hey there welcome to my channel where i take you on tours of unique homes
and showcase people living alternatively in today's video we meet a solo female
who lives nomadically in a self-converted shuttle bus turned tiny home dee started
her downsizing journey with a tiny house but then yearned for life on the road
so she converted the bus that we're showcasing today and now has the best of both worlds
a tiny home for settling down roots and a nomadic home for adventure and 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 video right now let's take a tour
hey everybody my name's dee and this is my 2012 chevy express cutaway bus let's take a look
i was living in portland i ended up signing leases every couple months and it got really exhausting
living out of my boxes i thought might as well just build something myself because
nobody else can take that away from me that's when i decided to build the tiny house
i felt pretty stranded having this mobile unit being the tiny house and not being able to move
it anywhere i was looking at trucks and it cost 20 grand or more to purchase a truck that i needed to
haul the tiny house i decided to start looking at auctions and just looking at other options
that wasn't like a traditional truck i saw one of these trimet buses and on the side it said
chevy 6.6 liter turbo diesel engine and i said huh that could haul my tiny house i purchased
the bus off of auction for seven thousand dollars and i got in the bus lifted my foot off the brake
and it felt like a boat like a huge boat i felt like i was in the water and it was then i realized
that this was not gonna haul my tiny house after that i said well i have all this extra material
from the tiny house i literally have everything i need to build this bus everything that i learned
in the tiny house i applied in this bus my tiny house took four years and this took four months
and a lot of things that you see in here is scrap material from the tiny house i created
a theme of french country then when i started designing my blueprint i tried to incorporate
those themes those textures the materials and the way that they were built into the bus
if i can do it in these nails then you can too
the shuttle bus is 21 feet long it came from the portland trimet and it was used as a handicapped
shuttle bus and it originally came with a handicap lift which is in the front door
section but i did take it out i decided to take full advantage of these doors being the
front in order to have my bed in front of these shuttle doors i did have to substitute a full bed
into a twin bed i think it's still worth it having a twin size bed just so that i can have
this shuttle door experience and i can always open the curtains and it gives me a lot of access for
all of my large equipment underneath as well i have a huge piece of equipment that i had to put
into this bus and that i had to make room for and that's a pole i think it's really
a unique thing to be able to bring a poll to be able to create a conversation with other people
who may not value the whole aspect of involvement and strength and mobility that it really takes
it's time to look at the inside of the place so follow me let's take a look
this is the first area that you see when you walk into the bus
and i wanted to make it pretty welcoming and inviting but also a grab-and-go station for
some of my items without having to travel through the bus of course some of those items are going to
be all of my shoes i do have a variety of my purses and all of my dog items up here
so this is my plant section it's part of the walkway when you first walk in
and it's just filled with all the plants that were in my tiny house beforehand
i didn't really find a plant sitter so i kind of had to take them all with me
just to kind of create a more welcoming green space for people when they first walk in
if you come along this way i'll start off with my wardrobe a big part of who i am is my wardrobe and
i couldn't leave any of it in the tiny house so of course i had to carry all of it with me one of
the first pieces that i purchased for the bus was this dresser and i really liked the way it looked
i also have clothes up here i know it can be a lot but that's okay because that's part of who i
am and when you want something really bad you just design around it and make it happen
that's the best part about building your own build is you just get it put
all the things you want in and nobody can tell you no
i also have this really nice trunk i found for 15 in a thrift store and then i redid
it inside there's a lot of storage and i made this nice foam cover you can pull the trunk out
and people can sit down like this in it for the drive if they want to and chat to me
as we continue down the hallway we have my bathroom
i decided to build my own toilet i built this box out of cedar from the ceiling of my tiny house
the inside is a six gallon bucket and i bought a system from off of etsy
and it's a urine diverter and a fan so i did have to cut two holes for the fan
and for the diverter into the bottom of the floor and then on this other side is where i
keep the dirt to use with the composting toilet i wanted to add some stained glass to my bus and
when i found this door i thought that it was the perfect opportunity to be able to
create that stained glass effect it's actually just paper that i cut out in different squares
and applied with water it's super easy it costs about twenty dollars
my wood stove i'd like to point out the tiling in the bottom i did all the tiling myself i just cut
away the floor and then tiled right on top of the ply board this is the french wood stove i had it
in the tiny house but it was never installed and i thought this was the perfect opportunity to add a
french-inspired item into this bus and it also has a nice hot plate on the top so i could be cooking
some of my dinners boiling water then i added a nice little backdrop of this stainless steel
with the next part is my masterpiece which is the tub the tub has a lovely cow print
on it and it's also removable outside of the bus i can take this tub outside and
use my little hose that normally sits up here and i can fill the bath outside and take a bath
outside as well so it's really just dependent on preference this table just simply rolls like this
and then i have a chair that i put underneath and it just sits right here while i take my shower
and when i'm done after i finish draining the tub i can always just move the table right back
to where it needs to go being able to create a space of the wood stove
in the hot bath water and having the nice breeze of like snowy pine trees going through the windows
that was a vibe that i wanted to create so it wasn't just having a tub that i could
take a bath in it was being able to create an experience of having all of those things around
this is my fridge and freezer i chose the dometic brand
i haven't had any issues with this fridge so far it runs off of ac power and dc power
i found this stainless steel sink for 60 dollars and i was able to install it by putting in some
bolts in the legs and then bolting it into the sea rail in the bottom normally it has to be installed
with some flanges up at the top but there's always ways to work around when you can't install
something the way it's meant to be my freshwater tank is 33 gallons and behind here in this corner
is my hot water heater and i position this here so that it wouldn't have a lot of piping from
the back end of the propane into the water heater i didn't want to have propane running
throughout my whole place i wanted to keep it in one spot that was pretty important to me
and i have this emergency window that completely opens up and on the outside when i completely
open it up i can fill up my water tank really easily which is also pretty important to me
in my kitchen area i decided that i needed to have my
oven i need to bake my cookies i need to bake my muffins
this kitchen area was really important to me to kind of nail with the french country concept
so when i found this dilapidated touch on the side of the road i decided that i was going to
vamp it back up and i added this really pretty mosaic tile on the top the
completed look is brought with some pendleton fabric i also use the pendleton fabric on all
of the curtains and the curtains are handmade as well these curtains have little rivets which
my upholstery friend who works on boat showed me these and you can just put the rivet in any
fabric and then it has the second piece which you can just snap up really easy it's better than
velcro and blue don't recommend that heat temperatures are too much going into the bed
area part of the french theme was using doors to separate living spaces
and i decided to use two doors to sandwich and create the walls to make more of a day lofted bed
it's nice because it can fit me and my dogs and i have these lovely pearl lights
on the top which are used almost all the time so what do you think
let's take a look at my battery system and all the different components i have this is my
battery area you can see my two lithium batteries and i built a little box around it with cushion
ac converter is in the back and that's mounted to a c rail on a board and then this guy right
here is my shore power and then i have my dc to dc charger and my solar controller in the back
i have one 330 watt solar panel this is one of the systems it took me a long time to
figure it out but once everything was in front of me and i ordered the components
it was a lot easier to kind of put everything together with other people's assistants
thanks for watching this week's video please make
sure to like share and subscribe and i will see you soon with another unique home tour
you