Veteran Family of 4 Convert a School Bus to Find Where They Belong

hi I'm Ryan I'm Morgan hi my name's Ryan I'm Layla and we're the Crabtree's and this is our Bus, Chittybang Skoolie the United States Army I was an infantryman then I went to work offshore and I became an offshore cementer in ultra-deepwater in the Gulf of Mexico whenever I went to work he he stepped in and became his stay-at-home dad we're too few odd jobs traveling with them being in the military just office management stuff I was also a wife of a veteran - been married almost about 14 years actually anniversary yesterday just had our anniversary we've been through a lot in our life like most people everybody has their challenges you can walk away from them and take that experience and turn it into something or not and we've always been people who can face I think any challenge we thought we found the home of our dreams and a couple of days after Thanksgiving in a fireplace malfunctioned it was about six months old at the time caused a whole 100% loss stuff that kind of started a journey of having to rebuild things we were just dealing with a lot of bullshit it was dealing with banks and insurance contractors contractors and trying to get the house built back the way it needed to get built and a lot of things went wrong so it was a bittersweet but we moved in and we filled it with more stuff even better than before you know we thought we were filling this void it seemed like in our life one night I had lost my job we're trying to figure out what could we do differently that didn't involve both of us having to go work a corporate life and he was retired at the time we knew that we enjoyed being together we enjoyed we're being with our kids and we still had started homeschooling and we just didn't want to be a part and we didn't want our kids to grow up with both their parents go on working we have all these great things no time you know they're gonna get old and you know then we're gonna have nothing but time and no kids so they're gonna be having their own families so we really just did it to get closer to them I guess find where we belong build our future instead of consuming our future and not relying on other people to do it that's one night we started looking into the tiny houses and the bus just seemed to fit everything that we wanted and a lot of people quit and a lot of it's really hard because it's a lot to take on it took us about a year to sell our house we had got the bus a few months after we put it up for sale and then we just started selling all of our big furniture things that we didn't really need she took about a year and a half to build and she's a 99 front nose international Genesis and she's 40 feet long we flat noses we added three feet to the rear to extend the frame we have no prior real building experience at all we pretty much did YouTube University to figure it out so far we've been in it for almost a year and we've been able to pull up anywhere and as long as we have water we can power the electricity the TV fans the only thing we can't do is run the air conditioner that we just installed and the bus was kind of the main thing that you know gave us the confidence to really realize that we can be you can dream it you can build it this had it like obviously any bus it had a bus door on there hold I'm gonna get a beer man all right so the front door we did have a bus store we went we went to ebay and we found the cheapest door you could find online I think it cost about $250 already do it again I would've got the cheapest door I would have got something a little nicer but also make sure you level your door how didn't do that we we really didn't do much on the paint job we didn't sand everything down I'm not a body guy don't really care about doing paint jobs so we just did it was a two hundred dollar rust-oleum paint job is what it you know ended up costing us we found these little latches on ebay for about eight bucks we use a piano hinge welded it to steel found these boxes on Amazon or Ebay they're about a hundred dollars and then we welded the frames on to the actual frame of the bus there's two here there's two over here on this side then there's two more on the other side so a total of six and then we ended up building out our own battery box so we made that out of steel we got all new tires we actually put the tires on ourself and man that's a pain I'll let somebody do that next time that's a that's a full-time job here's a vent for the refrigerator and then we got another vent on top I want to give them some really good love on this they've been awesome Precision Temp RV 550 I think is what it is we've had maybe two issues with this called the company up and they literally sent me on a new one no questions asked it was so easy precision temp I recommend they're good we used steel I think it's 16 gauge steel to cover all the windows and I probably want to use the 16 gauge steel I'll probably go to some more thinner sheet metal it's just easier to work with and I we have anywhere between 300 400 to 500 pounds extra just using that heavier gauge still added a city water line and so on the inside I actually just have two ball valves and that way I can run city water straight or I can turn the ball valves again to where now I'm just using my RV pump so that helps out a lot so over here on the left side that's the custom