Couple Sells House & Builds A School Bus Conversion In 4 Months Costing Under $16k

Hi guys, I'm Chase, I'm María José and this is our bus. Uncle adventure means uncle adventure in Spanish. I am from Venezuela. I moved here four years ago and almost five, we met and started living together and decided to buy a

school

bus yes I'm originally from the east part of Tennessee Knoxville, she and I met when we lived in Madison Wisconsin we were both working and Now we had the opportunity to come back here in Nashville and she came with me, yeah, and then one day. I went to work and I hated it and I texted her and said let's buy a bus, so there were a

couple

of non-negotiables between me and her and one for her was her makeup.

I'm sure she'll talk about it for me. she was a hammock, I love my eno, I've always had my eno with me wherever I go, let me see if I can undo it here, so we found these really awesome clips and then we screwed them into the ribs of the bus and this. Just keeping it out of the way is going to be a struggle, so we kept the mirror again. I like the

school

bus aesthetic and it hides the hammock very, very well. This was a good place of refuge while we built the bus we would open. roll up all the windows we're actually going to have to relax them a little bit, here we go, so yeah, when we were building the bus, this was a good place of refuge, it was hot, you know, June and July, in middle Tennessee, we opened this and we let go of all the windows. the breeze comes in, here we go, so we roll down all the windows, this holds the weight perfectly secured right in the strongest part of this bus, relax, so when it's not 40 degrees outside we can roll the windows down again and you know, relax here. you could sleep in, you know, if we have guests and we build this bus with the guests in mind, our couches, which she'll talk about, slide together and then this would fit perfectly on top of it, so we could basically sleep another four people here very comfortably, so we would just set this up on certain occasions, it's not always available, I'm sure when the weather improves when we go west, there will be many situations where this will appear, you know, for the compartment above.

Here all this was original. I know some of them don't have it. I was very excited to see that we do have it. I kept it because it's a very nice space for me to put a fire extinguisher. Our procedures. We are legal. I have my drill battery and I also have a little safe here. I keep the bus receipts from our construction, so there's a few more, but you know it's a good reminder of the money we spent on this, which was. As much as I thought it was going to be, it was a little more than I would have preferred.

We bought the bus on April 6 of this year 2018 and it is not finished yet, but it is fully functional and that took us May, June, July, August, 4

months

. and then the total cost was less than 16,000 which includes bus and tax registration everything so this is the living room area. We decided we had an idea that we wanted separate rooms we didn't want as one area and then we went into privacy as Chase said we want guests to come here so we want them to feel welcome not feel like we are all sleeping together in the same place, so we have two couches here that we can actually throw away.

I'll put them together, I'll probably change that to make it a little bit easier to put them together, so I always need to chase and say, "Hey, I need help." We have some storage, but because it's so hard to get in there, we barely put anything in there, so I actually went to Ikea and then these bed frames had like this weird thing, it's a slab system that we have on each side of the sofa and then we can just fill them up and they'll just present themselves in the middle, we actually made the We cushioned the curtains ourselves, we were going to buy everything, but then we said, you know what, let's just buy a machine and try to make it ourselves like it's a bus school, let's make it as unique and on schedule as possible, so actually everyone told us like you.

I'm crazy, it's so hard I hate sewing and we thought now we really love it, we bought the machine and now we're trying to figure it out, okay how could we make this pattern here? So we made the cushions ourselves putting the inside was a little hard, but they have zippers on the sides so you can wash them. My dog ​​already vomited on it, so it can be cleaned up, which is good. We try to put as many stones on the floor, we'll probably get a few more because the floor is a little cold and my dog ​​slips when we drive so it helps keep him in place.

So we have some storage here, which really right now we just have some tools and screws and things that we might need for construction. We also put up some curtains. I didn't want to see all the wire or the type of plastic the bus originally came with, so we just put some wood behind it and covered the wires. We actually drilled a hole behind it. and we can just put the cables to the whole cable system, yeah, that way you know it looks a little bit cleaner and then it's a little bit firmer for the curtains as well.

