hey there jenna here welcome to my channel where i take you on tours of tiny and creative homes
in this week's video we meet one young couple who converted a school bus into a beautiful
nomadic tiny home this tour features gorgeous walnut kitchen countertops
functional workspaces for working on the road and they also planned the design with room to grow
in case they decided to expand their family one day with this space we really thought
ahead we could use this as a bunk bed area so that might transition in the future
if you guys like these kind of videos make sure that you subscribe and hit that notification bell
so that you know every single time i publish a new tour but right now let's jump in and take a tour
make this house
you can grow up your whole life and have no idea what's in our country i wanted to
explore the u.s i had never really been many places outside of maryland or just the east
coast in general on our first date i told hunter i want to go on a big cross-country road trip
when i graduate college and camp in a tent and he said let's do it so that's what we did being
able to have carly see everything for the first time doing it together was really really special
my dad had told us he was gonna give us family land to build a house on even after that trip
that was still the plan we were like can't wait to get home and start building a house we're looking
at shipping container houses or maybe like a little pole barn and we wanted to be off-grid
but the longer we were planning that we just missed traveling and being on the road we bought
a 30-foot tow behind camper we left in the camper to travel that's when we started boondocking and
once we got a taste of that we were like we don't want to build a house we started doing
more research about upgrading from the camper getting something a little bit bigger but having
something that we could drive and really live in full time that's what brought us to the bus
start to finish construction of the bus it took us nine months so much of the things we've
learned have been from the camper and the tent trips that we took before we converted the bus
having that experience definitely changed how we would design the bus even us with the two dogs
were like we could have half the size of a bus but we didn't want to build a short bus and then have
to build a bigger bus so really the plan is just to grow into it eventually and have a family and
we didn't want to have to do two separate builds to do that so we want to just start out with what
we thought was the right size and not have to redo a whole other build when things change
our bus is a 2001 thomas it's 36 feet long
we have the 3126 caterpillar engine back with an allison transmission with the 3126
caterpillar engine we get decent mileage for our weight we get between 8 and 10 miles per gallon
our departure angle with the back bumper is built pretty high so we don't have to worry about
scraping going out of parking lots or trail heads we were really lucky to find a bus that already
had understorage built in we have two bays on this side and one bay on the other side this side we
have extra tools spare parts on the other side we have our generator and our air conditioning unit
on the roof to house the solar panels we built an aluminum rack only thing we would change is go a
little bit bigger on the aluminum we only have one inch square tubing so it flexes a little bit with
the wind when we walk on top of it definitely gone a little bit bigger like two inch on the
back of our bus we built this deck out of steel and composite decking to hold our dirt bike
we have a 2019 yamaha wr250r we knew we wanted a couple different modes of transportation in
case something happened to the bus or if we didn't want to drive the bus everywhere we
were going the bike has been great i've ridden pretty much my whole life carly
actually had never ridden a motorcycle before she went and took her classes
and got her motorcycle license and now both of us can ride it individually or together
on the roof of our bus we have four solar panels they total out to just over 1300 watts in total we
really wanted a big solar bank so we could run our air conditioning for the dogs we also put a small
deck here just so we could get up and walk past them to clean the panels up on the back of the
roof on our bus we have our internet antenna for our internet we have an instaconnect we just use
a sim card and pump it in there and then you can have internet pretty much everywhere you want to
go so we've been on the road for about six months and for that time we've only had the bus and the
dirt bike for the longest time we were just taking the dirt bike and carly and i would ride together
but then we'd have to leave the dogs behind so that made us decide to get a 2000 jeep cherokee
it's on 35-inch tires it can go pretty much anywhere we want to go our plan is to flat tow
it behind the bus here soon and it'll be really nice having that extra mode of transportation
we upgraded all of our bus lights to led for our headlights we went with the jw speaker lights
they're super super bright on low and high beam and they also have a grid pattern
integrated it melts the snow or ice in inclement weather
we really wanted our door to open like a traditional house door we cut the hinges
off the left side and bolted both panels together using stainless keeping the traditional bus door
was really important to us having the glass top and bottom it's really nice when driving
you can see where the curb is next to you and that way you know if you're getting too close
welcome to the inside of our home when we were thinking about the design we wanted
it to be really warm and we feel like it's really welcoming and comfy with the layout
