hey there welcome to my channel where i take you on tours of tiny homes creative homes
and share stories of the nomadic movement in today's video we're actually going to tell a
story about someone who was upsizing into a tiny house sam started out living out of his backpack
but now he lives in a renovated school bus that he was able to convert for just ten thousand dollars
sam makes his living as a traveling artist and i recently commissioned him
to sculpt a juniper tree out of copper wire for me as some of you might know my daughter's name
is juniper so this piece means a lot to me and i gave him total creative freedom
so he decided to add the rock himself which i absolutely love
so let's take a tour of sam's renovated school bus and learn what it's like to be
a traveling artist and if you like these kind of videos don't forget to subscribe
and hit that notification bell so that you know every single time i publish a new tour
hey i'm sam and welcome to the serendipity bus
when i was just a kid you know even before i could drive i was spending a lot of time
outdoors and in nature that led me to hike on the pacific crest trail so i did 2600 miles
of backpacking and over five months you really learn how to travel how to just be really mobile
so when i found this bus i was just driving down the highway and it's on the side of
the road with a for sale sign and i could see the the possibilities
i've had this rig since basically 2016. i really enjoyed just having the bus empty and working with
the open space and like a blank canvas it can feel like an overwhelming task but when you
set an overall goal it helps to work then backwards from there
and say okay here's the priorities putting in that labor that sweat equity it's worth it my bus
was three thousand dollars when i got it another couple thousand you know in terms of necessities
financially i do a lot of odd jobs and i just try to live really simply selling artwork is
becoming my main focus and drive i've got a lot of different creative outlets and i
do photography and i've been doing different wire wrapped artwork i love to just work with whatever
materials i can find you know that are oftentimes overlooked or that need to be utilized instead of
just thought of as trash or scrap the bus itself is really like a canvas of that lifestyle you know
i wanted to create something that allowed me to have functionality artwork and room to live
this is a 77 ford b500 it's a five window bus the bus overall is about 28 feet with the
motorcycle and everything on there it's really capable off-road it's got low gearing in it
and it just allows it to crawl over stuff and i've gone some places i probably shouldn't have gone in
a school bus my bus comes prepared i've got a 10 000 pound winch on the front so that i can pull
other people out which is basically all i've ever used it for snow ice sand it doesn't matter it's
an amazing tool so this is my smoke stack for my wood stove and i just take it down when i need to
travel so that panel that i created fits into the window and is all sealed off and holds the chimney
in place keeps everything from lighting on fire i chose to just do this setup because certain times
a year you don't even need to have the wood stove plus it's a hole in the roof and that's gonna leak
every single time it's really hard to seal so i'll take all this down when i travel but then
also i'll just take the whole wood stove out of the bus in the summer and enjoy that extra space
my bike is a 2011 suzuki drz-400 just like the bus i've totally built it out to be a really
independent unit so i can put all my gear on the bike i've got a whole independent tool kit
and i love to just hop on this thing the efficiency and the speed is 10 times
what a bus is so you can just save some gas and explore everywhere that i want
anything wrong with the bus or for some reason you know you got a good parking
spot you don't want to lose it just drop this thing down and and head off
underneath the motorcycle is the rack that holds it and that's something that me and my pops came
up with and using this chain hoist it actually is a two-piece construction and the whole thing
drops down to the ground so i don't need any ramps or anything and i can just easily
balance my motorcycle there while i'm getting it strapped down and then bring it right back up
up here in the front i've got my hood ornament that i added which is my howling wolf
which really means a lot to me when i'm going down the road and just like watching that
and having that projecting forward as you know the essence that i'm bringing
but the whole front of the bus is super classic very much the same style that they used since like
the 60s so this thing gets a lot of attention just because it is old and it looks even older
so one of my favorite additions that i've done on my bus is fabricating this into one single door
and so it is a matter of building a frame that can support them
and then adding a handle just like a standard door and you're all set
welcome to the inside of the bus this is where i've created my happy place to be able to hang
out i really wanted to focus on the woodworking in this build and try to make it nice but also
try to make it really durable wood is great for a lot of things it's very lightweight
and with the right engineering and joint work and stuff you can make it strong
and so a lot of this is all framed internally and then just covered by the finished wood that makes
it look nice and allows for everything to function properly in the very back i've got my bathroom
slash closet and actually this is where i started my build i wasn't going to do my very best work
initially so i started back here made the door and then realized by the time i get to the kitchen
or the front how i want to do it right and so this is kind of like the beginnings as it were
but i've got my door full length mirror little port-a-john bathroom and then i can store all
sorts of stuff here in the bathroom and just close the door keep the bus clean and hide stuff away
there's such a little amount of space in a bus that all your doors obviously have to be able
to swing open given this width i decided to go with bi-fold closet doors which allow me to just