Back when we first put up the curtains we had wires to hold them together, they didn't look very good but they did the job until we went to Walmart and found these curtain rods for like two dollars and screamed, we bought them all and they work perfectly , they don't look bad. not at all and yes, you can move them if necessary and put them back together very easily. Yes, we made the curtains ourselves. I'm looking for a way to preserve them now. I'm just using a hair tie to bring them up. some light in, but yeah, it was very easy, we actually bought the original curtain from Amazon and then we cut it out and we just measured the size of our windows and they're blackout curtains, they're blackout curtains so it's nice to keep them cool. inside when it's really hot outside and then when we sleep, we don't like the sun to shine through, so in our kitchen instead of building and I'll be honest, instead of building we wanted to buy cabinets for this bus, really, really.

I really pushed the limits of what I know about woodworking and honestly I just build anything so we opted to purchase pre-made pre-made cabinets. Don't do it, honestly, don't do it. Thanks later, if you only knew. Rescued some from Craigslist that were solid wood, absolutely the face on these was white oak, they are from Lowe's and that's what you know, their cabinets are meant to be in a

house

, on something stationary, not something you know suffer obstacles along the way. 65 miles per hour, so I can't say the quality is bad, but the app I put them in was a really bad decision, so the drawers are missing right now because they fell out, but build your own, you know, have a few. extra, you know, there are days to do it right, don't buy, build your cabinets, but we went with an L shape.

We did a bunch of surveys of family members and people on YouTube and everyone said they wanted our refrigerator right here and What did we do exactly the opposite? from what everyone said because we wanted a functional space, we wanted it to be open, we honestly wanted the ease of plumbing, we have the shower right behind here so we could run both lines right from there so the sink here, our stove here and so we wanted a good amount of accessible and accessible space, I guess prep space, if you will, so my biggest point in all of this is to go with the functional, that's what we did instead of what was popular, we love it, you couldn't change it if you wanted to do it and then build your own cabinets, so with the refrigerator it runs on our solar system, we wanted a completely residential refrigerator because our intention is to explore as much as possible in very remote areas, so we want enough custom usable food and supplies.

This was possibly lower energy consumption than most apartment-sized refrigerators we had seen and was significantly cheaper. I got this at a discount while it was still working fine. Thank you, better purchase. Yeah, I paid like $250 for this. refrigerator um black stainless steel still worked perfect with the design we were surprised it fit it was fun to see everyone at Best Buy just pushing it through the little door but it's here it's working we took the doors off of that so they didn't get scratched perfectly and we didn't have We had to load it where we bought it, at best we stopped the bus and they loaded it for us so that was a huge benefit and they were excited to see the inside of the bus. so we thought, well, if you help, you'll be able to see the bus, so it worked out perfect.

So we have a cabinet, we bought the countertop from Ikea, we chose a gray color because we already had different colored wood on the floor and we wanted to keep it simpler and more neutral, as you can see inside the box, we have very neutral colors, we don't have many colors flashy just because we prefer something that is cleaner, so if we want to add color. other things we totally can and won't be able to be more into something that's just brilliant, we want to put velcro on things, but I want to finish the whole kitchen and then decide what I want to put with velcro.

At the moment, everything goes in the sink while we drive and it's easy enough for me to put it away. In fact, the design we have for the kitchen worked perfectly. I have plenty of prep space. We only have a two burner two burner two burner turbine because there are only two of us, to be honest we don't need much, more or less two is what we used in our

house

before, when we have the big house, we have like four and never the we use. I probably use one so that's the perfect size, we have a larger one in the back and a smaller one in the front and it worked perfect for us.

Then we got the sink, we actually got it at ikea and we saw it and fell in love. Well, perfect, it's going to fit amazing, we picked it up there and then we went to the damaged part of Ikea, you know, it's 50 off and everything, and we found it there, so we left the good one and took the zero. but it was perfectly fine, it was just a scratch because it was on display, but it all worked, we actually have it there, yeah, the same as this one was there too, you know, we have the deep sink, it's very nice to store it while we drive, but really It is useful to know that the most useful thing is to wash the dishes immediately after using them and put them back, so you know, as long as you are on top of cleanliness and order, you really won't.

