hi I'm Ryan I'm Morgan hi my name's Ryan I'm Layla and we're the Crabtree's and this is our
Bus, Chittybang Skoolie
the United States Army I was an infantryman then I went to work offshore
and I became an offshore cementer in ultra-deepwater
in the Gulf of Mexico whenever I went to work he he stepped in and became his
stay-at-home dad we're too few odd jobs traveling with them being in the
military just office management stuff I was also a wife of a veteran - been
married almost about 14 years actually anniversary yesterday just had our
anniversary we've been through a lot in our life like most people everybody has
their challenges you can walk away from them and take that experience and turn
it into something or not and we've always been people who can face I think
any challenge we thought we found the home of our dreams and
a couple of days after Thanksgiving in a fireplace malfunctioned it was about six
months old at the time caused a whole 100% loss
stuff that kind of started a journey of having to rebuild things we were just
dealing with a lot of bullshit it was dealing with banks and insurance
contractors contractors and trying to get the house built back the way it
needed to get built and a lot of things went wrong so it was a bittersweet but
we moved in and we filled it with more stuff even better than before you know
we thought we were filling this void it seemed like in our life one night I had
lost my job we're trying to figure out what could we do differently that didn't
involve both of us having to go work a corporate life and he was retired at the
time we knew that we enjoyed being together we enjoyed we're being with our
kids and we still had started homeschooling and we just didn't want to
be a part and we didn't want our kids to grow up with both their parents go on
working we have all these great things no time you know they're gonna get old
and you know then we're gonna have nothing but time and no kids so they're
gonna be having their own families so we really just did it to get closer to them
I guess find where we belong build our future instead of consuming our future
and not relying on other people to do it that's one night we started looking into
the tiny houses and the bus just seemed to fit everything that we wanted and a
lot of people quit and a lot of it's really hard because it's a lot to take
on it took us about a year to sell our house we had got the bus a few months
after we put it up for sale and then we just started selling all of our big
furniture things that we didn't really need
she took about a year and a half to build and she's a 99 front nose
international Genesis and she's 40 feet long we flat noses we added three feet
to the rear to extend the frame we have no prior real building experience at all
we pretty much did YouTube University to figure it out so far we've been in it
for almost a year and we've been able to pull up anywhere and as long as we have
water we can power the electricity the TV fans the only thing we can't do is
run the air conditioner that we just installed and the bus was kind of the
main thing that you know gave us the confidence to really realize that we can
be
you can dream it you can build it this had it like obviously any bus it had a
bus door on there hold I'm gonna get a beer man all right so the front door we
did have a bus store we went we went to ebay and we found the cheapest door you
could find online I think it cost about $250 already do it again I would've got
the cheapest door I would have got something a little nicer but also make
sure you level your door how didn't do that we we really didn't do much on the
paint job we didn't sand everything down I'm not a body guy don't really care
about doing paint jobs so we just did it was a two hundred dollar rust-oleum
paint job is what it you know ended up costing us we found these little latches
on ebay for about eight bucks we use a piano hinge welded it to steel found these
boxes on Amazon or Ebay they're about a hundred dollars and then we welded the
frames on to the actual frame of the bus there's two here there's two over here
on this side then there's two more on the other side so a total of six and
then we ended up building out our own battery box so we made that out of steel
we got all new tires we actually put the tires on ourself and man that's a pain
I'll let somebody do that next time that's a that's a full-time job here's a
vent for the refrigerator and then we got another vent on top I want to give
them some really good love on this they've been awesome
Precision Temp RV 550 I think is what it is we've had maybe two issues with this
called the company up and they literally sent me on a new one no questions asked
it was so easy precision temp I recommend they're good
we used steel I think it's 16 gauge steel to cover all the windows and I
probably want to use the 16 gauge steel I'll probably go to some more thinner
sheet metal it's just easier to work with and I
we have anywhere between 300 400 to 500 pounds extra just using that heavier
gauge still added a city water line and so on the inside I actually just have
