Her DIY Bus Home - A Masterpiece of Tiny Design

This is the main reason why I wanted to buy a bigger bus was so I could have a space to work. I think a lot of people would pay a lot of money to have a view like this from bed and I'm just so grateful that I have that. I never wanted to be someone who let fear hold me back from living life in the way I wanted to live life and I don't want to see anyone I love or anyone in the world have fear hold them back. Hi, I'm Sarah. This is my bus. Come take a tour. Welcome to my kitchen. I love to cook so I wanted to make sure that I had a big cooking space in here. The entire thing was built around this massive fridge, fridge, freezer, Dometic that came with the bus which I felt like was a massive score so I was not going to get rid of it. So I decided to just make everything around that which is awesome and it allows me to have this really big prep space. This oven is a vintage 1970s Coleman that I found from a guy in Arizona that was selling his bus and all the stuff in it and I said, hey, can I just have that stove? And he said, yeah, love it. Three burner propane works like a dream. Oven works, burns hot. I couldn't have asked for anything better and it's just a really pretty color and I enjoy it a lot. I went with a vintage stove because I am a sucker for things that look nice and cute and it was green and it matched plants and it kind of just went with this sort of vibe I was going for in here. My life would maybe be a little bit easier if I had a newer stove but I don't think life is supposed to be super easy. So I opted for this thing and it was like 70 bucks and I, you know, didn't really want to pass it up. This is my prep space. All of the countertops in this bus are maple that I got at the Skagit Wood Expo and Marketplace in Mount Vernon, Washington which happens in April and is an amazing place to get slabs if you're ever looking for any of them. And I had my prep space in the middle first off because I'm a lefty so I want to be able to chop, chop, chop and throw stuff over here. And as I'm putting stuff over here to cook, I can put any other dishes just right in the sink and it kind of keeps this space open as just prep and separates the two areas which works really well and it's just seems to be really efficient and make things go quicker. This is the sink over here. I will dry dishes either on this cutting board or on a little rack I have that goes over the sink. It drains out by the wheel well and if I'm ever somewhere that I don't want to drain out into the road, I'll put a bucket underneath there to catch the gray water. I have a 40 gallon water tank in this bus. It also came with the bus which was another screaming deal and it lasts about two weeks for me if I'm being conservative with showers and dishes and the like. Sometimes if I'm out boondocking, I'll have a spray bottle of vinegar and a spray bottle of water and that's sort of how I'll clean my dishes so I'm not using as much water. And speaking of dishes, this is my little kitchen storage area. This is the thing I regret most in my bus. I got really excited that I knew how to make a slider but all of my utensils, pots, pans, plates, dishes, spatulas, blender is under here so when I need to find something way in the back, I have to take everything out and it just doesn't make sense and it was silly. But everything is under there and it goes all the way back the whole width of this counter so there is a lot of space in here which is really nice. Underneath here is just my hot water heater which is on this side of the sink. The hot water heater is tankless. I had one in here before that I think was an EcoTemp brand that froze and completely crapped the bed. So now I have a new one. It's a Camp Lux. I love it. My propane has been a little bit weird lately so it's not working as well as it should be but I don't have any complaints other than that and the propane connection is probably my fault more than the hot water heater's fault. This is my spice rack and if you're hoping to have your spices displayed in a little cute way like this, I made these window sills and I used just a drill bit and I countersunk some magnets into the wood here and then glued magnets on the bottom of my jars and they stay on there while I'm driving. But I like this because it's almost like an optical illusion where they just stay there and they're floating and they look nice. I do not have any upper storage in my kitchen. My last bus had upper storage and it felt really cramped and dark and it impacted the light coming in and so as I was building this kitchen, I really loved the openness of it and I decided to keep it that way. It's clean. It's clear. It makes the bus feel a lot more wide and spacious and it works for me. After having this bus for two years now, the only thing I would change about the kitchen is this slider, as I mentioned. But other than that, it works perfectly for me and my lefty self and just splitting the tasks like I mentioned before and I get to make lots of really good food. I bought this bus in late 2022 for $8,500 and it came with a 40-gallon water tank. It came with 200 watts of solar. It came with the fridge-freezer combo, which is like $1,800 on its own. So for me, it was a screaming deal. I didn't really want to spend more than like five grand on the bus but coming with all these amenities meant that I was saving money in the long run. So I purchased it the same day that I went to go see it. After I bought the bus, I brought it home, stripped everything out. I put in two inches of spray foam in the walls and the ceiling, insulation in the floor, sub-flooring and then I took that bare bus to Arizona for a trip for about two months and in that time, I really sat with the space and kind of figured out where I wanted the layout to be, what was going to work for me, what wasn't going to work, how I wanted the space to feel. I'm really happy I did it that way because it allowed me to really be conscious about the way that I was going to build this space. Welcome to the first half of the living room. I call it the cozy corner and as you can see, it feels very cozy. Over here is these little cubbies that I made. This is Spanish Talavera tile. I think I just bought it off of Etsy and I bought it because it matched my stove. So a lot of this living room is based around my oven. Down below the fireplace, I have storage for my dog's toys. I also have the ceramic wicks and the gel fuel for the fireplace. It is not a real wood stove. My last bus had a wood stove in it and I wanted to be sure that this one had actual RV insurance but I didn't want to give up the look of a fireplace because one of my favorite things in my last bus was laying in bed with a little fire going. This burns gel fuel or I put candles in here. Gel fuel is essentially like an alcohol-based burning system. If you go to like a restaurant or something and they have those little fireplaces on the table, that's normally gel fuel. It doesn't let off any sort of carbon monoxide or soot. So it's perfectly safe to burn indoors and it does let off a little bit of heat. So if you sit next to here with the gel fuel burning, you'll be cozy and it gets warm. Even with this candle right here, it feels warm. I had one of my good friends hand make this for me. I wanted to kind of go with the 70s theme of the oven. So it's like a little mom fireplace and it's really cozy and I love it and it's perfect. This is the second half of my living room. This shelf extends around here and we have a matching cabinet to the other one and up here is like produce storage and snacky things, anything that I kind of want to grab quick. This is my kitchen table and it also turns into a guest bed which is a really awesome feature and great for sleepovers. It's really cozy to sit here, play cards. It works perfectly for me. There's plenty of storage in here. I wouldn't change anything about it. Down here is my diesel heater and it comes out of this cabinet in here. This is my record player cabinet. I've had these records with me since I was 15 years old. They were in my first bus. People thought it was crazy for me to bring my records with me on the road but after collecting them for so long, I was not getting rid of them and it's really nice to put a record on, make a meal, burn my gel, fuel my fireplace and just relax. These are two closets. The bigger one has most of my clothes in it. Smaller one is like dog bed storage, laundry, different utilities. When I'm having sleepovers, I will open these doors up and it kind of sections off the bedroom. This is my little bathroom. This is just a battery-powered light. It has a rechargeable bulb. I was gonna wire something in here but the bathroom was the last thing that I built and it took me like a year to build it so this just works perfect. It magnets up here and the light turns on. All of my storage is just these little cubbies like you saw in the front. All the things in a bathroom that you need. The way that my toilet works is it's a five-gallon bucket in here and I line it with a trash bag and then this side uses these Ecline bedding pellets which is just compressed sawdust. So once you put the trash bag in here, you'll put a scoop or two of the sawdust and it expands whenever moisture touches it and then when you're done or your bucket's full, you wrap it up and you go to an RV dump and you throw it in a dumpster. Traveling as a solo female for more than four years now has taught me more about my resilience than I would have had the opportunity to in any other aspect. A lot of people ask me if I'm scared or if scary things happen and yes, they do. There's plenty of times I've been scared. There's plenty of times where I've been on the side of the road sobbing because I don't know how I'm gonna get through something but once you get to that point and you're met with either you get through this thing or you don't, you pretty much always get through it and that has been so empowering and so confidence building for me as a woman that I'm just so grateful for every experience that is just complete because I have grown to be this woman that is confident