When a Master Carpenter Builds a No Budget Bus Conversion

so I've done a lot of work with saell on the beach where I had my house and I had all kinds of leftovers in the shop and saell is great for ocean water and for outdoor work and I've done also interior work on boats that combined I was like Hey I'm going to try to make this thing look like maybe a yacht or something it turned out really good well this is a 1985 Crown used to be a school bus when I bought it there were no windows in it it's got a 14in roof raise on it got 2600 WS of solar on the roof with a solar maintenance platform what used to be uh two headlights I changed out to four headlights and put a couple blinkers up top you see my uh mosquito graveyard going on I think uh maybe we saved a couple people from getting bit on this trip all the body work and the sanding was done by the previous owner so I got it in this condition except for a little bit of the Bondo that I'm I was trying to fill up a couple of things but I don't know if I'm even going to paint it i' I'd like to who knows this is one side of the engine 855 Cummins big cam pancake so they lay it flat everything that would normally be on the top of a of an engine I can access right here I actually extended the door the 14 in as well port for the diesel heater I've got a diesel heater in the trunk that heats up the rear of the bus when we need it water in overflow and then I elected to do a pressure feed system to where I can switch this to my tank or I can go to City pressure this metal was all beat up I I replaced all this powder coated the the bumper got the roadm tow hitch here and the trunk oh boy this is like so crowned in style did all the solar work on this bus crowned in style is the man when it comes to solar man he does a great job I did all this after electrical from my from my panel and wired the whole bus but he did all of these wire runs here all of the victron mounted everything all the wire runs to the Transformer and I'm telling you what the S so batteries everything that he did topnotch he's topnotch a Marine water heater up top these two boxes right here hold two 55gal freshwater tanks pump systems over there that's the diesel heater is up top on the Shelf next to the water heater there's Elon Musk sitting there with his uh you know his um satellite disc I don't know how anybody could go without it and not have that on the road nowadays cuz that thing works just great soon as we plug it in bam we got instant great internet 6 24v s so 100 amp hours lots of batteries I want to put my tools I want to load everything in here and possibly do some some mobile work on people's buses as well at some point in time uh but that's after we have a little fun six cameras one in front one in the rear it's really nice to have that camera system he gave me extra doors I just loaded this thing up and built a storage compartment this is more of a maintenance side so both your oil filters fuel filter boom bo we come on over here this is eventually going to be hopefully my wife on an outdoor kitchen this used to be the spare tire area I have the outdoor unit for my AC mounted down under there 18,000 BTU outdoor unit with two 12,000 BTU ceiling cassettes you'll see that on the inside I built the door myself out of the original bus door the original bus door comes over and it has a hinge about 2 in over right here here so that the door could be swung open or in in case of emergency you could push the door open I took that hinge cut it tapped it into the side rewelded it onto the existing frame so the frame came back to here extended the frame punched the buttons and hit the code and it opens and closes all good and it shut it's like thunk it's [Laughter] like for the last well all of my life I've been uh working with tools with my hands started as a uh roofer waterproofer went on to Plumbing for years with a guy doing all the In-N-Out chasing around In-N-Out Burgers worked with electricians and everybody so I've got I've had my hands in all the trades gone onto a general contracting most of the work I do myself hired my son for a while and he is great he is just awesome he's helped me immensely through the bus this is a 13-speed eaten Fuller manual transmission so it it has your high and low and overdrive and it drives like a beast right now fully loaded pulling our Jeep didn't go any slower than 4550 uphills and other than that anything flat ground I'm doing 70 75 having to back off a little bit and oh gosh I'm going a little fast right now I think I'm getting six or seven miles to the gallon I was hoping I'd get nine or 10 but with the toad back there and everything that I've done to the bus and all the weight that I put in it I think I'm I'm probably down there around six or seven we tried to incorporate things from our house and things that we really loved into the build this here used to be actually our coffee table in our house the ends of this are now the nightstands that you'll see in the in the bedroom both of these are actual trucker air ride seats we're probably 95% done with the bus so you can see there things just aren't done but this eventually is going to be a fold down desk and not to mention now you can face the everybody that's in the in the living area and use this as a as another seat to hang out in it's nice and comfortable too so here in the living room we wanted to make sure we had enough space for our family two kids both married and soon to be five grandchildren so we wanted to make sure that we had an open concept this pulls out into a full-size bed we have a table back here hidden that comes out we can fit our whole family here and have a lot of uh good times and make some good memories all of the trim work that you see in the bus all of the this Redwood that you see is all saell it's an African Redwood similar to Mahogany but it's got a a little more texture in the grain it's waver and it actually has like a more glisten to it it like it just pops it like when you see it sometimes it has different colors and effervescence to it I just I love saell all the toe kicks have drawers in them so we didn't waste any space down there instead of baby locks we put on these rotating locks so that when we leave we can just lock all the doors this is kind of my domain I love to cook it wasn't always like that I burned water the first time I tried to make food for my boyfriend who's now my husband but now I love to cook so one of the things I really wanted when we built this was a lot of counter space a lot of cupboard space I this is my favorite drawer extra deep holds my whole set plus a food