toolbox that we built and we have a lot of tools in the back of that and over here it's a little custom gym locker what do we call it and we have our propane we have for just normal barbecue propane bottles and at the bottom this generator fits down there up here and we have a winch that attached this to this ramp and then that'll close everything up in the back we have an LED light bar on the back LED light bar on the front if people are telling you don't buy a cheaper LED light bar they don't know what they're talking about buy the cheaper stuff it just takes some caulk and get around all the seams and you'll be fine over here we have filters I only needed two of these and I ended up getting three just to make sure but two is honestly all I really needed these are to just I guess pleated filters they look like a roll of toilet paper and then this one's a carbon filter for taste and smell this is a it's called on-the-go portable water softener this works actually really well I'm pretty happy with that you see more steel window covering this is a 50-amp service line and then right here is the exhaust for we have a 40-foot boat heater that we put in here that works really well in the wintertime here are the two other bays right here that I was telling you about we call them our basements and then this comes lockdown right now but that's where the four batteries go the CR 260 I do recommend if you're going to do a school bus conversion rip and gut everything out on the inside and we probably had about 40 pounds of wire that we actually ripped out at the inside of the school bus this is Morgan's garden she likes keeping this thing she's had him for the last year it's made in the Pacific Northwest and now we're in Arizona and it's still working for us no she's proud of we custom-built everything that you see the couches this one is adjustable it pulls out into a bed it's actually pulled out a little bit right now because it's just more comfortable we also have storage underneath I have a bunch of books underneath this one has our table underneath it which we don't use so it probably wouldn't do that again but we do have storage underneath these do not pull out I think we might change that in the future all my curtains have reflectix inside you can hear it it keeps these best windows a little better insulated because they're not RV windows but I think they work really really well I'm keeping cold out and heat out depending on the season whatever you want to accomplish we decided to go with the corrugated metal ceilings it fit the roof a lot better the curve it was a lot easier to work with that's one of the struggles in school a building is that nothing's square everything is off a little bit so if you notice like how we even trace we profile scribed all the walls to kind of fit the corrugated pattern so that did take some time we used a tool called the perfect butt for that and works really really great we also decided to go with LED light strips because we weren't really sure what we were doing when we were doing electrical electrical wasn't after thought we knew it was an afterthought which is why all the outlets are sticking outside instead of flush we did also decide to go with these really great ports because everybody has electronic devices so we put him in the most usable spaces also the cabinets are all custom built Ryan did all these himself the countertops are granite and after a year they haven't cracked or anything the only thing I'll have to do is probably just recaulk the seams but with all the twisting and turning and traveling it's actually done really really well this door is new a trash can pop out and we had put a fancy design on all the cabinet doors which the hinges wouldn't hold very well so my door kind of fell apart so we ended up having to to redo this but I do like this door a lot better so I think we're actually gonna redo all the cabinets with this and we also want to add some shelves across the top as well just to kind of give us some more storage space and then we used IKEA for organizing tiny spaces they have really awesome awesome options as far as that goes we also have a ro system this is a reverse osmosis faucet where we are drinking water from there's actually three filters on here on the bottom and then two extra filters up top and there's also a five gallon pressurized tank and this all came from Amazon and then we also afterwards added this UV light so as soon as the RO water comes on this light shoots on and it kills any last minute germs that might be in the system on on contact there's also parts per million meter so it tells us how many parts per million that's coming in I think it's about 530 right now and then after all the filters it gets it down to 45 there is a lot of waste water that comes from the RO system it's always purging but I'm okay with that because I know that the water that we're drinking is really clean and the other addition that we have is also this new air conditioner we still have to add the ceiling panel for it I think we're gonna go with a copper piece from Home Depot it's an Atwood 150 26 model and it was really easy to install it's works really really great in this space we also went with mostly RV appliances this is an RV it's a norcold it runs on propane or electric we also went with the Atwood like wood vision through burner stove we keep all of our breads