hey guys jenna here welcome to my channel where i feature tiny and unique home tours and showcase
stories of people living alternatively today's tiny tour features the story of chris and brandy
who after decades of work were tired of the rat race and looking for a big change
they always knew that they were happiest when traveling so they downsized and renovated a
school bus into a beautiful traveling tiny home the interior is surprisingly spacious
with a 15 inch roof raise and all of the same finishes and furnishings that you'd find in a
traditional home so it feels super cozy on the inside but the front yard is constantly changing
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but right now let's jump right in and take a tour of this beautiful school bus home
hi i'm chris and i'm brandi excited to share with you our school bus senor bussenstein
before we moved into the bus we both had full-time jobs you know we had a house with a fenced-in
backyard what most americans aspire to have and we had that we just got to a point where we
had done it for so long we both worked full time essentially since we were 19 20 years old we were
tired of it we just weren't happy just didn't feel like we ever had any free time outside of that you
know one week two weeks a year where we would get to travel and we just decided we wanted to figure
out a way to travel more and that was when we were happiest was traveling yeah being able to get out
and and see mountains and desert and ocean is just something that we've loved to do together
i got into home remodeling and construction in my early 20s i've been doing it for about 23 years so
in building out our tiny home on wheels we really wanted to feel like a house and that's what i
knew how to do anyway so for me it wasn't really any other way than to just build it like a house
i think i put probably 30 000 into the remodel
and then we probably put another 10 to 12 000 i'd say in mechanical repairs
our inside maybe 200 square feet but our outside is enormous
and beautiful and has endless opportunities
we're here on the outside of senor busenstein this is a 37 foot long international amtran with
a dt466e and an allison 2000 transmission that was one of the main reasons we picked this bus just
longevity and reliability of these motors plus it's got plenty of power we do tow a full-size
truck behind this has no issues at all with that one of the things that i don't love about having
a dog nose or conventional bus is the turning radius is is pretty big compared to some of the
flat fronts so that's one thing to keep in mind if you're looking at doing one of these buses
we have a 75 gallon water tank and our diesel tank is 60 gallons the bus weighs 21 400 pounds fully
loaded with a full tank of water and a full tank of diesel as far as mileage we typically
get anywhere between six and a half miles a gallon all the way up to nine miles a gallon it
really just depends on the terrain whether we're pulling through mountains or we're in flat land
so we named our bus senior bus and steen and a nod to our favorite television show the office
there's an episode in which jim's trying to load boxes onto a truck calls it senor lodenstein so
that's kind of a play on that it was just a fun way for us to reference our love for that show
for the paint job on the bus we did brush and roller it's all rust-oleum paint we did gloss
white on the roof light machine gray underneath and this is a custom mix of a sea foam green that
my wife picked out we ended up putting in nine rv windows and two skylights for a total of 11
openings not including the windshield so it gives us a lot of natural light inside when we want it
our bus originally came with three underbody storage bays two on this side one on the other
side this house is a gray tank for our kitchen sink this is mostly leveling blocks and tools
i did add another storage box here needed more space for tools hoses electrical cords that sort
of thing on our bus we have a 30 amp electrical system so anytime that we're plugged into shore
power or running a generator that plugs in here i have a fresh water gravity fill this
is how we fill our fresh water tank and then for those rare occasions when we have
access to running city water for a long time i do have a city water inlet as well i have a
series of valves underneath the bed that i have to turn if we want to run off of city water it works
for us but it is a little bit complicated to get the system switched back and forth
so on the back of the bus we still have the original emergency exit door
which allows us to have essentially a garage we've got quite a bit of storage here under our bed
so we use these totes to keep things organized we have about six of these under here
as well as our fresh water tank and our batteries are under the bed as well
we do have a locking system on the inside i don't have an external lock but we have a
pretty primitive system just a u-bolt that locks around the lever so no one can get in when we're
asleep at night so welcome to the roof of our bus we've got four solar panels up here originally
this area had been planned to have a roof deck but we learned pretty quickly on the road that
solar was a much higher priority for us so we added two additional panels so right now we've
got about 1200 watts up here each pair is on its own charge controller i've got one set in parallel
and one set in series on our first couple trips in the bus we didn't have a tow vehicle with us
and we actually would rent a car when we got to a location but it was a real hassle and we knew that
once we went full time we wanted to have something with us at all time this is a 2019 ram 1500 don't
even notice it behind the rig when we're towing and it's a great vehicle for us to travel into