a lot of it came from our experience in the camper so we had this camper it had overhead
cabinets throughout bright leds that were all up in the ceiling they're really harsh
on our eyes with the lower ceiling height so we wanted indirect lighting in here
we have it back here behind our wire coverings and underneath our cabinets and it's turned out
really well and it feels really cozy where it's not too bright over here we have our bar style
table we decided that we didn't want a dinette which we had experienced in our camper it serves
more than one purpose we don't only eat our meals here but i do a lot of video editing here for our
youtube channel hunter will sit here and draw out schematics for electronic builds and we also have
our dog food storage underneath and we use our seats here to feed our dogs as little platforms
so it just serves many many purposes and it also makes it even more open in here
since we kept almost all of the windows in our bus we really wanted to insulate
it really well with whatever curtains we chose so we have reflectix on the inside to insulate
and then we cut fabric to size we already had the reflectix for
the curtains so we put it up underneath of the cedar and i think it worked out really well the
more insulation the better in the build we ended up using spray foam reflectix wool and foam board
we wanted to insulate it as much as possible we wanted to be able to go anywhere we wanted
whether it was really really cold or really warm so insulation was definitely a priority
over here on the other side of our kitchen we wanted a lot of counter space
it makes it really easy cooking meals and even having groups of people in here with us
our countertops are pretty much our favorite thing in our tire bus hunter and i both were like we
need to have live edge countertops it was just a priority and we love how they look our friend
john kidd from the renaissance mill he milled them sanded them epoxied them and did everything for us
this tree is black walnut and it was actually local to where we were doing the bus build which
is really cool we went back and forth for a while about whether we wanted to build our own cabinets
or not and we decided that the easiest thing for us to do was just to buy them pre-done from lowe's
we were thinking that the white would be a nice contrast to really make the live edge stand out
we installed rv drawer catches on them and so far they've been great even with really heavy
pots and pans and the bus making turns that they have never opened so that's been awesome
we have an ever chill 12-volt fridge it has felt like so much space like double
the space compared to our camper and the reason we like having this much space is
because when we're boondocking and staying in a place for two weeks it's nice to go to
the grocery store stock up the fridge full for two weeks and not have to move because of food
over here we have our oven it is a great stone propane range and oven it has three burners and
most of the time i'm just using two when you look at an oven like this and you think it's so much
smaller than a household size oven it's really the perfect amount of space over here we have
a lot of storage the first two drawers are our pantry that's where we keep a lot of our dry food
down here we have a cleaning drawer and bathroom supplies drawer and then back here for our clothes
hunter has the first two drawers as his closet and i have the bottom two drawers as my closet
with this space we really thought ahead we have enough space under our couches and in our kitchen
cabinets that we could use this as a bunk bed area so that might transition in the future
everyone that builds a bus knows that it's hard to work around wheel wells and you have
to kind of plan around them so our toilet is on top of one of the wheel wells that worked out
really well we have plenty of space above we went with a separate toilet and we absolutely love it
it is amazing to not have to dump a black water tank we used black river rock as the floor
in our shower and we went through three different things trying to figure out what we were going
to do with the walls first we were looking at tile and we actually bought a bunch of tile and
then we were just a little worried about all the movement with driving the bus after that we got
vinyl tile and it just didn't seem to match the rest of the stuff so then we went to the
corrugated metal which was really inexpensive and it's turned out great we're really happy with it
for the back of our bus the priority was having a queen-size bed so that's what we put back here
first thing underneath we have our water tanks and also all the electronics that hunter did
all of our components are victron and we have a 3 000 watt inverter solar controllers and five
battleborn batteries we really wanted a lot of natural light to come in in the bedroom when
we would open up the curtains when we wake up in the morning so we took our emergency
exits and made a skylight that's nearby and we also kept all the windows around the bed
so that we can roll up the curtains and let the light in and then luckily
we just happened to have a bus that had windows where the school bus sign was that isn't always
the case but ours did so we really wanted to keep those because we really liked how they looked
when people that live differently are like you're crazy what are you doing like this isn't the way
to live your life you shouldn't let that affect you because there are plenty of people out here
living this way and we all feel the opposite where like if only everyone else knew we're able
to go wherever we want to go whenever we want to be there and there's nothing holding us back
thanks for watching this week's video please make sure to like share and subscribe
and i will see you soon with another tiny or creative home tour
you