processor plus my Vitamix which I use almost every day first time that he built his own drawers so pretty proud of these they come all the way out they definitely hold a lot of stuff I probably need to edit some more but I do love to cook love the big sink we could probably wash both of the grandkids in here and the pull out trash can I mean everything just flows when we we put a lot of thought into the design well I guess my second favorite drawer would be this one so I guess you can tell I like to cook I myself I have never traveled I I've been a working stiff all my life heck my kids have been to Hawaii my son's been to Italy I've been to Baja Mexico never even been to Canada I've been to maybe 10 states and flown over the other ones I want to travel I want to see the states I want to drive this around I want to hit like you simed and Niagara Falls and New York City and that's important to me while I still have a little bit of of uh of life left in me and not hobble through it you know I definitely have have no regrets on selling the house this is a lot more manageable and gives us much more time to be outside doing the things that we want to do which is get out in nature and meet people and and this is the kind of community that we were looking for yes oh yeah definitely the people the people in this community everybody we've met everybody's been so welcoming I'm totally excited to be able to to hit the road and and uh have fun and enjoy what we've done all of our hard work yeah we say we're not here for a long time we're here for a good time that's it everything in the bus is electric all electric cooktop induction cooktop all electric stove we elected to go with no propane because we have some much solar on the roof we didn't really have a floor plan when I put these six windows in I just guessed oh I should have plenty of room for my bedroom and bathroom back there we'll have plenty of room for the kitchen in here in living room it's an open feel I mean it just you know I mean you can't beat just this open feel of both sides being really open and Airy Max fan only makes a a 14-inch fan well this hike crew makes an 11 in so a 14in would have stuck the trim way out in into here and I don't think it would have opened up underneath my solar panels 700 CFM the normal Max fan is like 900 so this thing really kicks out some air if you got that in a kitchen Hood you've got a massive kitchen Hood we have an RO system which is the water drop R system it's an electric pressure run R system so it doesn't run off the pressure of your tank it's actually got an electric motor that pushes the water o over your Ro filter 600 parts per million going in and only 60 going out so it's to me it's a good system gray water that comes out of your Ro which isn't really dirty water that goes back into my clean tank I'm barely going to increase the dirtiness of my water in my main tank if I just run this RO water back into my main tank nice big Fridge Big pull out Pantry on top another pull out here that kind of more of the bathroom stuff washer dryer combo unit all of these panels I can remove I take off a couple of screws take off these things all of these panels can come down and expose everything within this Chase to get to my AC units to run new electrical do anything I want to in this chase this is a a granite Bowl we it's not very functional but I love the way it looks we went with the Nature's head toilet instead of routing this outside of my bus and having a hole outside of my bus I have taken a 3M carbon filter hot glued in here and that keeps the stink from going into my bathroom works really well I I like carbon filters inside of the shower we've done a a light combo fan I like it it's kind of noisy Max fans seem to be noisy that little hike that that thing is a real nice little fan simulated wood tile I see wood inside showers and it freaks me out being a general contractor I just go what you got wood in your shower cobblestone on the on on the deck and I even did a little drain with the with a stone in it we didn't go low flow like that mister type of a thing that that they make now we went with a Hans grow it has a an on andof valve on it that works great it turns down to just a little tiny stream my wife takes a shower she moves it down to here she down here I take a shower I can move it up here look I'm get we kind of like that one and down under my stairs here those are the wires for the heated floors the heated floors aren't hooked up yet everything that you see runs back and forth in this bus is all tied in under these chases and it goes all the way through I can access these chases front to rear this is my water heater now it shuts off at 10:00 turns back on at 6:00 in the morning um I went for marine style level indicators they aren't like those little dots 1/3 2/3 3/3 what you know those RV things they're just the worst I have both AC's on right now front and rear there's my AC load 1100 but PB Chargers are hitting 1968 so I got got 2600 WTS almost pulling down almost 2,000 charging my batteries running my AC yeah it should be up to probably 100% Again by the end of the day on the batteries and built that door extended it and uh reused the hardware so that it would and close up real tight and it's sealed up real nice too it it worked out really nice again I've just kind of tried to create that boat yacht look the metal in the back was just it just came out certain dipitous Le the I I say that word a lot with this bus because this is all scrap metal from when I did the outside of the bus all these pieces are just scrap metal it just fell into place and it just happened I tried to keep the grain moving down these as well Domino jointing them together and then making that radius flow got the drawers underneath all the nightstands I made it so that I could open up the window and we'd have the like right now you can hear the creek running out there so usually we we we'll sleep like this at this side but last night we slept over here being able to lay here in your own bed and hang out the greenry all out there this is this is this is what it's all about this is why I work so hard I'll be able to I'll be able to go places and and just relax chill out for a while [Music]

Channel: Mobile Dwellings

Views: 1,015,698

Keywords: crown bus conversion, school bus conversion, land yacht, vintage bus conversion, expert skoolie build, skoolie conversion, skoolie, school bus tiny house, school bus yacht, crown school bus, crown skoolie, crown n around

Id: wjnIZkR3PHQ

Length: 13min 30sec (810 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 11 2023