town to get groceries a lot of storage in the bed huge back seat for our dog when we take in places
follow me and we'll check out the inside
welcome to the inside of senior bus and steen aka our home it's our cat gibbs and our cat ziva when
we did the build we wanted to make sure it felt like our house i was comfortable in building
houses and remodeling houses and so everything that i did here is done in a way that i would
have done it on a sticks and bricks as you'll notice we don't have any upper cabinets here we
wanted to keep the space really bright and airy and open feel that was a design choice from the
get-go to keep this nice and high and open so i'm six foot one the bus when we bought it was almost
exactly six foot one on the inside and i knew with insulation and and the ceiling material
i would have been stooped over and it was just something that i really didn't want to do
we did a 15 inch roof raise we went back and forth on that and ultimately just decided to
pull the trigger and do it aside from having that head space to be able to stand up comfortably
it just feels bigger feels more like a home to us so in the cockpit of our schooly we've got
new captains chairs i had a captain's chair for my wife co-pilot seat if you will and then one of
the considerations we had was our cats and making sure that they had a place for their little box
and a place for the food that our dog wouldn't get to it so we did build this box plywood box
keeps their food it's easy to access to refill but the dog cannot get in there to get their food when
we're in transit we typically move it out of the way dog likes to lay here when we're driving and
then behind the driver's seat i have a little door the cats go into a compartment under the couch
where we keep their litter box and there's a door opens in the front slides out for easy maintenance
so in our living space we knew we wanted a large oversized couch so we went with a full
seven foot long this is actually a queen futon mattress that's just folded up it does turn into
a queen bed if we need it but typically this is the state it's in we like to watch tv in
the evenings that it's our favorite way to unwind whether it's the office on dvd or watching movies
or occasionally over-the-air tv so we did put a tv in we've got a dvd player and all our movies
and everything in the cabinet below is just one of the things we enjoy doing in the evenings
here we have our table this is mainly used for eating we can fold it down flip the chairs around
if we're housing guests but it's just a good place to look out at the scenery and enjoy a meal
welcome to our kitchen it's a little small but it's very functional for us
small sink with a faucet we do have a drinking faucet that's got its own filter
we have a two burner propane cooktop it's really worked out well for us
this is a prefab butcher block top from home depot that we stained and sealed with mineral oil
all the cabinets and cabinet doors and drawer faces are hand built by myself our spice racks
here we do have our pantry here so most of our dry food storage is in this cabinet here
i keep all my coffee supplies in the top and then we've got baskets in each bin
for our refrigerator we just went with a 7.6 cubic foot residential refrigerator
bought this at home depot used to be red rattle can spray paint it the color that we chose and
it works really well for us above it we've got extra storage typically it's
chips bread that sort of thing and then the cabinet to the right is our primary clothes
storage so we've each got two of these soft bins pull out and then we share the top basket
so we're here in the bathroom we essentially decided to make this a wet room so we do
have a flushing toilet with a bidet all the walls are waterproof completely behind what
you see what you see is actually tongue and groove cedar that i milled and painted with
an exterior paint and then our floor is a penny tile on a waterproof preformed pan
we have a curved shower curtain right here that gives you a lot of room for a tiny space once
the shower curtain is closed it's about four feet by two and a half feet so really just as big as a
lot of residential showers so here in this angled hallway on the way to the bedroom is where most of
our electronics are housed this corner cabinet has our two charge controllers those wires then feed
into this box under me where my inverter is my ac breakers as well as our dc fuses and then that
all runs in from our batteries which are just on the other side under the bed we did a little jog
in the hallway you step up over the wheel well into this little cozy nook we've got a queen
mattress we added some cargo nets here for extra clothes storage we did think about putting some
cabinetry back here for closed storage but felt that that might make the space a little bit too
constricting and claustrophobic the cargo nets are working great for us
it's not an elegant solution it doesn't look great it was a cheap solution to add more storage and
i highly recommend i mean they work great can hold quite a bit in them
for me it's always i want to see the next thing i want to see the next thing and
being on this journey has kind of taught me to maybe slow that down a little bit and
enjoy where i'm at first and then we'll go to the next thing because that next thing is still going
to be there we talked about it for a long time like should we do this it's it's it's risky i mean
we sold our house we sold most of our stuff but i i wish we had done it sooner i have really bad
anxiety and my anxiety has improved drastically just do it take the leap you can always find a
better view we found it's actually gotten us probably closer together than we were before
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