I need a big sink, but it's good for storing things, so you can say that, so of course we use the sink to store things when we drive, but it's also very good because it's deep and we can just clean the dishes right away. and try to clean it and keep it as nice as possible because it's a smaller place, that was one of my conditions. I thought okay, we're going to live in a school bus, but we're going to try to keep everything in its place. I do not want to live. in a disaster and I feel frustrated being on the bus, I really want to enjoy being on the bus.

Also the nice thing about the sink is that we have a little chihuahua that we have to bathe and that is going to fit perfectly, so we chose the deepest and largest sink and we still have plenty of space for preparation, so for storage in the back top we only put the security to keep it close, it hasn't opened at all while we were driving, you can tell we haven't eaten. At the bus party we still buy new things, so we are still trying to figure out where to store everything. We have some cups and bowls in there, in this area we have to cut it to fit the curve and the ceiling, so we have to make sure it was extra secure, we already have the problem here, we didn't want everything to fall apart, so it's pretty good in there, I will say I just have some storage in there for cooking and prepping, but it takes a little while to figure it out, like you know in your house you just like to put it in there and then you're like, oh, it works better here, so it's like you have to work to see how it will work best.

To be honest, it's been a big area for me because we have a lot to store and the kitchen is pretty much the largest storage area in the kitchen area, but we actually bought some dividers, I'll say as organizers they're on Amazon and we can save them. All of our canned food and dry food, so we're still trying to figure that out as well, but we're doing our best to keep everything where it needed to be initially to fit the curvature of the bus, which is incredibly difficult. We did something very similar to this with self-tapping screws and toggle bolts where we re-drill, push in our toggle bolts to secure the wood, essentially the base plate, if you will, with the toggle bolts and then self-thread them at various points and then we reinforced the inside of the cabinet with wood and then we just mounted it directly to the face board we madeand then after about 600 miles on the road this started to loosen and move a little so we added the secondary support underneath which should have been done from the beginning, in hindsight we would have preferred if you knew how to just build the cabinets on the curvature of the wood and hold them or in the curvature of the ceiling and hold them this way to start, like this in the refrigerator.

We have too much space, we could actually store most of our dishes and tupperware and still have enough space for now, but we have stayed downtown where a family lives so they can cook for us, yes, so we don't have to. I have a ton of that, but January comes around and right before that we're going to need all the space we actually have, so it's nice, I didn't mention how it's powered, so it's powered by the solar system. We have 800 watts on top. They are 100 watt monocrystalline panels that we wanted mono.Poly, I know there are a

couple

of other types of things, but we went with mono panels.

We have 500 amp hour batteries, those are Agm. I think they're not necessarily what we need, so I think we're actually buying batteries right now. As painful as it is to shell out the money, lithium will be the way we'll want to go and honestly, we're looking at a much larger battery bank just for our battery needs. As we grow, we will add some additional things. We want to have the option to run the air eventually, even if it's for an hour or two a day, but we don't know that we don't have any of that installed because of the weather and temperatures that we are in now and at that time they are powered from DC to AC through the walls with a 4000 watt Ames power inverter with the wood stove.

This was something I absolutely had to have. I don't know, I was as interested in it as I was at the beginning and now I love it, but I wanted it for two reasons. Wood heat. I grew up with a wood stove in my house and it was one of my fondest memories. sitting by the fire, the dog sitting by the fire, but two, I wanted it because I mean it's a natural heat source, you can go out and chop some firewood, you can buy ricks and bundles of wood and you know, aesthetically, this thing is beautiful, it fits the space perfectly, so those were really the reasons why I wanted to implement it on a school bus it's a lot harder than you know, just the concept in your head, so, the first one was finding a three-inch stovepipe that is not stainless steel or single-walled.

Because you're going through the roof, you've got some insulation up here, some combustible materials, but once we figured that out, how did we get it? How do we know how to put it in place and make it work? Well, I did it all in about four hours when I actually got down to installing it, so I went to Lowe's and bought this 15 and a half by 15 and a half inch paver, used a masonry bit to drill it, and then put in bolts. from actual carriage bolts to the bottom and tighten the wood stove to the block first I moved it.

