School bus turned Tiny Home w- cosy wood stove & open floorplan

We completely built this ourselves. So for the cost of the bus and the renovation process, it was 40 grand altogether. Living in a bus has changed our lives completely, but also you feel a sense of becoming who you were meant to be. So the bathroom is the only part of the build that we cut out a piece of the roof and went to a sheet metal place to fabricate a kickout for us. That way I could stand up while we were taking a shower. Sorry. Hi, I'm Joe and I'm Heather and we're roaming with moose. Before we went tiny, we were living just North of Manhattan and Westchester in a one bedroom apartment with our dog. I remember very distinctly, Joe and I were sitting on the couch in our apartment and I've never heard of school bus life, schoolie life, van life, or even tiny living. And he showed me this Instagram post of a schoolie and I was instantly hooked. We completely built this ourself with a little help from friends and family. Of course, our school bus is 25 feet in length and we have about 18 feet of livable space behind the driver's seat. The bus itself costs 9,000 and then another thousand to ship it up from Maryland to New York. So all in on the bus was 10 and then the renovation process, all our materials costs of the build put us right around 30,000 in materials. So for the cost of the bus and the renovation process, it was 40 grand altogether. Here we have a 2012 international school bus and our engine runs the DT466, which you'll find in a lot of construction gear and farming equipment. So when we got it and only had a hundred thousand miles on it, so this hopefully should take us the long run. Starting here, we kept, we made the decision to keep the bus doors, the original ones. We ended up getting rid of all of the original bus windows. All of the sealant was disintegrating and it was a big job to replace it all. So we decided to panel it up with sheet metal. And then we got these RV windows, which are double paned and better for keeping the bus insulated and being from the Northeast, we need as much insulation as we can get. But then coming around over here, we got this ladder and this has two pins in it that pushes up and folds back into the bus. So it's not sticking up and this ladder will bring you up to our roof deck up on the top. The roof deck we had custom welded by a friend, the entire frame of it and then layered in pressure treated boards for the top. And just to give us another space to hang out. Another thing that we did is we ended up replacing all of the lights. The ones that came stock with the bus were waterlogged and then a lot of the components weren't working. So we had to do a fair bit of wiring back here. And then you could see up at the top, we have a camera, which we have on all sides of the bus and that's operational while we're driving. That way it's easier to see our blind spots. But underneath that we added a few of these solar powered motion sensor lights, which are great at nighttime. If anyone is walking around the bus, they flick on and it's pretty easy to get alerted. All right. And on this side of the bus, starting at the back, our freshwater intake, which the freshwater tank is a hundred gallons and that's underneath our bed. And this is where we put our water in and we do our fill ups and all of the water runs on the same side of the bus. So here is our exhaust for our water heater. And this is a tankless water heater. We ended up putting a lot of undercarriage storage in here. This is our propane and we just have it in with a bolt and a pin. There's a lock on it. And that's how we access our propane, which powers our water heater and our three burner stove. And then on this side, these are some work truck toolboxes that we mounted to the bottom. And this was just to give us a little extra storage for the things that we didn't necessarily want in the bus. And then on the other side we have, this one is all of our camping gear, our backpacks, our tents, our hiking poles, and any other outdoorsy tools that we might need if we go out into the mountains. So when you first walk into the bus, we redid our front steps and we ended up putting some grip pads down, not just for us when we're walking, but mostly for our two dogs so they can get up and down because the steps are a little bit steep. And then we added some shoe storage right next to the entryway and that functions as our mud room because it is impossible to keep dirt out of this bus. And then our front dash area, this was in pretty bad condition when we first got the bus, there was chips in it. What we did is we epoxied all the chips, sanded them down, and then we spray painted it this cream color to match the rest of the bus and the outside of the bus. And then our front cabin overhead here, we wanted to make it a goal being on the bus that we were going to try to read a little bit more. And then right here, this display is where all of the outside cameras feed into. And this gives me a four way split screen so that I can always see what's going on on the outside of the bus. And it's always recording in case anything unfortunate happens on the road. On the dashboard is the one place that we decided to have all our stickers from our travels. As we come past the driver's seat, we enter into our kitchen and our main living space. We put in a three burner stove that's complete with an oven. The oven was a necessity for us. Heather, my wife is an excellent baker. So having sweet treats on the road is always great. And then we did a nice, we did a nice big butcher block countertop and we repurposed the section that we cut out for the sink and made an insert. That way we didn't have to compromise on counter space and we have a big open sink just in case our dogs need to go for a bath. They're small enough that they can fit in there and that's easy for us. And then we have these cabinets built and all of these are on spring locks so that they don't open and slide around while we're driving. And then all the way down to the bottom here, we have a kick draw for our dogs, water dish and food bowl. Another cool thing that we have on the bus is our waggle pet monitor. And what this does, it's essentially functions as a thermostat. It doesn't change the temperature, but it allows us to monitor the temperature of the bus. When we leave the dogs in the bus, if