and that's strong and that's capable of doing those things. I never wanted to be someone who let fear hold me back from living life in the way I wanted to live life or experience opportunities that other people got to experience just because I was afraid or because people who cared about me were afraid and I don't wanna see anyone I love or anyone in the world have fear hold them back. So if you're a solo female watching this channel and you're wondering how you can take this next step, all life is is making a decision and figuring out how to be okay with that decision and figuring out how to move forward with that decision with confidence and with grace and with strength. So I encourage you in the face of fear to walk with it. This is my silversmithing studio and this is the main reason why I wanted to buy a bigger bus was so I could have a space to work. Silversmithing is what I do full time. It's totally my passion and this little two by two square is where all of the magic happens. Up here is some of my bigger tools like my matte propane, something called a pickling pot which if you wanna learn anything about silversmithing, I do teach classes. Other silver supplies are over here and then there's more storage down in these drawers too, little anvils and soldering blocks and files and tweezers. My torch is down here as well as all of my silver itself. And then these are the tools that I use the most while I'm smithing so I just keep them more accessible than the other ones. Silversmithing is the process of taking sterling silver sheet or wire and forming it into jewelry. I am a self-taught silversmith. I've been doing it for about three years now. I started my business in 2021 and like I said, now I do it full time. I travel around, I find mainly sea glass or rocks or abalone shell or different stones from different places and try and set them in a way that honors that place. I've been making these little landscapes recently based off of places that I go and I really love making them. They're hand engraved. If you wanna see more, you can go on over to my website. As you can see here in my silversmithing studio, it's also kind of the hub for most of my power. I have my inverter switch here I have AC outlets here as well as DC outlets. I have a 200 amp hour lithium iron battery with 400 watts of solar and a 2000 watt inverter. That's plenty of power for me to run what I'm running which is just one fan, my fridge freezer and any of the tools that I need for silversmithing. This is my bedroom. This is Bo, the bed hog. This is where you'll find him if he's not running around outside chasing squirrels and deer and all the other things. This is a full-size bed. It's probably the most coziest spot in the bus. I have plants in here. I have all of my books. I have some artwork. I have one too many pillows but I love it. This is, I call it a hutch but it's more of just like a big storage container and it goes the whole length all the way down to the floor so you can really fit a lot of stuff in there. This is my bookshelf back here and just like my records I've collected these books for a long time. There's a lot of field guides in here. There's a few cookbooks. It goes back to kind of collecting knickknacks and collecting things. I just like the cozy feel of having books around and it's nice to lay in bed and reach for one and start your day or end your day in a cozy way. I think that there is nothing better than pulling into a backcountry campsite at like sunset and getting ready for bed and laying down looking at the stars with all these windows around you and then waking up at sunrise with a 360 degree view of like desert or mountains or a lake landscape and I think a lot of people would pay a lot of money to have a view like this from bed and I'm just so grateful that I have that. If you are planning on living on the road for any extended period of time I think it's so important to keep friends close and to continue to cultivate community and relationships no matter where you are. A lot of people have this really romanticized idea of the road and freedom and going wherever you want and it is that but it's also really isolating and it's also really hard and it's important that you have people around you who understand that or who are going to be there for you through that adversity. I know for me it's been really easy to keep people at arm's length and really easy to fall into that isolation almost with a mask of independence but really it's really beautiful to have your people close to you and it's beautiful to find more people to be close to and I think that should be at the forefront of anyone's mind who's traveling full-time rather than where do I want to go next. You know it's kind of where do I want to go and who do I want to bring with me I think is an important thing to keep your mind on. Thanks for watching. If you'd like to see more follow along my story or see more of my work you can find me on Instagram at sidesaddlesilverco and you'll find my website all my fancy reels all the things over there. See you on the road.