rather than trying to re get those corners in every single night we just kind of pull it right out from the back and also with the the old the handicapped doors that are here it gives us a real nice spot for when it's in both table mode or even in the bed mode sometimes we can it's warm enough we can open those doors right up and have a beautiful uh sunrise or sunset views whichever way we face it beautiful yeah huge amount of uh storage underneath the huge bed nice lounging area you can uh you can bring in a lot of guests yeah yeah exactly that's kind of what we're we're thinking and then the other little i just i also made it so that this side can adjust this cushion can be removed and this guy here actually can slide over as well so we can go right on out the door if we want to yeah so it's an exit yeah entrance exit open the door there's another storage space underneath for robin's uh a bunch of our kitchen utensils and heavy machinery there that we use the kitchenaid and a bunch of other good stuff and then we also have this nice little cutting board on the end as well so we can take care of the countertops that is our lithium iron phosphate battery that we're uh yeah we're working on trying to build we have to finish the uh getting hooking up the all of the battery management system things all just need to need to be soldered together still but uh once that's done that'll be almost 400 amp hours of power but yeah so this can open up real nice and i think cody our beautiful views so this is uh this is just beautiful carpentry i mean it's just stunning and yeah and so you have an awful lot of nice artwork also yeah we made room for our art so we had this large painting that was painted by a friend of ours mitchell johnson who it was a wedding present for us in 1992 and we didn't want to part with it even though we wanted to have our van life and so we designed around it so that's why this counter is significant lower than this counter which works fine for us because we're tall and this is where we cook so we have a we use a camp stove so when we take that off and put it on the counter it's about the right size anyway so it actually worked out really well but so we have this big painting we have some vases and stuff that are meaningful or that we um have been passed down for generations um another painting over here of mitchells that we um that we kept rather than doing a lot of you know hardwired lighting we did we decided to use quite a bit of uh battery rechargeable battery uh stuff so we got a lot of the little aaa rechargeable batteries and we just use those in a lot of these little fixtures that uh are easy to oh you know pop new ones i mean these were the original lights from the bus but then just put some led bulbs in and these are run off the solar those two are run off the solar so do you have a plumbing system we have yes we have a gray tank system um so this is our sink we cut the i cut that out of the countertop and i just couldn't part with that beautiful pieces but it works good because we can store stuff in here when we travel yeah when we're driving traveling we can put some things in there and cover it up and have this to take with us we decided on a nice big sink after i was had to be talked into having a sink at all which i'm really glad that i was talked into that we've got the yeah battery power there and oh you're just using your standard uh yeah just underneath that about about here going under into that counter or into the closet there's a 15 gallon uh water tank that we fresh water tank yeah our fresh water tank there that that's all hooked up to then we have our trusty berkey here that we put all of our water through to drink at some point we don't have a hot water tank now but we were thinking we may do the small you know hot water heater and so if we do that this spins around and we could always open that window up and pop it right out the window and have our handy shower right there and uh right right out of the front out of the faucet here and so what everyone wants always wants to know is uh how do you go to the bathroom oh god our favorite topic yeah yeah much talked about we have a little dry bathroom oh so you actually have uh is this a regular toilet it's actually a composting toilet composting that i made myself based on the sea head designer style um and uh yeah it works out really well you know it's got the the separator uh right that's the that's the main function yeah it separates there's basically a five gallon bucket and a one gallon milk jug or water jug and uh separates those things out and then there's a shaft running down the middle of the five gallon bucket with a wand down there so after you do what you do you crank it around 15 or 20 times in the coconut coil that we have or coconut core we put a little bit in there each time yeah okay the next question everyone has to know the burning question of the hour how do you take showers uh that we're uh planet fitness members and there's always you know again the parks state parks county parks and lots of places to take showers i'm sure i know you've done a number of videos oh yeah great locations that uh truck stops and all the other good stuff 200 years ago the idea of having a shower every day was ridiculous right right honestly it's good for you for your body for your skin and for your oils yeah i agree 100 yeah so the only other thing that we didn't is our crowded closet so there's any other one we'll have that has a positive one a test hard to see but lots of hooks the solar our solar hookup is back there all the different wiring and stuff again we've got we have two 200 or two 100 watt flexible panels on the roof that are permanently attached up on the roof and um again right now we just are using one 100 amp hour agm battery but we're just limping along just barely enough and so again we're hoping to get that lithium iron phosphate one all worked out and then we're going to have plenty of plenty of power once we get that done well eric and robin thank you so much for sharing your home with us it's gorgeous wow that must be wonderful to uh just you know have have this much amazing handy work around you while you live and all you out there i hope you got something out of this some wonderful ideas of how beautiful your home can be some patterns to follow after if you did like us on youtube subscribe to the channel and we'll talk to you later hi thanks everybody [Music] you

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 166,755

Keywords: live, living, car, van, RV, Full-time, nomad, gypsy, camper, camp, boondock, travel, snowbird, caravan, tiny, house, tribe, RTR, adventure

Id: SvYO8x541j8

Length: 20min 46sec (1246 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 25 2019