we do some activity where dogs aren't allowed, we can leave them behind with a little bit of peace of mind that we can check on our phone, what the temperature is set out, how they're doing, if they're doing all right, or if we need to come back and turn the AC back on. And then those actually came with stickers for our windows that say that this vehicle is monitored by waggle. So that if people come by and see our pets in the bus, like we are down here in Florida, they don't feel inclined to smash our windows to help our fur babies. So, and then on the opposite side from the kitchen, we have our dinette. The center piece seat comes up to become a table and then underneath both seats of the bench, they flip up and we have storage underneath there. And then we take a step a little bit further and we get to the last part of our kitchen, which is our refrigerator and our pantry. We have 16 Mason jars up here and this is where we keep all of our dry goods. And the fridge for the first part of the journey kept opening on us. So we just got one of these command hook locks that keeps everything, keeps the door from opening while we're driving. Same idea here with our spices. We magnetized our spice rack and there's not a whole lot of wall space on the bus. So anywhere that we can fit a piece of artwork, this one here on the fridge is actually a piece of watercolor art that my wife did being on the road. She's launched a business where she does pet portraits, where she will take any companion and do a portrait of them. And she ships those out and all over the country. So that's been great to see because there's a whole lot of pet lovers out there. This is the project that I saw start to finish every nail plank of wood that is on the ceiling. Uh, this is, I believe eighth inch, um, cedar tongue and groove. And we put these recessed puck lights in, which give us plenty of light in here. This is our shower and then we have a composting toilet to save space and to avoid having to put in a black tank to the bus. So the bathroom is the only part of the build that we cut out a piece of the roof. And we went to a sheet metal place to fabricate a kick out for us. That way I could stand up. The last thing on the ceiling is our air conditioning unit, which we can't run too often just because it draws a whole lot of power. And then this must be the crowning achievement for the bus. This is our fireplace. This was a project because we had to redo it a couple of times. The first time the walls were too close to the furnace for it to be safe. The second time we forgot to put a one inch air gap around the border of this, this unit. And it takes a little bit longer to get going, but I think there's a real sense of reward in there. Once it's going, it heats the place great. And this air gap, what happens is when the bricks get hot, the air gap pushes all the air out into the bus. And this place, honestly, sometimes it gets too hot and we have to crack a window in the middle of winter, which I think is a good thing. We also use these, uh, compressed sawdust bricks, which we get from tractor supply. They're really cheap and affordable. And once we get this thing up to temperature, we'll throw a sawdust brick on and this thing will burn for three or four hours through the night. And then underneath, uh, is where we put our storage. So we have our kindling and our logs under here. Um, we have extra logs out in the back on the rack, but whenever we have paper goods, cardboard boxes, uh, bags from grocery stores, they all go under here. And now as we get to the back of the bus, we're entering, I guess, what we would call our bedroom. This unit here is, uh, functions as storage for us. And we have all of our sweaters in bins. We have our technology bin. And then up top, we have all our hat storage. Um, and we're in Florida now. Uh, so there's no need for the 26 beanies that we brought, but it was somehow we just couldn't let go of them. So, and I'm sure we're not done collecting them on the road. I'm sure there'll be more beanies up here and they'll just be overflowing. But the coolest thing on this unit is we have our coffee bar. Heather makes a really mean latte iced or, or hot. Doesn't matter. We keep all our beans and tools up here. Um, and we have our grinder and our espresso machine. And then underneath that unit, we have a little bit more storage. These go really far back. That's where we keep a lot of our clothes. They're kind of just thrown in there. Now we have our hamper on the front here, and then this swivels out and that's where we keep all our toiletries, all our medicine. And then behind those things are all of our water components, our plumbing. So that's our tankless water heater. That's our water pump, our accumulator, our filters. So everything is kind of controlled back behind this unit. And this opens up wide so that if anything does go wrong, which it has, it's easy access for us to get in there when we need to. The bed is a queen size bed. We went from a King in our apartment down to this under the bed on this side is where all of our electrical components feed into. So that's all of our solar on the roof. We have five, 100 watt panels. So 500 Watts of solar on the roof that feed into our inverter and our charge controller. And we have eight 100 amp hour lithium batteries back there. Um, I work remote from the road, so we always have to have the wifi up five days a week. And then we also have a DC to DC converter. So this battery bank back here is charging off the engine while we're driving. And then, like I said, on nice days, we can open up the back door and let a cross breeze through and get this place nice and aired out. Living in a bus has changed our lives completely, but also you feel a sense of becoming who you were meant to be. I feel like it's just brought on a whole new confidence and assurance in what you do and just putting everything you have into something. And it's really a passion project. If you're somebody who's thinking about doing this, just do it. You'll never be in a perfect position in life to take on any big project. Even if it's not a bus, time just goes on whether you do it or not. So just do it. Thanks for watching this week's episode. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Please make sure to like share and subscribe, and I will see you soon with another unique home tour.