hi there welcome to my channel where I take you on tours of unique homes and showcase
stories of people living alternatively in today's episode we're going to meet a traveling artist
and graphic designer who built her own tiny home on Wheels inside of a pink bus this is
the longest I've been in a house in my entire adult life I'm so happy with this bus in this
tiny tour Rita's personality really shines not only through her artwork but also through this
Unique Home that she's curated herself and if you like videos like this one make sure that
you subscribe and hit that notification Bell so that you know every single time
we publish a new episode but right now let's Dive Right In and take a tour of Rita's bus
make this house
hi I'm Rita this is Anana this is dragon and this is my home Wilbur
before van life I was living in an apartment in Dallas I worked on the engineering floor at
a software firm I thought that it was the type of job I really needed to have so that I could
keep climbing the ladder and getting the job that would eventually make me enough money where I was
impressed with myself or that my family was impressed with me or something I could work
remotely sometimes so I would just like take my Jeep I'll take these road trips pretending like
I was still just at home in Dallas and just not telling anybody that I was living entirely in
my Jeep living out of a two-door Jeep Wrangler with two dogs and sleeping in a hammock every
night trying to work at a whole corporate job was like probably not really going to
work forever so I wanted a rig that I could tow my Jeep behind and that I could have a whole desk at
I spent five weeks and two days building the bus in a parking lot of a masonic temple and
there's like 50 old men that would just like come in and out of the parking
lot being like what are you doing today Rita while I wrenched away on a pink bus
this is the Bible of an engine this is a Ford Bible mine is clearly very well loved and very
well used but I don't think I would have had the confidence to do it if I didn't have this
book and I've learned so much about it that I feel like I could confidently rebuild this
bus even better again total cost of the bus was just under nine thousand dollars
I've been living full time on the road for almost three years now I'm so happy with this bus
welcome to the outside of Wilbur he is a Ford shuttle bus he's a 2001 Triton V10 he's about
14 873 pounds and 20 feet long eight feet wide he gets about 10 miles per gallon and
it doesn't really fluctuate much with him Towing my Jeep or just rolling with him alone Wilbert
came disgustingly moldy green and white when I got him I painted Wilbur pink it took me about
six hours to do from start to finish including sanding and all so Wilbur's first set of doors
were the traditional bus doors and they had the handle that pulled and opened the handle on mine
broke when I was driving 65 miles an hour and the doors just opened up and let trash and dog
leashes and a couple other things out into the highway I am a big fan of this front door I got
this from a Habitat for Humanity for 60 bucks the front door actually just fit perfectly
so when I first got on the road I lived in my two-door Jeep Wrangler for six months
this was part of my kitchen build I will set this thing up in the morning and have coffee
outside sometimes I like that I was able to bring a little bit of the Jeep build into the bus build
so this area is just a lot of extra storage for me one of the features I love about this
bus is how many doors it has it came with a wheelchair lift in the back out here and
I love that these doors open up so it's just like a huge open space and just so
like light and Breezy on a good day like this this is also where I shower I have a shower
tent if I'm in like a more public setting or if there's like a lot of campers out
I have a camp Lux propane water heater here I keep all my shower supplies here it's 12 volt and it
turns on and heats up pretty quickly I can take this off or I can just stand under it and have a
shower outside I have a six gallon water tank for this and I'll get four good showers out of that
so we're in the back of that of the book I love to collect stickers from places that I've traveled
a lot of these stickers were from when I was back in the Jeep and I knew the entire time when I was
collecting all these stickers that one day I'd have a rig that I would put all the stickers all
over the back so I weighed my options pretty heavily on how I wanted to get onto the roof
I didn't have a ladder for the first little while on the road and I ran into a problem of not being
able to get onto the roof where all my solar panels are so I drilled a couple holes in the top
of the bus I think they're like three inch long bolts with eye hooks at the end and I just hung
this little ladder down here which is so cute and I kind of thought it was like a temporary 15 fix
but it's been a couple years now and it's really cute and it works pretty well and then I'm able to
