Vintage 1957 Kenworth School Bus Conversion With A Slide Out - Totally Custom DIY Skoolie

[Music] [Music] my name is Josh diamond and this is my wonderful wife Katie diamond hi and this is our bus scarlet the Schooley we're known as the bus Buccaneers so the story started out in our house we were sitting in our hot tub we had a beautiful shop classic cars motorcycles toys and she was sitting in the hot tub and she said do you want to sell the house and move into a yurt and I said absolutely not couldn't do it so she figured out how to get to me and asked me if I wanted to sell the house and move into a classic car or a classic bus and we found this bus in Olympia Washington the conversion was about 80% done when we got it so 87 year old man Clarence he did the conversion back in 91 took him three years did the 18-inch roof raised six inch floor drop and then also has a hydraulic push out in it he did most of it and when we picked it up he had died 20 years ago so it was sitting for 20 years and then we've just pretty much finished great-grandson sold it to us with no instruction manual and we picked it up and tried to keep it alive keep the history behind it keep it vintage looking and then fix everything as we could when we got it not much work no we didn't have water the push out didn't work yet it had cool pink shag carpet that was nice and mildewy we had colonies of mice all under our storage areas those many hours of cleaning and tinkering with everything going through every little spot before you then it's a 1957 Kenworth Pacific and Kenworth buses were originally built in Renton Washington our home base is up in Seattle area so it was real close welcome to our bus this is scarlet the Schooley and we are the bus Buccaneers this is our living room so these two spots are where Josh and I spend majority of our evenings we don't have a couch or anything so normally we'll have an ottoman right here and we kick our feet up and watch TV at night so the Clarence and Thelma were the original couple who built this bus and they were upholstery and furniture makers I believe so they made all of the furniture in here so these chairs were custom and they upholstered them as well as the headliner so we decided to keep those to keep them original we're trying to stick to what they had in here and we've been updating it as we need to and make it more livable for us so this is where we spend a lot of our time this used to be a computer holder there was a massive computer in here this is storage now but this would open up and the computer would slide out and raise up so Clarence could do his work from the road so that's pretty cool now it's just storage for us though so our bus has a slide-out in it which is not typical for most buses this whole section if you can see from the floor is ten feet by two feet and from here to there it's all the way in and so these two chairs come to like right here so it's pretty narrow and then the table comes to about here so we have a little bit of walkway and then we have about probably like 10 inches to get through the back hallway so it's pretty tight when we're not parts and we have this slide out in the floorboards raised up and so we usually stack them and put them by our bed so they're out of the way Clarence built it from scratch it's a hydraulic system and it's built all underneath the bus so this is one of the original slide outs Clarence after creating it he actually sold the plans to our v shops so they could use them which is pretty nice we have one of the original slide outs ferraris so Clarence and thelma's daughter she gave us a converted DVD that used to be a VHS of Clarence and film of building the bus the door used to be up front like a normal school bus and they cut out and had to build the store custom so it could be right here the bus kind of has a curve to it and so one of their big issues was making a door with the curve that matched the bus that would actually function and there's also the steps we have steps that come down like an RV does and I was one of their big struggles too they spent a long time on getting those just right so the stores very special we appreciate it gives us more room up front so it's pretty cool so we have our 130 pound Neapolitan Mastiffs with us her name's Blanche so this is her spot this is her little bed her little area and she'll come lay here in the evenings or if she's in trouble that's her spot we don't kennel her so if we're gone for the day she usually just chill right here this is our table we don't necessarily dinner here every night because we don't really have a seated we mostly use this as storage and a place to work if we need you sometimes we'll eat here and then this table is pretty neat they also custom-built this just like everything else on this bus has a leaf in it so we have the leaf under our bed if we want to extend this from our work space I also let the table up with lights and they put this map in here with places of interest for them which is pretty cool so we kept that just to honor them they really did every little detail in here so this is actually from a vintage bus it's a first aid kit and here we have miscellaneous lighters we keep our gloves for dumping tanks in here our letters for Markie just