two ball valves and that way I can run city water straight or I can turn the
ball valves again to where now I'm just using my RV pump so that helps out a lot
so over here on the left side that's the custom toolbox that we built and we have
a lot of tools in the back of that and over here it's a little custom gym
locker what do we call it and we have our propane we have for just normal
barbecue propane bottles and at the bottom this generator fits down there up
here and we have a winch that attached this to this ramp and then that'll close
everything up in the back we have an LED light bar on the back LED light bar on
the front if people are telling you don't buy a cheaper LED light bar they
don't know what they're talking about buy the cheaper stuff it just takes some
caulk and get around all the seams and you'll be fine over here we have filters
I only needed two of these and I ended up getting three just to make sure but
two is honestly all I really needed these are to just I guess pleated
filters they look like a roll of toilet paper and then this one's a carbon
filter for taste and smell this is a it's called on-the-go portable water
softener this works actually really well I'm pretty happy with that you see more
steel window covering this is a 50-amp service line and then right here is the
exhaust for we have a 40-foot boat heater that we put in here that works
really well in the wintertime here are the two other
bays right here that I was telling you about we call them our basements and
then this comes lockdown right now but that's where the four batteries go the
CR 260 I do recommend if you're going to do a school bus conversion rip and gut
everything out on the inside and we probably had about 40 pounds of wire
that we actually ripped out at the inside of the school bus this is
Morgan's garden she likes keeping this thing she's had him for the last year
it's made in the Pacific Northwest and now we're in Arizona and it's still
working for us no she's proud of
we custom-built everything that you see the couches this one is adjustable it
pulls out into a bed it's actually pulled out a little bit right now
because it's just more comfortable we also have storage underneath I have a
bunch of books underneath this one has our table underneath it which we don't
use so it probably wouldn't do that again but we do have storage underneath
these do not pull out I think we might change that in the future all my
curtains have reflectix inside you can hear it it keeps these
best windows a little better insulated because they're not RV windows but I
think they work really really well I'm keeping cold out and heat out
depending on the season whatever you want to accomplish we decided to go with
the corrugated metal ceilings it fit the roof a lot better the curve it was a lot
easier to work with that's one of the struggles in school a building is that
nothing's square everything is off a little bit so if you notice like how we
even trace we profile scribed all the walls to kind of fit the corrugated
pattern so that did take some time we used a tool called the perfect butt for
that and works really really great we also decided to go with LED light strips
because we weren't really sure what we were doing when we were doing electrical
electrical wasn't after thought we knew it was an afterthought which is why all
the outlets are sticking outside instead of flush we did also decide to go with
these really great ports because everybody has electronic devices so we
put him in the most usable spaces also the cabinets are all custom built Ryan
did all these himself the countertops are granite and after a year they
haven't cracked or anything the only thing I'll have to do is probably just
recaulk the seams but with all the twisting and turning and traveling it's
actually done really really well this door is new a trash can pop out and
we had put a fancy design on all the cabinet doors which
the hinges wouldn't hold very well so my door kind of fell apart so we ended up having to
to redo this but I do like this door a lot better so I think we're actually
gonna redo all the cabinets with this and we also want to add some shelves
across the top as well just to kind of give us some more storage space and then
we used IKEA for organizing tiny spaces they have
really awesome awesome options as far as that goes we also have a ro system this
is a reverse osmosis faucet where we are drinking water from there's actually
three filters on here on the bottom and then two extra filters up top and
there's also a five gallon pressurized tank and this all came from Amazon and
then we also afterwards added this UV light so as soon as the RO water comes
on this light shoots on and it kills any last minute germs that might be in the
system on on contact there's also parts per million meter so it tells us how
many parts per million that's coming in I think it's about 530 right now and
then after all the filters it gets it down to 45 there is a lot of waste water
that comes from the RO system it's always purging but I'm okay with that
because I know that the water that we're drinking is really clean and the other