I had already cut my hole and used a six inch hole saw. That thing was crazy, good luck finding them and you know when you do. Sorry for your wallet, we were in Wisconsin when we finally found all the stuff, we couldn't find anything in Tennessee, I mean, you know, at least for a small wood stove, but then we secured the block with just real stuff. screws through the floor so it doesn't move and then I built a small decorative piece to hide the screws, but I am absolutely in love with the wood stove, many people complain that the burn time is not extremely long.

But what I discovered is that if you use really nice hardwoods, you can maximize burn times. In large chunks, we cut all of our wood into probably six and a half inch chunks and we can fit some of them, probably three chunks in there. and that will burn for four and a half hours five on a really really really nice hardwood the dogs love it the dogs love it I love it you can feel the heat coming off of it here and we have the front door wide open par the bus and today it's in the 40s so the only thing is that when you go with a small wood stove like this you need the radiant heat fan to push the air that you know in the direction you want otherwise you will have There is a hot spot here and for our design it is difficult to recover air, but over time it fills the entire bus with heat.

She was shooting a video, she was making up videos and it was 24 degrees outside and this was before last year. week yeah we had snow which is strange for us it was about 20 24 26 degrees outside and here we had to take off our coats it was hot it was very hot our ups guy came in when I was delivering packages and I had this working and he even made a comment about how hot it was, so I would say we can do it and we have the walls insulated. We can get a good 35 to 40 degree difference from the outside to the inside.

It depends on how hot we let it burn, you know, if we have all the curtains down, we try to use as much passive solar energy as possible to help heat, you know, and then on the cold side we'll leave the curtains closed. We're blocking the fresh air in and we're also leaving the heaters on, the original bus heaters, yeah we're leaving them on, there's one here, one in the back and then you've got one there so we inspect all the lines very very well before because I know there are some problems where a leak occurs and then you know you have a lot of problems there, but we liked the fact that if we were in a serious pool and the bus was, you know.

By increasing the temperature, we could turn on the heaters and circulate the coolant even further back, so when we drive, we just turn on the heaters. We have a right front, I have one under the seat and then we have one on this wall, actually underneath. the cabinet, but it is not inside the cabinet and vents up the wall and into the bathroom. The bathroom will get very hot while we're driving if we have that heater on and then we have one that actually vents in the back. in two different ways, so it also keeps the rear area warm, but that's only when we drive.

This thing produces enough heat. I wouldn't say it produces too much heat and I can see that for some people this might not be enough if we had moved it further forward, we would have problems keeping the bus warm if we had moved it further back, it would probably be too hot in the bedroom, this is a nice open area for it, so it heats this area very very good, and then with a fan it pushes the heat back, super super nice, it doesn't fold up here, we actually have the table mounted on the wall, it comes off from the wall and then it has hairpin legs that you can open up and they sit perfectly. here between our two couches, okay, now we are here in the bathroom area, our area where we spend most of the time, it's very comfortable back here, that was a big point for us, we wanted to enjoy being on the bus, so that We went with our queen size bed from home from home yes, it is very comfortable, we have everything on top almost everywhere something from Amazon something from the world market yes, we love that store, then we have the wall that divides the living room The garage which chase will take you there in a moment and show you, but we also have some storage on top where we want to build two more because it's a long area and for me it's a little difficult to just open the. one in the middle like curl up and try to grab everything that's there, we don't have a lot of things there right now, just our sewing machine and we like to sew things, but that's pretty much all we have there, so for me, how to chase?

He said there were some things for him that I really needed to put in the box for me, which was my makeup area because I do makeup tutorials so I didn't want to get rid of anything. Also, I'm self-employed, I'm self-employed, so it's going to be more like freelancing and doing my makeup along the way, so this was the area I wanted to keep because I wasn't going to give it away. It's also part of my job, so I love how it looks. It actually fits the room perfectly. I have a pretty good space to record and it looks good, I don't know, we have everything from here from ikea and some storage is not the best, they are already broken, like this is a mess, so it's already broken in half and Chase said it's actually made to be in a house, not a school bus, it moves around and it's full of makeup and sometimes my drawers explode and go everywhere, so we're trying to find a way to keep them closed while We're driving, but we already have that figured out right now, so we actually have this little area here that's more because the TV area, Chase loved to play video games, so he looked for a place to store all of his games and your PlayStation.