little things our keys we have to use these keys all around the bus to get into the any storage compartment we have a bunch of those so a bunch of little things that we use a lot stay in there and we wanted to keep with the vintage theme we like vintage and antique so we made this shelf out of an old Pepsi great with keep a lot of our electronics in there and things we use a lot easy access so we decided to keep the dark walls because they were here we wanted to keep it as vintage as possible they're pretty dark but it also hides a lot of dirt and grime it's dirty in here we have a big dog and she's loved her lot so it actually works for us we do we do have a lot of lighting in here when we're plugged in and we also have windows so it does help him brain things up but it is darker than most buses it's been good it's very it feels like a old den Selma and Clarence they did the headliner this is all custom and it helps a lot with sound deadening and it helps with insulation it's been super nice to have it's pretty quiet in here when we're driving and it stays warmer in here and all of these are up lighting so these light up I took a lot of time we also have these lights built in to the ceiling so they really hid lights everywhere right here once we bought the bus for like a month after we had it we kept finding more lights which we'll probably find more you never know so this is our kitchen we really didn't change much the only thing we change I was major was this used to be a convection oven that no longer worked so I ripped that out and then we had a toaster oven here for a minute and realized that wasn't the safest so now it's just storage so I have pots pans cookbooks up here which is a nice extra space the fridge thankfully worked when we got it which is a huge blessing so freezer fridge and then up here's more storage for whatnots so our fridge can either be run off of ac/dc or gas so we're kind of set up for any anything we need to it's a pretty decent size we have plenty of room in here I just strategically shop I'll go shopping like once a week or I'll stop if I need something that's big I'll just make sure to stop at the store that day I leave a decent size freezer too I think the freezer smaller than I like because we live off of chicken breasts from Costco it's been bread so I'm eating chicken breasts and Brad will fill up the freezer but we make it work so in the kitchen here this is all custom built as well we've part of the video that they sent us is them structuring out all the cabinets which is pretty cool this is our stove this is original with what they put in it works pretty well it's just a propane gas top kind of dirty and then we put this down for more workspace usually when I cook I'm making something that's super big or messy or cutting I'll do a lot of my chopping on the table right here and then I'll come over here um and fell in love with insta pot I got this for Christmas and probably won't ever go back things been a lifesaver I can do so much more with that but I've learned to cook a lot on just the stove with the pot in the pan and this is the original sink they had in here we did replace the faucet because it was leaking so we put any went in and this has the hose and has two different options so it's easier to use the other was very short it was hard to clean with all right here where I keep our housekeeping it was a cool slide out so this for like I think film I had like cookbook center we just have our wax paper and here is our cups and bowls we do cheat with paper plates sometimes save on dishes and in here we have spices we love spices as you can tell we have two almost three shelves and spices and whatnots in there it's pretty decent I cut back on a lot of stuff but I don't really need a lot of stuff to cook down here is Blanche's slobber rags she has shelf always some hidden dirty dishes in there and bags cleaning stuff first night going and then right here we have a lazy susan she just opens up this was filled there was old food left in here we got it there's mice crap everywhere so I spent a long time cleaning this and with chemicals and I pay and everything it kills this is all of our dry food so it kind of it gets kind of mess you have to clean it out every once in a while fit everything it's a tiny opening there's a lot of space in there buddy you're gonna like get in there so and then you have these three tours this is my pots and pans which I mostly do all my cooking out of this one this one and this is how I wash dishes as well I'll fill this up with water boil it and then all washing the same so if we're not plugged into a hose we don't have running water at the moment the bus has an old air water system which we have not gone through to figure out how to get water well we're not blending it so that's fun we just do jugs our jugs of water if we're not plugged in this drawer is utensils this drawer is our silverware and towels lighters we've to light the propane stove I turn it on and then coffeemaker of course you keep our adult beverages up here and then this is our little coffee area and this has Thelma and Clarence's initials and it just cool shooted all the etching in the glass so you got coffee up here wine glasses if they also put this custom little piece