also store my my bike on the back of the of the door here which is really convenient it's on my
roof I have 400 watts of solar and I have it tied back into my alternator too if it's ever cloudy or
something just like go into town go to a store and come back and it's like charged for a day
so this is my board since this is fiberglass I was able to just like drill inch and a half
long screws into this and then I have this little I think this is like just garage
Hardware but I love that I can see it right out of my mirror it doesn't obstruct anything
this is my Jeep River I actually lived out of her for six months before building the bus I
love this Jeep more than life itself possibly more than Wilbur she can take me to some pretty
gnarly places and I just really love off-roading I love driving her so she's pretty crucial to tow
behind Wilbur and have her with me all the time so I flat tow my Jeep behind the bus but it takes
me about two minutes and 20 seconds on a fast day to re-hitch all right so let's head inside
all right so we're inside my bus now up at the front we have kind of the cabin it really just
feels like driving a pickup truck with a giant house on the back of it when you're up here
you'll notice my dashboard is pink and the steering wheel and the door when I first
bought the bus it was like really sticky and gross and weird up here I actually
just like rattle can spray painted it and then I just have shoe storage
up here it's kind of just a catch-all for everything when I first walk into the house
so over here I have a little bit of extra storage over my windshield when I first got this it was
just a lot of insulation and wiring I didn't need most of that so I took a jigsaw to it and cut this
hole out eventually framed it out and I've been able to use this as my library I had to build a
little platform on the bottom so that everything could stay a little bit evenly but surprisingly
nothing really ever falls out of here so if you look up you'll notice my ceiling is made
out of pallet wood I used a jigsaw and chopped them all up I love the look of it being just so
ragtag and jumbled together I was a little bit worried about how dirty they all were but it's
it's honestly worked out and my house smells like Home Depot most days which is one of my
favorite smells works out pretty well so over here I have my coffee station I am a big fan of
coffee it's kind of a routine in the morning I'll usually have one of my friends over in the morning
we'll have coffee together and I have probably five different ways to make coffee in the bus
I end up with all my coffee mugs over here hanging up
so as we come down in the bus is my art studio and this is really the most important part of
the bus for me the biggest pain point for me living in the jeep was not having a
study workspace enough storage for all my art supplies stable enough power in a jeep to be
able to power my computers that I do graphic design on and a place to put drying paintings
creating the art studio and the bus has been one of the most fun and most changing things
about it I tend to switch focuses really frequently I paint murals on the road so I
need enough storage for three huge Tupperware containers and I need gigantic paint brushes
I need tiny paint brushes for my oil paintings I do watercolors all the time and I've had to
have so much varying storage out here that has really shifted around pretty frequently it's
been really nice to be able to create a space that I can spread out as much as I want I can
be indoors but also have good lighting inside and be protected from things like the wind and rain
my my mom bought me this little cup holder so this is one of the only like glass or ceramic
items in the bust that I have kept and I cannot believe it's been held on for almost three years
with a little bit of Velcro on the bottom and it makes me really happy she recently
passed away and it's so nice to be able to like see a little bit of home and a little
bit of family on the road every day I have a lot of random hooks around here that I'll hang
like wet pallets on and I also have a warning for any of my friends who come into my bus not
to wear anything white or that they don't want to get paint on because as you can tell for me
you don't last 15 seconds in this bus without touching something that has wet paint on it
into the back of the bus we have my bedroom living room I have a couch down here during the day and
at night I can fold it out into a queen size bed I don't always fold it out at night it's
more than enough space for the three of us you can fit a good five girlfriends on the couch here
it really makes a nice open space for hanging out in my art studio and I have friends in here
and I just absolutely love how many doors are back here it really creates like such a living
room Vibe and during the day when it's sunny I usually park my bus this way facing the Sun so
in the morning I can open my curtains back here and like watch the sunrise through my windows