It was important, we actually found that on tj maxx and it looks great so we just mounted it there and it's stable for the tv. We actually want to mount it like in a corner because right now it's like in the middle, but yeah, right now. It's just there, but actually eventually, when I got on the corner there, I bumped my shoulder pretty regularly, yeah, and other people who get on the bus do it too, yeah, and every time it happens I get angry underneath from the bed, yes. So it was really vital for us to still have space and we went from a very large house for two people to an area that is functional in all the ways that we need it, but we know that it is important that we still keep the things that feel like home and that You know, keeping our passions and our hobbies alive like I have my didgeridoo, I have my guitar on the wall, she has her makeup space, she let me have a Playstation, not that I use it here, but you know, and Then having a lot of storage space was also very important to us, so actually, in a small space, we have more storage than we really need right now, which is great, but that's only because when we decide to go small, We really committed. 100 to that, for reference, we had large walk-in closets and essentially we had walk-in closets in every room, every room was completely furnished with dressers and drawers and every closet was full of clothes, it was completely full of clothes and shoes, every drawer was I filled my clothes with clothes clothes and the guest rooms, his clothes and the walk-in closets, and we downsized to where we could add things to our closets now in this small space, but we're still trying to keep him a little more responsible for each item. we buy, we have to give away, so it makes you think if I really want it, there's something I don't like as much, so we're trying to keep it more balanced and actually keep what we really need and we did that. one and two because eventually we would reach zero and you know that we are lucky to have everything we have ever needed in life, yes, and you know that right now I still have more clothes than I need and instead of taking Buy As a hobby, if I really need a nice winter coat because we're in a place where you know something isn't keeping us warm, I can go buy one now, but I don't have one because I don't need one yet.

Another thing with the storage, I'll show you here, we have the bed on struts, no, I have it with our 100 gallon water tank in the back, it fits perfectly in the space, it's nice because you know it has all the stuff in it. around. Well, as you know, the bus is heating up, you know how to keep it from freezing and then we have a bunch of extra decorative pillows, you know, a tabletop oven, since we only chose the stove and then some other storage things that we didn't I use them so often that's why they are under the bed but it's nice to have that space, it's on struts that help us lift it up but they don't keep it up and now for storage we choose to have it close on this side. the hallway was eventually going to be a washer and dryer, it was going to be a washer and dryer area, but we decided we'd rather keep it for storage for now, we'd really rather just park somewhere and go do laundry.

We won't be able to use it if we're not connected or if we don't like the whole process, so why just have it? You know, with the classes, we actually built it ourselves, of course, like almost everything else, it was a bit of a problem because they'll do it. It opens when we were driving and if we put the locks on, the other type of locks will open anyway, so we went with this one, which you just turn it and then you can open it very easily, that's the other problem with this one that you have. to open all the closets so we can open that one, we have pretty much all of Chase's clothes left in here, we just have a few extra jackets and we put our tripod and camera equipment on the other side, it's mine and I keep someshoes on the bottom and also my clothes and that's pretty much all I have now so that was a big help because they don't look bumpy.

I would say they don't take up much space and we can fit a lot. of things on them and they have worked perfect, eventually we will paint it, we would do it white, but then we thought it was too much white, so we went with an oak stain and we loved it, it actually looks rustic. I pretty much said I didn't want a rustic look, but in the end I like it because it brings out some of the colors in them, actually wood, some greens, blues and grays. I really like it because it matches the floor.

Well, here we're going to have another closet area, but it was too small for it, so we'll probably just build some shelves and have like a shoe rack or we can put little things in to store them, and that's nice. almost everything for our closet area this is our bathroom we have a lot of space for it to be in a school bus and we designed it that way in particular on the opposite side of this wall there is a hallway and the hallway for some people can be a little tight I don't rub on either side and that's perfect I don't hit my head and I don't necessarily have to bend over too much but that was a sacrifice for us to have our own personal sanctuary you know wake up take a shower You know, shower before bed we wanted something in which that we could move and we wanted to be beautiful, so we covered the shower with marble and subway tiles and found the shower tray in some kind of scrap yard.

