It s just a School Bus Until you step inside

We're Zach and Brittany and this is our home. It's so scary to change everything you know. We felt scared too, but it's so rewarding at the same time. Once you start, it's so fulfilling. The whole project probably cost me about like 50 bucks. Best 50 bucks I've ever spent. You see this little bump out here with the little basement awning windows? That is right above our bed. If this one ever broke and they discontinued it, we would die. Brittany and my wife did all the decal and the painting. She's an amazing artist. Now we're in the small zone. Hi, we're Zach and Brittany and this is our home. This is our bus, When in Roman. It is a International FE 300. It has the Detroit 466 in it. Currently it has 297,000 plus miles on it, but it was currently rebuilt at 292. The bus is about 40 foot long. Brittany and my wife did all the decal and the painting. She's an amazing artist. I helped with the base layer and that's about it. Let's check out the inside. So right when you walk in, we have a ton of license plates. I've actually been collecting them for years and years and years. When we bought the bus, I was like, we have to incorporate these somewhere. Sadly, cut them all up to get this the way it is, but I love it and it's something that a lot of people think is really fun. Then we have our engine cover. Zach actually built this and then I bought a big rug from like TJ Maxx and I cut it to the size and I did all the trim work. So we did this because the engine is crazy loud and it gets really hot. So on the inside of this, we have a couple pieces of insulation board just to help keep with the noise and the heat. And then our engine's also covered in Kilmat. I think it helps a lot, at least in the sound department. Zach might say otherwise in the heat, but it's been a long time since he's driven without it. So I don't even think he has a way to compare. Last thing we have over here is going to be our mini split and our little accent wall. It took me about a day to paint and we added this little Zach-wanted alien. So we added Rick and Morty's spaceship and it has Zach being abducted by them. Down the road, I was like, you know, we should swap out the sun for the let's see what you got guy. And then I added floaty Jerry just to kind of like tie the whole thing together. This is our TV stand. The whole thing is just like plywood with Ardex feather finish, which we use throughout the bus. I really love that product and would recommend it. On the front, we have our consoles. And then at the bottom, we have a very extensive DVD collection, probably like 900 DVDs, anywhere from Lord of the Rings to John Wick, like whatever you name it. We used to have a 60 inch TV on this wall that we took from our house and Zach thought we were going to go blind. So we downsized to this 44 inch. So once you leave the driver's area, you enter our living room. This is still a little bit of a work in progress. I do plan on doing a black and white national parks mural here that we will paint as we go with the color. Then we have our storage cabinets. I got all these little wooden cutouts off of Etsy. Our couch does pull out into a full size bed. That way if we have guests come over, they have a place to sleep. But also we have 120 pound German Shepherd and another 60 pound dog. So there's not enough room for us all on this couch when it's closed. So that way we can all watch a movie comfortably. So this is just some decorative shelves because it needed it to look really cute. And then we put all of Mr. Lou's toys in this little basket. This is a scratching post for Mr. Lou, which also acts as just a nice little end cap. And he can go up and onto the shelf and get away from the dogs when he wants to. As we work our way down, we have a pop-up table. So it just pops up like this. And then we have two collapsible chairs that are over here. We have these windows that open up. So for summer, really nice. We can enjoy the view while we eat. This is our tiny wood stove. We absolutely love it. It definitely heats the whole bus. No doubt about it. Sometimes too hot that we have to crack open some windows. Then we have a wood storage bin. This is also with the Ardex feather finish. We have some nice black penny tile just so that if any embers fall out, they don't hit the floor. And then we have our hidden pantry. It's decent size. And this is also the home of my full-body mirror because it has the farthest distance that I can stand and see my entire outfit. And then I also have an outlet on this wall. And this light is dead right now, but I can pull it off. I can stick it here. Shine light on my face and do hair and makeup in front of this door. Then over here, we have our chair storage so that when we're driving, the chairs aren't falling over or anything. And we also keep all of our cutting boards on this wall. The underneath of the oven, which we have a little door over here for Mr. Lou, this is actually his litter box down here. And then we have our propane stove. I definitely wanted a lot of counter space. And I knew a lot of people in schoolies talked about wishing they didn't go so small in a sink. So we made sure to get the biggest sink that we could. Then we have these little shelves that just have like our everyday vitamins. And these are from Amazon. So we do not have a sink in our bathroom. So this acts as our bathroom sink. So these are actually like retainer holders. So just so there's something cute and not ugly sitting on the counter. And then this is our refrigerator. It is one of a kind because I really wanted something that would fit in this very small spot. And most refrigerators that are this wide are also really short. So if this one ever broke and they discontinued it, we would die. It doesn't, it's got like decent freezer space too. Like definitely enough that we can stock up for two weeks and not have to worry about groceries, which we love. So this is our wet bath. It's all tiled by me. We do have the Nebbia by Moen showerhead, which we love. It conserves a lot of water. We have a airhead composting toilet. It's actually our second toilet we've had on this bus. We had a