in there for the wine glasses to fit in so we get two wine glasses without breaking that's cool this is an old fire extinguisher I doubt it works but it's here so we just didn't take it out all right so coming down our hallway we also have these custom frames that are lit up and inside of them they did have family pictures in them that the family took out so we put in a map a vintage map of route 66 or a long time dream goal there's a duo of a whole route 66 and back so this is a cool cool thing to put in here so these are our maps in our hallway and on the other side we have our bathroom we have this pretty sweet door that was custom built so it fit our siding which is pretty neat and then come in here we actually have a pretty decent sized bathroom for a bus we have a full sink we do have a shower but we don't use that first shower we use it as storage we have full cabinets we have we have a lot of room in here for extra stuff and we also have a mirror that has storage inside of it so now our little doodads in there and this seals up pretty easy for moving all of the cupboards have like locks on them and the mirror has magnets on us they stay shut for driving so right now our toilet is just a standard RV toilet it's the one that was in it when we got it we just cleaned it up we were thinking about doing compost toilet but since this worked and we already have to dump our great inks we figured we just keep it so until this gives out we might reconsider doing a compost toilet before an hour keeping them regular normal toilet okay so moving up hallway this section here used to be a washer and dryer which we took out her storage we needed some place for our laundry and our dog food so Blanche's food lives down here in this garbage can and then our laundry and here we have our extra doodads whatever we need up here we have extra pillowcases sheets towels that kind of stuff so this is the bedroom this is where we sleep at night and our clothes live this is the mattress that came with the bus we ended up liking it more than our two thousand dollar mattress we just bought so we kept this one and we have quite a bit of storage in here for clothes we have these are both hanging closets which josh has his jackets in here I have mine in there and then these both open up these are like our shirts and so we did down sides on our clothes quite a bit but not as much as we thought we'd have to we have we take out our clothes and seasons we have a storage unit based in our hometown so during the seasons we'll go into the storage unit pull out the clothes we want put the other clothes away animal seal back up and we'll switch out our class assuming that's a hassle but it's fine we each have our own hanging closet over here so we have our whatever we want to hang up and then we have some smaller cabinets up top and then we have five four drawers the bottom one actually used to be a safe but we took that out we have drawers for our socks and underwear and small things like that josh is a huge hat guy so we have hat bins we have hooks all over the bus for hats you'll see so we do have storage underneath our bed there's old Pistons with wheel optic heavy all that silly stuff is what we use to keep our windows warm in the winter we had about three feet of snow well we have what do we have an or we've like camera gear we have bigger boots what else clothes I have a sewing machine in there the few times I saw it in here one of my favorite things in fact on this side is our nook for my hats and kind of like that's where we have our charger we actually have a power plug up there it plugs down here but probably one of my favorite things is that map that's actually from my grandpa who passed away when he was about 87 and I found it in his garage and I just thought it was really cool that it was Pacific Northwest and we're seattle-based so it's kind of cool to have that sweet map here you know people always say well when you move into a bus how minimalistic are you and we kind of always were like well we're minimalistic because we live in 200 square feet but we're not really minimalistic because we still have things we still have toys and we still I've got a drone and cameras and we still got toys we just had to be strategic on where we put it all so speaking of places to put things we can actually jump outside and I'll show you our entire storage under the belly of the bus so under the belly of the bus we've got storage here pretty cool all of them are locked with keys and all the doors are actually thick insulated doors here and then they seal so we've got storage here both these compartments are the same mostly this is all tools and extra knickknacks for cleaning the bus and it does go the whole length of the bus as far sorry the whole width of the bus as well so I I've got stuff in there that we put in there and if I really need it then we'll dig everything out and get it I've got yard games like bocce and croquet and stuff like that which is pretty cool and it's also insulated and sealed so we don't have that many problems with rodents we've had a few problems few small problems of them getting into the small holes but everything is sealed as far as the belly is concerned and it's all insulated so I don't have to worry about