hey guys jenna here welcome to my channel where i take you on tours of tiny and unique homes
in today's video we're going to meet a family of six along with their two dogs
and a snake that all live inside of a beautiful bus conversion that has plenty of innovative ideas
they've had to get super creative with this many people living in a small amount of space
so they've created a compartmentalized bathroom a couch that doubles into a dining room table
and a downstairs bedroom yeah that's right a downstairs bedroom in a bus that's something
i've never seen before if you like these kind of videos make sure that you subscribe and hit
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right now let's jump right in and find out how six people two dogs and a snake live in a tiny space
we're the evans family welcome to our tiny homes
on the bus with us our four youngest kids sam
lucas quinn and then hudson actually turns seven tomorrow we have two dogs and sam's pet snake doug
something that really made us start thinking along these lines of having more freedom and ability to
do things was our transition to homeschooling and that really opened our minds to a lot of freedom
the mortgage the job we were giving our time away in order to meet the demands of living a
traditional lifestyle and we didn't have any control over it you're having to use so much
energy to come up with these ways to connect as a family and we just were tired of having to work
so hard for something so precious it should have been a bigger part of our lives all along
the dream was to be able to capitalize the time we had with our children and to travel and see
things to explore the world with them and make memories we were very much aware that it would
be a sacrifice on everybody's part that everybody would be sacrificing something it wasn't just us
giving up our house we knew it was going to be difficult tess and i would look at each other
and just be like oh what what did we do we sold our house and now we're stuck in the bus like
what oh we don't have a choice we just have to keep going the whole goal of kind of a traditional
lifestyle is to make things as comfortable as possible and there's not a whole lot of
growth you grow when you experience something that makes you uncomfortable
we love our bus we have put so much work and effort and intentionality into it but when it
comes down to it the bus is just a tool that being said it's the tool you live in every day
and it needs to reflect your style and desire and your comfort level and the things that are
most important to you it's been interesting to see the ways our children have been stretched
because of the sacrifice they're making they're gaining so much they're growing their capacity
to love to experience the world to learn and we see that every day in the way that
they interact with others in the way that they interact with the world around them
gus gus is a 1986 mci mc9 crusader 2. he has a detroit diesel 8v 92 motor with no turbo
so we go everywhere super slow we bought the bus for 8 000 and we ended right at 29 000.
gus gus is 40 feet long bumper to bumper we also tow a dolly and a minivan behind us so
all said we're about 58 feet long we have these three storage bays that go all the way through to
the other side this first storage bay is all just storage the second bay is our oldest son's bedroom
and then this third bay is all our kind of mechanical equipment
i've got 100 gallons of fresh water i've got 100 gallons of gray water
i've got three propane tanks 90 pounds of propane down here on the roof i have six
solar panels they're 300 watt solar panels so we have a total of 1800 watts on the other side
i have our battery bank for our solar setup the battery bank is six six volt golf cart batteries
that i have hooked in parallel and in series so we have one giant 12 volt battery system
the drive axle here is a dually which means it has two wheels side by side and then behind that is
our tag axle which helps take some of the weight off of the dualies because the motor's back here
so the back of the bus is very heavy one of the difficult parts about traveling with a big family
is actually being able to get that family around to all the spots you want to see once your bus
and your rig is parked and so we found a toyota sienna and it's been working great it's easy to
tow behind the van it's not too heavy but we can also you know fit a lot of groceries in there
so we can head inside and check it out
we wanted a great family gathering space and we didn't want to lose the
dining room table that was a really important part of our family culture
and so we decided to come up with our own new design to figure out how
we could have a large family dining table that could fit all of us plus some guests
so this is really easy to set up we have these legs that pop out and lock into place
and then we just lift the whole table into place as far as the frame goes it's all welded
metal about an eighth of an inch thick i think it's 14 gauge metal and it's all powder coated
we decided we needed to keep as many windows as possible
the important thing to us was the natural light and making it feel open and large
in the kitchen we went with butcher block countertops and we chose to
paint the cabinets green to bring a little freshness and brightness into the space
we decided to go with a pattern floor just to add a little fun and interest and we've been really
pleased with it it actually hides a lot more dirt than we thought it would my husband custom built
all of our cabinets and this has actually been my favorite kitchen i've ever lived in
i feel like i have more workspace than i've ever had because we have a lot of countertop space
we went with a full-size residential refrigerator which has been really nice to be able to hold all
the food that we go through with a large family in our drawer matt custom built some dividers
to be able to hold all of our dishware so all of our silverware cups spoons and plates all
fit in here nicely so that that saved us a lot of space we installed this door here to separate the