It sounds strange, there's a very eccentric guy in middle Tennessee named Tink, he has hundreds of acres full of reclaimed products that he buys bulk truckloads full of from Lowe's and Home Depot and contractors and stuff like that, so we picked up our shower pan because it was about 35, and the next closest we could find was about 140 of this size, the shower rod that we made or the shower curtain rod that we made ourselves with a pipe bender and some tubing and, uh , it's only set on, you know, two. points on the roof and it moves if you move it, but that's just the metal on the roof, you know, the sheet metal on the roof bends but it hasn't fallen off, it's very safe for what it is and yes, we put a lot of thought into it. space for the bathroom because this is a very good place to relax and unwind we wanted to be functional we wanted to be beautiful and comfortable the downside to this would be our floor and we haven't talked about the floor yet it's beautiful it was relatively inexpensive and I think I was thinking covering the floor of a house instead of covering the floor of 250 square feet of a school bus when I went to buy it and, as you know, I was shocked by many things, so I ended up choosing a cheaper wood laminate.

I shouldn't have done that. We had a small air conditioner that we used and just a little bit of moisture hit the floor and it actually started bubbling so we didn't know it was there so we did it. I don't get a chance to clean it knowing that this area is exposed to moisture. You know we can and do clean it, so that's not a problem, but I think at some point I'll probably redo the floor with a durable vinyl. So my advice would be to learn from my mistake and do something that may cost a little more, but keep in mind that at most you know you're doing 250 260 square feet of flooring, but it will pay off in the long run.

So everything in here comes out of our 100 gallon water tank. We wanted to keep the speakers and the bus so that all the original speakers we can listen to music while we shower or while we are in bed and then we get a really small space. bathroom vanity for small spaces from Lowe's and it works perfect in fact we haven't had any complaints about it like we already know kitchen cabinets and stuff like that so there we have it I think this is a toilet for recreational vehicles with water discharge and it is super. comfortable, works very well.

I've seen a lot of videos where people go the composting toilet route because they don't want to deal with gray or black water tanks or sewage tanks in particular. I grew up camping and yes there was someone who got the bad end of the deal and who, you know, was helping to empty the black tank. It was me and it's actually not that difficult or such a messy task, so for us we could have gone the composting route. but we chose to make a holding tank only because I was not familiar with composting. We had heard some horror stories of people cleaning the composting toilet.

I'm sure if you did your research you could find positives and negatives about it, but We will split some of our time between state parks and campgrounds and things like that, we will have dump stations and there are a lot of travel centers that also have dump stations for RVs, so our black water tank is almost 60 gallons, our gray water tank is 55. So with that and everything vented, we have no smell in here and many of you know there is potential time to poop, that's the reason and she doesn't have to worry about washing the tanks.

I don't mind doing it, but I think it gave us a little more flexibility, less maintenance, it's easy to clean, you throw it in and set it up, forget about you never have to deal with it much, so that's why We opted for that. I have some towel storage here at some point in the future. I'll probably build a small cabinet above the toilet, but it will have to be small just for some extra storage because I'm sure the longer this trip will be. and the lifestyle we have, we will need a few more places to store things.

I frosted the window, but then we also added the curtains. This was just a cheap movie and it looks a little bubbly inside, but you can't tell at all. and I wanted that because it's the bathroom where we need privacy here, but I didn't want to put something that would block the light because you know natural light is very important and it's very nice to have, so we frosted the windows so that you can't see in, but you know you can still see out and then we can always roll down the windows if we're alone in an area and we want to catch some views while we're doing our thing, we have a great opportunity.

There is also a small trash can here for the bathroom, we don't even have it in our house which was so big. We didn't really have much trash. I can't say we didn't have a huge footprint, but some people did. fill a trash can in a few days and it would take us several weeks to completely fill our one trash can so we don't need a ton of stuff in there so one of the first things you see when you get on the bus next to the staircase there is a small shelf in the corner where we keep things like my Game Boy Color.