mildew or getting any type of do inside of it the bus was originally yellow just like any other school bus and then Clarence actually painted it I'm a car show or classic car guy so I didn't want to change the paint because I really loved the paint scheme I love the style that he did so what we do is we just try and keep it really clean we try and detail it once every few months do a full buff and wax and get it really shine and get up on the roof and pressure wash all the dirt off of it we take it to car shows as well just because it is a classic it's kind of fun to show we've got power here on this side so we've got some power on the outside one of my favorite features is this right here so every time we use this a lot in the summer a ton in the summer we don't use it as much in the winter just because it's not covered but it's actually a barbecue that's plumbed into the propane of the bus so it doesn't have its own separate propane tank we've just still feel the same 40 gallon propane tank that we have in the belly but it's cool because we can sit out and have a barbecue we don't have to worry about unpacking it we just slide it back in and it just gets put away and this is just a windshield so sits like this and it's just a simple it's not the cleanest we used it last night below this we have to D six batteries those are our starter batteries on the other side of the bus we have two more d6 house batteries and we can bridge those if we need more power or if I start to run low we can kick on the generator with the other two on the back we've got one of our dual sport motorcycles we're working on right now building a nother bracket the front of the bus Katie also has a dual sport dirtbike street-legal we wanted something that we could get into town you know this thing is just so big that we tend to try and park on the outside of town and ride in it also gives us the chance that we can go and explore some forest roads and kind of get up and go play in the woods there's here where we're at right now at the bus fair there's actually a hot springs close by so we're probably going to jump on this and go up and try and find it have a little bit of fun so it's nice to have that we don't have a tow vehicle but having this is pretty sweet moving around to the other side this is where all the important stuff is so generators here and our generator is actually plugged in like I said earlier in the cab it runs off of the same propane so there's the generator it's a 4000 watt gen set but it's a great great thing to have on board just because we don't have solar so it does make a big difference feel to kick that arm and it was converted to propane Clarence did the conversion coming down here we've got our battery bay electricity bay as well as our dump banks so being all the dump our tanks or hot water heater we don't use this anymore but we left it on because it's cool it's actually for a Hubbell phone and TV so when Clarence originally did the conversion phone actual like telephone plug-in was big and and cable TV was big so when they would go to an RV park they would just plug into the the satellites that are right at each lot it also has a batwing TV antenna on the top for analog signals which aren't aired anymore so it's kind of hard to find we try and throw it up and get a analog signal occasionally and we get nothing you can see the outside of the push out here and one of the cool things that Clarence did when he did the push out is try and keep the look of the bus so these tracks here when they slide in follow along with the rest of the design of the bus he also went through and did the hard work of closing off these ends just to make it look a little bit more streamlined a lot of small work this school bus originally had windows big windows here as well so he did all the sheet metal work and rivet at work the whole front end of the bus has been redone he kept the split windshield which I love I think it's cool it adds to the character I threw on the siren got a little fire truck siren on the front which is always fun and then the bull horns are just added that little nipple is actually for air speed so if you look right up at the top next to the air horns that little thing is for actually doing the the instrument cluster in the front it's a lot of work went into it when we got it it was tough just because a lot of things didn't work because it was sitting for 20 years and they hadn't used it it was just luckily it was sitting in a shop so it was covered but it was just I mean we got it so much attention to detail and everything granted a lot of things didn't work but we just really appreciate it and we want to keep it alive just because we have a passion for classic vehicles so we can't take all the credit for the conversion but we have been doing a lot of updating since we got it and a lot of fixing a lot of tinkering but it's worth it so driving scarlet the Schooley is unique and of itself it's a classic car so when I'm driving first of all no power steering at all it is a beast to drive so when I'm doing the 17 point turns the buses have to do it's all arm strength I'm pulling as hard as I can I'm going down the freeway it's not bad it cruises but it's got a lot of play just like the old cars do I've