addition that we have is also this new air conditioner we still have to add the
ceiling panel for it I think we're gonna go with a copper piece from Home Depot
it's an Atwood 150 26 model and it was really easy to install it's works really
really great in this space we also went with mostly RV appliances this is an RV
it's a norcold it runs on propane or electric we also went with the Atwood
like wood vision through burner stove we keep all of our breads our coffee mugs
kind of some random drying paintbrushes it sits up here this is actually a
Dickinson propane furnace it's actually made for boats and it works really well
I don't mind it it does we still do have some cold spots kind of throughout the
house and it's just like a long hallway but
typically we'll have floor heaters going and we're plugged in to kind of help
move that hot air around too and this is actually our old roommates pergo
flooring that we reused and so far the only thing that has fallen and travel
right here is the smear that I have sitting there after a year that's not
too bad so we'll just glue that one back up and
then we decided to go with this stone to kind of help capture some of that heat
and it will radiate whenever it's off so there's a little bit of method to the
madness with everything that we've planned and coming on back here this is
the bathroom area and the bunk room we have a curtain that kind of sections
this off so when you're using the bathroom we're taking a shower you can
kind of have this whole place back here step out into the hallway and dry off
we went with the nature's head composting toilet which has worked
really well and this is my utility closet also doubles as a Halloween
costume holding area and eclectic mix of music instruments and art stuff but the
main operation of this is my my solar power and right now my batteries are
charging they're up to 93 percent it's not even noon yet and you can you know
check out my page to see how I wired it and everything and we keep this cover -
just in case of moisture and condensation from the bathroom it kind
of protects the electronics equipment here ok so this is the bunk room we have
all the kids stuff and toiletries and such behind this curtain which curtains
are great to hide things this is their bunk area um my oldest she has the top
bunk my youngest is down here she has an animal net kind of keeps all of her toys
together you can tell our dogs she likes to sleep up here to you which is why
it's kind of all torn up down here but it's important they have their own space
they have their own areas they can get away from everybody in that I think is
so important in a tiny space is sectioning off everybody having their
there their room because you're kind of always around each other which is great
but you know everybody needs their personal time every now
and we also went with Rock Climbing Walls instead of a typical ladder
because these are just more fun and then this is the master bedroom
and this is where all the magic happens in the bus and it also houses our
storage tanks me love the mastiff her beds down here as well we do house to
one hundred gallon tanks under here this is my closet of all my stuff and my
sewing I have everything fit back here for girls and such and then Ryan's is
over here on this side we have a TV we have a WD player with a bunch of movies
Xbox so the kids can come back here and play we could be in the front watching
movies you know so if it is a rainy day or if it's just you know too cold to go
outside we do have the comforts of any normal house and then also mirrors I
feel I feel like that opens up the space as well so it's like a little nest back
here but once as soon as everything is opened up and just really I think it
feels like really homey and welcoming I feel like when you DIY something you're
just never done so we'll continue to keep building Chitty Bang and she'll
continue to keep taking us places I guess as long as we want to do this
lifestyle
things I would do differently is I would definitely decrease the weight I would
raise the roof on the bus definitely we have to 100 gallon water tanks to be
honest we only need 150 gallon water tank I guess some advice that I would
give to windy school a tiny house builders if you're married you're gonna
fight probably every day if you call that hammer that thing or that screw
that twisty guy we always prided ourselves on our
communication but this was a whole nother challenge take your time don't
get in a rush do tons of research plan plan and then plan again and plant some
more it's kind of like you know measure twice cut once that's what she says all
right guys I hope you enjoyed the video today if you want to follow Morgan and
Ryan Crabtree they have instagram facebook youtube everything and what's
up names we have instagram is at thecrabshomestead we have facebook that's
@ChittyBangSkoolie the website is www.thecrabshomestead.com
and I'll throw links to all that in the description below so you can go ahead and follow them
On all their social media. If you enjoyed the video guys give it a thumbs up
subscribe to the channel if you haven't already, and until next time guys, i'll see you later.