I think I have Pokémon or Tony Hawk in there. You know, we have little bows, some candles, Polaroids and books. This was really going to be wasted space. If I didn't find a solution and I wanted it to save some of the books I enjoy reading and rereading and then a place to feature some new ones in there, so it took me about an hour and a half. Half to build this made some adjustments and then attached it to the side of the couch and I think it works perfectly, a little space on the shelves up here, a place where we can secure our lamp and then something like not really a Gather everything but a place for you, you know, some electronics, headphones, things and some books, so we like that.

Maybe not the best use of space, but we can remove them here on the weather mat so it probably will. It doesn't change what we have, I don't even really know what you would call it a single piston lock, I'm not sure, but we have it secured through both doors and you can actually close it, it's locked. not getting in once we close the actual damper there, the air damper for the doors and then from the outside we have our keyhole, just a standard key lock unique to the school bus or this little house if you will. , but we wanted something that we can ensure, you know, may not be the most secure and we are always thinking of ways that we can improve the security functionality and the reliability of everything on this bus, but no one has really tried that.

It hadn't gotten in yet and I wanted to do that, actually that was one of the first things I got on the bus after we bought it in April because we had it stored in a storage facility that we were driving to to get the bus through because we didn't. I could store it in our neighborhood because of the HOA, but I noticed that some kids near the storage facility had gotten on the school bus and were playing with the settings of the indoor outdoor lights and speakers and that was it. something we added pretty quickly, but it was like a $20 or $25 lock that we bought.

You can get them at Home Depot Menards Lowe's and you just have to drill a hole in the metal. The only thing is that the folding doors go down. At highway speeds they will flap a little bit so it's a little noisy there but keeping it closed and the air damper closed for the doors not opening that's really difficult so the paint scheme for the bus we wanted do is Henry's. tropical at the top, so we did the first. It was a noticeable difference in Tennessee summers in terms of the immediate heat or the radiant heat that you can feel coming off the roof, so we knew the white on top was amazing. anyone building a bus or even a van, if you're renovating a motor home, most of them are white top anyway, go get, you know, depending on the size of your vehicle, a five gallon tub of henry's tropical and take a day to spread that marshmallow. everywhere, but I wanted green, I wasn't really sure what color green I wanted to do and she really liked the teal bus colors, but we wanted something that we wouldn't necessarily have seen in a lot of bus

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They are extremely popular right now and we wanted something that would last, so we consulted some experts at Sherwin-Williams and they recommended an oil-based industrial enamel that they said would hold up to anything we would need in the future on different terrains and We spent a few weeks looking for colors for the bus and came across a particular shade called waterfall green and fell in love with it, so we bought five gallons and instead of applying paint, we poured it. in a Wagner spray bucket and we set up for about a week and a half on the bus and sprayed the entire bus in a matter of about 90 minutes to the end which is now and I mean it's dirty we've been riding the bus this is the look of the bus, but we had all the windows taped up.

My mom helped tape the windows because she loves the paint prep part. It was possibly the rainiest day or not necessarily the rainiest, but the windiest day we had. I saw it working on the bus and we did it, but we love it, it blends in with the environment, it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb, but it's unique on the road, you know, it's no longer a school bus, it's already a school. bus you know it's not a prison bus and we like it, we like that it stands out with the little white details that we have on the side of the interior of the bus that we kept as I mentioned, we kept all the original speakers on the bus.

And we also kept things in the front, so I guess the original head unit of the bus had a little microphone connected to a megaphone outside, so I guess the bus drivers could shout out routes or tell the kids to be careful or whatever on the bus. so I wanted a place where, if we were parked somewhere like here and we were sitting outside or around a campfire and we wanted to listen to some music, we could flip that switch to the outside and have some music in here, so I got speakers from marine grade, I drilled the holes in them and they are cheap, I think they're ten dollars a speaker and I also mounted some outside speakers underneath and then just plugged everything into the external route so they sound phenomenal.