got about six inches of play in the steering so I'm constantly doing this it's not I just hold and and go it's a constant move back and forth but it is just like driving a classic car it's a lot fun he's got a lot of this nostalgia especially with the steering wheel this is the original Kenworth steering wheel and as you can see it's got the original blue paint from when it was a school bus so this bus actually originally was built with a 350 gas engine it's had a transplant it had a Detroit 6v 9 2 T so it's got a 2 stroke turbo supercharged diesel in it right now paired to an Allison 6 v 4 which is amazing it's got about 900 foot-pounds of torque it is a powerhouse it can pull anything it does about 65 going down the freeway fine when I'm climbing it's doing about 50 but I also have a Jake brake in it so when I'm going down hills I can slow down and our gas mileage we get about 8 miles to the gallon so pretty good for a big old diesel like that two-stroke diesel which isn't terrible so the Clarence the guy that built the bus originally was a pilot and we've got a lot of instrument cluster from an actual airplane and airspeed actually works we've got the tilt and pitch in here as well those all work some of the cool things that you get when you get an old school bus is the Wigwam which is that's for our air brakes this actually comes up like this and stays up and if I lose air pressure it'll drop down which is a very good visual if for some reason you're not looking at your gauges or you forget to check your gauges this comes down and it's like okay stop down if that if that drops that means you're in really big trouble as far as the front area is concerned this right here used to be a record player and down here used to be a boob tube TV so it was a big style TV right when we came in we pulled that out we wanted to do a flat screen and we wanted to do it high up so that we could actually see it from when we're in the kitchen Katie could turn around and actually watch what we're watching so we kind of swapped put the TV up here and all the entertainment sound down here it kind of leaves it a little bit more open but while we're driving we can stash stuff right here our snacks and whatnot over here we've got all of our switches and all the switches are labeled similar to like a pilot I've got all my lights and then I've got actually a safe built in right here for some of our valuables when we're at shows and whatnot I can actually lock it and it's actually welded into the frame of the bus so it's a very very very safe safe we got controls up here for doing our leveling jacks because our bus does have leveling jacks so right now we're on really uneven ground but we're pretty dang level I can throw the leveling jacks down from here I also have controls we have a 4,000 watt generator on board that is our only source of power when we're off grid because we don't have solar yet so I can actually flip the switch from here while I'm driving and we can pop on the AC unit or you know pop on the TV if we really wanted to and just run the generator I've got a light up here to tell me when it's on and when it's running and then when it's off the jacks are all automatic as far as being able to lower and raise them but I do have to manually level it on these levels here and it's been really convenient when we go out to some of the open fields and really rocky places that we get out to sometimes we do because they are custom made Jack's they flip down so we have to make sure that we're we have enough clearance to actually flip them down and then drive but I have lights here telling me when they're up all the way I've got little Silla needs that when they raise up and fold in it'll tell me when they're raised up and fold it in and I think if I go down the road and they start to lower because of bumps or whatnot these lights turn off I got to stop because I don't want to drag them one of the other cool things that I really like up here in the front is this which is the original placard from when the bus was made it's got the original vehicle weight which said six thousand pounds it's now about 45,000 pounds our bus is significantly heavier than what it was up here in the front we got a like cool some cool magazine holders that's pretty much our junk holder for Katie and then our CB radio which I love because I'm kind of a nerd the CB radios are fun just to be able to talk to truckers sometimes I feel like a trucker I'm driving I try to wave at them alright well thanks for watching guys we really appreciate the support we love and enjoy scarlet the Schooley I hope you guys enjoyed her just as much we're trying to keep her alive and then all the links to our social media are going to be in the description below bus Buccaneers check us out [Music]

Channel: Tiny Home Tours

Views: 379,673

Keywords: tiny home, tiny house, tiny home on wheels, van life, camper van, shipping container, design, tiny houses, tiny homes, tiny house tour, skoolie, skoolie build, school bus conversion, school bus camper, skoolie camper, skoolie conversion, skoolie slide out, school bus slide out, vintage skoolie, vintage school bus conversion

Id: HGsfw9kGE6g

Length: 30min 47sec (1847 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 17 2019