nature head first and I had it for about two weeks and I hated it. So we swapped to this one. And then we have this sliding glass door, which I like to paint random things depending on what the holiday is. So I had a Grinch on this from Christmas and I'll just, it's, it's something that I can, it's kind of like my whiteboard on the bus. I really wanted a chalkboard door that blocked off a room, but with the curve didn't work. So this is, this was next best solution. We needed something to get our big German shepherd up on our probably like four foot tall bed. Um, so these are the stairs. We made them as functional as possible. So they actually are crazy, like long storage and they'll go all the way to that wall. So, um, they hold a ton of clothes and then we just have those little RV locking knob. So it's flush. Now we're in the small zone. Um, so this is our bed. We have a California King mattress again, for when the dogs do sleep with us, we need all the space we can get. Our dog Milo is a third person and our dog Millie is a child. So it gets crowded in here. We have our bump out is what we call it, but we have four of these awning style windows. So we can open them up and it lets a really nice airflow in, even if it's raining. Then we have a, another mini split up on the back just to keep our room cool at night or whenever we want to use it. And we also have a max air fan. We use that all the time. So this is our cloud ceiling on a fall night. There's nothing better than turning these on and watching your favorite movie in bed. It is so magical and cool. Um, the whole project probably cost me about like 50 bucks, best 50 bucks I've ever spent. Definitely recommend doing even a small bit of this. It's so cool. I love it. This is just basically like everyday stuff. And then we have like cleaning supplies. We have a little extra storage of unused space that we just keep extra shoes in. This is our laundry hamper. And if you pull this out, I actually use just the empty space to build extra shoe storage. We have a lot of shoes, a lot of hats and a lot of clothes, which you'll see. And then this used to be our washer dryer and we never used it. So we just recently got rid of it and converted it to more clothes storage. So it's just lots of clothes in here. Here is our tiny closet. So this is mostly all of my clothes as well as all of our extra linens. We have four 450 watt solar panels on here. We have a 20 foot rec pro manual awning. It's not that bad. It takes five minutes to pull in and out. We have a little camera right here that kind of angles down this way because as I'm driving, this is my blind spot. So if I'm lane changing, I can look in that camera, see what's next to me. The front door here is the favorite part of the bus for everybody. They just love seeing a window and a front door like this. It's just your regular house door. We had to trim it to size. This is our front mini splint. When we were building this, I did not have access to a welder. I had to use angle iron and unistrut as you can see and bolt everything. You have the little ribs under the bus here. They're strong enough to put a bolt through and a nut on top and keep it in place. I don't know if you can tell there's a little damage here. We actually ran over a street cone and everything's still intact. So I think that's a plus. Back here we have our gray tank for the shower. And when we set up the plumbing, we didn't think about having the shower on this side of the frame and the sink on this side. So we had to actually split the two tanks up so that we could run the water and not go over the channel of the bus because there wasn't enough run to do that. It wasn't actually draining. So we have two tanks. This is the shower. Right here is our outside shower. This is where the dogs get their bath. We have a deck. This is all aluminum. This was the nice little kit Brittany found online. We just sized it up and when I had built the frames for it, you see the flanges and the pipe, that was actually spaced out perfectly without knowing what was going to go up there. We also, you see this little bump out here with the little basement awning windows, that is right above our bed. And originally we had a washer dryer inside and that was the height of it. So we had to build the bed and then we wanted to bump up the roof. But again, no welder, so we didn't do a full roof raise. Call this lovely thing the garage. Bunch of tools and supplies in there. All my climbing gear. We have an inflatable kayak in here. Paint and all that stuff. Our life before going tiny was full of working nine to fives. For me personally, I commuted probably two and a half hours every day and I just wanted something better. When we were miserable in our jobs, I started looking at tiny homes, which are obviously pretty expensive. And I stumbled across the Skoolies, which lets you kind of customize your build how you want it in the most affordable way. Anything else would have cost us a hundred thousand plus. And the bus itself costs about nine thousand dollars. We bought the bus, got in, all I had was sub floors. The build itself took us about two and a half years. It was really the second year that we like really cranked down and we're working on it every single day after work and every weekend. I've been calculating the cost and I don't have it a hundred percent finished, but it's anywhere from like 48 to 52 thousand for the whole build. I can't tell you the amount of people that we've met or know in the last two and a half years that talk about that this is their dream and that they would love to do that. My answer is always, then why don't you? It's so scary to change everything you know. We felt scared too, but it's so rewarding at the same time. So that would be my advice is just take the leap and do it because once you start it's so fulfilling like everything changes. If you like this week's episode please make sure to like share and subscribe and check back soon because we have new Unique Home Tours publishing all the time. And if you'd like to join our team and get access to members only content and unique perks make sure you click on the join button below.