our coffee mugs kind of some random drying paintbrushes it sits up here this is actually a Dickinson propane furnace it's actually made for boats and it works really well I don't mind it it does we still do have some cold spots kind of throughout the house and it's just like a long hallway but typically we'll have floor heaters going and we're plugged in to kind of help move that hot air around too and this is actually our old roommates pergo flooring that we reused and so far the only thing that has fallen and travel right here is the smear that I have sitting there after a year that's not too bad so we'll just glue that one back up and then we decided to go with this stone to kind of help capture some of that heat and it will radiate whenever it's off so there's a little bit of method to the madness with everything that we've planned and coming on back here this is the bathroom area and the bunk room we have a curtain that kind of sections this off so when you're using the bathroom we're taking a shower you can kind of have this whole place back here step out into the hallway and dry off we went with the nature's head composting toilet which has worked really well and this is my utility closet also doubles as a Halloween costume holding area and eclectic mix of music instruments and art stuff but the main operation of this is my my solar power and right now my batteries are charging they're up to 93 percent it's not even noon yet and you can you know check out my page to see how I wired it and everything and we keep this cover - just in case of moisture and condensation from the bathroom it kind of protects the electronics equipment here ok so this is the bunk room we have all the kids stuff and toiletries and such behind this curtain which curtains are great to hide things this is their bunk area um my oldest she has the top bunk my youngest is down here she has an animal net kind of keeps all of her toys together you can tell our dogs she likes to sleep up here to you which is why it's kind of all torn up down here but it's important they have their own space they have their own areas they can get away from everybody in that I think is so important in a tiny space is sectioning off everybody having their there their room because you're kind of always around each other which is great but you know everybody needs their personal time every now and we also went with Rock Climbing Walls instead of a typical ladder because these are just more fun and then this is the master bedroom and this is where all the magic happens in the bus and it also houses our storage tanks me love the mastiff her beds down here as well we do house to one hundred gallon tanks under here this is my closet of all my stuff and my sewing I have everything fit back here for girls and such and then Ryan's is over here on this side we have a TV we have a WD player with a bunch of movies Xbox so the kids can come back here and play we could be in the front watching movies you know so if it is a rainy day or if it's just you know too cold to go outside we do have the comforts of any normal house and then also mirrors I feel I feel like that opens up the space as well so it's like a little nest back here but once as soon as everything is opened up and just really I think it feels like really homey and welcoming I feel like when you DIY something you're just never done so we'll continue to keep building Chitty Bang and she'll continue to keep taking us places I guess as long as we want to do this lifestyle things I would do differently is I would definitely decrease the weight I would raise the roof on the bus definitely we have to 100 gallon water tanks to be honest we only need 150 gallon water tank I guess some advice that I would give to windy school a tiny house builders if you're married you're gonna fight probably every day if you call that hammer that thing or that screw that twisty guy we always prided ourselves on our communication but this was a whole nother challenge take your time don't get in a rush do tons of research plan plan and then plan again and plant some more it's kind of like you know measure twice cut once that's what she says all right guys I hope you enjoyed the video today if you want to follow Morgan and Ryan Crabtree they have instagram facebook youtube everything and what's up names we have instagram is at thecrabshomestead we have facebook that's @ChittyBangSkoolie the website is www.thecrabshomestead.com and I'll throw links to all that in the description below so you can go ahead and follow them On all their social media. If you enjoyed the video guys give it a thumbs up subscribe to the channel if you haven't already, and until next time guys, i'll see you later.

Channel: Sam Kresslein

Views: 211,774

Rating: 4.8634186 out of 5

Keywords: veterans day 2017, veterans day, fifthwheelfeel, alternative living, bus life, skoolie tour, skoolie conversion, skoolie bus conversion, skoolie bus, skoolie conversion tour, bus living with kids, bus living, skoolie family, full time bus living, living on the road full time, living on the road with kids, skoolie with kids, full time travel with kids, living in a bus, living in a bus with kids, living in a bus conversion, full time skoolie, skoolie, diy skoolie, minimalism, rv

Id: 38-o0CdOkGg

Length: 17min 27sec (1047 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 29 2017