get past here still and have a lot more ease of access definitely loved being able to hang up all
my clothes and but then also just throw things in here make them disappear so i've got enough
room in here that i can hang up all my clothes and jackets and store motorcycle helmets and exercise
equipment and everything in there so down below that is where i've got my drawers of stuff and
those all are secured when i'm driving so that they don't roll around and then all of this is
all custom made by me so you can't buy doors like this but you can make them if you know
the size and know how to work with materials to make that double hinge function properly
so here in the back i wanted to create a space that was a lot more private than
in the front and so i've got blinds that i can drop down over this back window and then over
the rest i added this privacy film which is really nice because it lets the light in but
you just can't see through it and so when i'm back here it can really just be like my zone
in the past i had my bed mounted up high and it's cold near the windows that visibility
is weird all that and so i definitely wanted to have it at a height that would allow me to
be comfy down here and almost be like down below the line of the windows this bed will also fold
up murphy style under these cabinets so that i can have a lot of room back here for bikes or for more
storage anything like that so for my dinette table i wanted to have something that not only
was a little bit of a surface but allowed for storage inside of it so it's about six inches
deep and that allows for the table itself to kind of cover everything the leg that supports
it also fits right inside and you've got a dinette table got a nice space for working i can do photo
editing or different things that i need to here on my monitor and it makes a nice useful space
this is my wood stove which i use a lot in the winter and just that heat from a wood burning fire
is the only way to make just the whole bus hot and so i love this thing it's something that i
custom made as well it's able to fit a full length piece of firewood so i don't have to
cut my firewood down into little blocks and then that also allows it to run for quite a while
i did have to fabricate it so that it would be at the height that i wanted which allows me to store
some firewood here underneath and then also at the right height so that the chimney can come up
and then be at an angle to go up out of this panel that i made the panel has a matching shape
to the top lip of the window it actually clips onto it put the window all the way down
and then put it up a click and it holds it in place securely
so a couple of my favorite things about my kitchen was just to keep it really
simple and so i didn't want to have a real elaborate setup i wanted something utilitarian
with a strong edge where i can just put stuff here on the counters if i need to
but i also wanted to be sure and have my tall counter so many buses the counter at the window
is such a low angle that it's hard to to do a lot of chopping or whatever you might need to do and
so this surface alone lets me have just so much more real estate but then of course it's got to
fold out of the way so that it's not a problem later and then i just try to keep everything
simple you know you got water down here storage and my fresh and gray tank
so it's really important to maximize every inch of available space so i've got my countertops built
back a little bit further than where my closet is which allows me to have this really nice storage
that i made for spices and teas and that sort of thing and utilize this space that would otherwise
kind of be hard to access or would maybe be unsightly so this just disappears right into the
wall there and makes for a nice storage of all the little stuff everything in the kitchen
bounces around everything in the whole bus bounces around so it was important to have latches on all
my cabinets that would make sure that nothing falls out while i'm driving down the road
so up here in front i've got my captain's chair and i mounted that onto a swivel
so here up front is where i can command this vessel from and so i've got my eight ball
shifter my classic d8 gauges tachometer i put this aftermarket steering wheel on there just because
you don't need a big steering wheel for a bus and it's a lot more comfortable for driving it
i highly recommend doing something that will be comfortable for you when you're going down the
road i also have my cb radio and then my control panel which i've rewired to kind of have what i
want right now which is my wipers my wiper delay and then basically lights and heaters so i don't
have ac in this bus but i do have something that's pretty cool which is a hood vent that
goes straight to the inside so when i'm going down the highway now i can get air blasting right down
through here i've never seen any other buses with them i mean there's an old school thing for sure
but i don't think ac was an option in the 70s not on a school bus i've got a mirror here that
actually doubles as a rear-facing camera and a forward-facing camera so that allows me to see my
motorcycle and see what's going on back there know if i'm gonna crash into something i use a lot of
different navigation tools and so map and compass is what i learned how to navigate with and it's
more than just navigating it's about knowing where you are knowing how you got there and how you're
going to get to the next place and so if you can read a map you can really find some amazing places
geography is destiny and you're either going to be choosing where you're at or it's going to be
chosen for you and so if you have the ability to live nomadically you are able to choose that
destiny choose that spot so being in a bus or being a nomad is kind of like being a hummingbird
and we can fly around and we can actually travel like long long distances and then we can hover in
place and just you know enjoy that like nectar of life basically and then fly along to a new place
i don't know about you but artists like sam really inspire me to spend more of my free
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i will see you soon with another tiny house or creative home tour