living area from the bedroom area and it's been really great to be able to have a place where the
dogs could be locked up if we were bringing in groceries or had guests over for dinner
so this door doubles as both a space divider but also the door to our closet and the doors way to
our son's bedroom we determined that he could have an entrance that was both out of the way
but also big enough for him to fit through he is six one and the bunks upstairs are six foot he has
a much bigger space where he can actually stretch out as he grows my name is sam i'm 15 and this is
my room i have more privacy than anyone else i have a full mattress definitely more room than
all my siblings my snake is back there as well as my clothes and everything this is my dress
wall and then i have this wall has leds in it and i have a car collection right there so far
it's been awesome he loves it and all the other kids are vying for that space when he moves out
here in the bunk area we thought it was important that each of the kids have a permanent space that
was all theirs we gave them a budget and they were able to kind of decide how they wanted to
use that money with bedding paint storage all of those kind of things so they really personalized
their own spaces this is more of my learning shelf and then what i'm currently reading
i have a shelf right here that i kind of just keep pictures
and toys and things like that we decided on this yellow because yellow is my favorite color
my passions are writing and reading so i can do that on the road and i don't have any trouble
my name is lucas i'm 13 and uh this is my room it's uh six feet long and i think like
four feet wide here i keep all my books and then random hobby stuff and then right here i have my
drumsticks and this is a harry potter one i chose purple because purple is my favorite color i miss
my friends in my hometown but there's there's pros and cons one of the pros is we get to experience
all of this when we go to baja we're gonna go see whale sharks and we're gonna go surf and like
eat a ton of tacos and we couldn't do that if we didn't sell our house and
take this big leap it's been a really big adventure and a cool thing to experience
i have a piano my vest is in my hat i have some blankets behind my pillow and i have some stuffed
animals i painted my room turquoise because it was my favorite color and here i got some rocks
i bought this for one dollar some leaves fell off it yes i wasn't wearing it enough
just back from the bunk area we have our laundry room we have a washer dryer combo which fits just
perfectly in this space we don't use it a ton but it's really nice to have when we have water
above that we have a drawer where we keep our dirty laundry and in order to utilize the very
back space matt built out this closet for him and i and we have plenty of storage for our clothes
we decided it was important to have separate bathroom spaces so we did our vanity area here
where we have all of our bathroom essentials and storage a small sink in the corner and even a
pull-down stool for my son matt designed this and it's actually kind of funny because it was like
maybe 11 o'clock at night and i came out to the bus and i was like are you ever coming to bed and
he was like yeah but hold on look what i figured out and he designed this stool that pulls down
it's it's able to be stored flat against the wall and our son can just pull it down step up brush
his teeth do whatever he needs to do and then it folds right out of the way which is really nice
being on the road means that like every day is different and so in order to keep us kind of
stable and give us a good foundation we decided we needed to put in a space that would keep us
intentional and on track for our goals so we just kind of have like our family calendar
our family jobs the things we're working on as a family and the kids each have a board
where they keep their goals for the month this map helps us keep track of where we've been
when we first moved on to the bus our youngest was only three so we felt like it was important
we still had a bathtub of some sort one day i was at lowe's and i saw the planters and the gardening
section and i found this half whiskey barrel and it actually made a really beautiful bathtub and
then we did exposed copper pipe for our shower ring as well as all of the piping for the water
we decided to go ahead and make our own composting toilet just to see if we could
save the money we thought we'd give it a shot and if it didn't work if we didn't love it then we'd
go ahead and buy the more expensive composting toilet we have a five gallon bucket and then we
went ahead and had a friend 3d print the urine diverter and then we just bought the urine tank
from a toilet manufacturer we just used pine shavings and it hasn't been a problem at all
all said and done i think our composting toilet was well under 50
also in the toilet room we have some art that is kind of personal to us on this wall in the
toilet room is our vision board that we first made with our kids to really start this journey going
we didn't know how long we were going to live on the bus and so it was important to us to
make it feel as home-like as possible we brought along with us our kids growth chart and we have
a little collection of my hand embroidery work including our family theme and a saying that was
on our wedding invitation we have this barn door that slides into the master bedroom when we were
planning our layout we really didn't think we were going to have a separate master bedroom we had
kind of planned on having the couches transition into our master bed but the more we thought about
it and thinking long term we realized that we really needed a space that was all of our own
and so we went ahead and made the space for our master bedroom which also doubles as matt's office
during the day and the place where we have movie nights of the family in the evenings
thanks for watching this week's video i hope you enjoyed it please make sure to like share
and subscribe and check back soon because i will be publishing another tiny or unique home tour
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