so I have my AC unit up here and it's not really common that people who get shuttle buses actually
keep them in or ever get any use out of them but I use mine a lot my dog is pretty elderly
and she can't really handle heat very well so I'll just turn on my truck for 10 minutes run this for
two minutes the whole place has cooled down and my dogs are so much more comfortable they both really
love bus life inanna would be really happy as long as there's a couch and air conditioning pretty
much anywhere she could ever go and dragon really loves bus life because he gets so much exercise
I really love having film photographs so I keep this little Polaroid camera with me and
when I'm in a really special place or with really special friends I love to take a picture a few of
my favorite ones have made it to the board I have my parents house in Virginia Dragon swimming next
to a waterfall and bend and not on the beach so I used to work with RPM 3D printing in Virginia
Beach Virginia and I did Wildlife Rehabilitation with them and this was the first animal we ever
worked with was a possum named Jenny we built a wheelchair for her so she was allowed to be
a disability Ambassador in elementary schools so over here in the middle of the bus I have my
closet it actually started off as a bathroom but like a lot of other van lifers who built
bathrooms or showers in their rigs it ends up just being used for storage mostly there was an
entire functioning shower in here my toilet was in here I think about a year ago I converted it
back into a closet since then I've converted my toilet into a seating area and the shower
has moved to an outdoor shower it's pretty nice though having hanging storage for all my clothes
I'm not really good at folding clothes so I love having as much hanging storage as I have here
so coming up to the front of the bus we have my kitchen one of my favorite things
about my kitchen is how many little tiny spots there are that you can see my art
I built this extra countertop here so this expands it's really good for pizza night or
extra cooking space where I'm cooking with friends almost all of my kitchen cabinet
the actual structure of it are all pallet wood I kind of chose a little bit of the stronger pieces
I love having these little hammocks throughout the bus because I can kind
of use it as a catch-all and have produce up here that I can see really visually
reminding me like what I need to cook this week that I should probably eat some fruit
when I was considering what type of sink I wanted and I was working on the build I took this Bucket
from my parents Farmhouse and I was just using it kind of as a catch-all and like physically using
it as a sink while I was building and I kind of grew so attached to it I was like there's
no reason I can't just cut a hole in the bottom of this and use an RV sink drain so I cut the kitchen
counter to fit this it's really nice I can take it in and out if I want to do something outside
with it and then my water storage is kind of unusual I did initially actually have a real
sink faucet here and it works just fine but I would occasionally when going off-roading
I would occasionally like get a leak and it would like ruin my week and I really didn't like having
the giant water tanks underneath that I had to physically move to empty or to refill so I feel
like this which holds two gallons and I just refill it from tanks that I have in the Jeep
so I can take the Jeep back into town at any point and refill all my water without having
to move the entire bus so one thing that is kind of a pain point in the bus actually is my floors
there's a fuel pump hatch at the back of the bus that I've floored over not knowing that I
would need to access that on a regular basis so I think if I were to do it over number one I would
absolutely not floor over the fuel pump hatch and then secondly I don't think I would go with lvp
again I had I had heard a lot of people that were really impressed with it before but it's not very
waterproof it's really easy to damage them I'm not in love with them I would probably just put like
shag carpet down next time no just kidding I have no idea
I hope that anybody who watches this walks away feeling like they can do it if this
was what they want to do or if they want to try something new nothing's really that hard
I don't recommend starting brain surgery tomorrow but like short of that you can
probably figure out how to do anything that you actually want to learn how to
do this is the longest I've been in a house in my entire adult life I'm
so happy with the bus that I just kind of want to rearrange and like give it a fresh redesign
if this thing absolutely died tomorrow and I couldn't fix it I would probably just go
buy another one off the same lot that I got this one from and start over do the same exact thing
thanks for watching this week's video please make sure to like share
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