We could delight. out here it's not that I would want to, but we could, but we can also cut it down to where it's not, it's not rude to the people who may be camping around us, you know, we like to keep that in mind wherever we go, but it's nice, it's really nice to have and they are great, this bus comes with two really large under bay storage areas. I would have loved to have four of them, some of the buses have them on the back and the other side, I couldn't at all. I would have bought a bus that had no storage.

If I had bought a bus that didn't have storage, I would have learned a lot about welding because I would have had to put storage underneath. These work great, we actually have some space left over right now it will probably end up being firewood, seasoned firewood for the wood stove, but we keep our tanks ofpropane down there, we stored some tools, some bus fluids because any diesel, you know, you never know what you might run into and something that's 14 years old too, you never know what you might run into, so the back is solar batteries in right now, charge controllers and then the front here are propane tanks and tools.

I think this is an Atwood. I think it's a six gallon water heater. I won't lie, this has been kind of a problem for us right now. I don't know many people who like cold showers, but we're having a hard time keeping this going. I don't know if it's from a wiring point of view. or what, but it's been difficult, this runs on lp, we've converted it to lp and it will also run on electricity, so it's plugged in somewhere, but it's not, it's not worth its price yet, I think if it I would have done.

To do it again, I would go for the tankless model, which I see a lot of buses do and at this point I can understand why, but maybe during the trip I'll change my mind, but right now I'm not interested. and here's our dirty garage area again we drive the bus it's going to get dirty we still have some oil residue left over from when we had a leak but I already had the lock removed just for this but we have a big master lock here. I see them on a lot of buses, they're pretty common, I love them, I think it would be hard to see someone get on them, which I'm sure can be done, but we just keep it closed while we go and then we keep a little bit of everything back here .

I have our switch box, our transfer switch, which we didn't really even need one, but we went that route because a lot of people that we had done a little research on did that. with your bus, but this is our 4000 watt ames power inverter. I didn't know much about anything and I still don't know much about anything solar related, but I know that ames is a very reputable brand and I think magna sign were the only two. That's what I felt comfortable with and so far it's worked perfectly for us. We did it all with the help of my father.

He helped my brother with some things and then I put all the pieces together and figured out how. about how to hook it up and we did it and it worked, we hadn't set the bus on fire yet, but we have the fire extinguisher on hand, you know, if we do the garage area in the back, it was something we had planned initially. I had actually planned for it to be a little bigger, but when we were recording everything we didn't think we would need a lot of space, I would say if you are going to build a garage area and you want the space to be compromised, I ended up removing about twenty or nine inches of this, which I think would have been extremely helpful for you.

We know the times when we need to get up and reach for certain things, but we definitely plan for it. I would plan for it to be a little bigger, but then we questioned that decision and downplayed it a bit, but it still works. very good for us, as so far, I have saved some wood back here, I have below zero, a sleeping bag, a bag ready for anyone who is still a prepper. I have it, but I only drive with my house now, so it's okay, some rock climbing gear. Little Coleman uh grill, so you know if we want to grill back there and it's unfinished right now, but again, I don't know, I don't know if there's really much reason for me to finish it, it's just an extra.

At the expense of this point, the only other thing we really want to do here is put the same transparent film or the semi-opaque or opaque film on the back to help keep prying eyes off the back. While we're on the road, yeah, it helps keep them honest, so this wasn't cheap gear and you know, some other stuff back here isn't necessarily cheap gear either, but I think once we get it, you'll know. blocked, it doesn't matter if we end it, you know, I can keep posting things that happened after my company sent out layoff plans and instead of letting it have a negative effect on our lives, we saw it as a kind of freedom and opportunity and we fixed the little things that needed fixing in the house, listed it, yes, and left.

Our first trip was cut short because we got an offer on the house and we went ahead and accepted it, so we had to come back. to the area to close we've been here now I guess the last three or four weeks we're going to hang out in nashville for the next few weeks we'll have Christmas in Wisconsin and then January 1st actually it may be before that yeah. It may be before the new year. We are going to take off towards the southwest. We're going to go through Texas and Arizona. You already know all the fun places there are.

Try to look for good weather until spring. Yes, it goes up the coast and then the Pacific. northwest, once it gets a little better, I'll probably say we'll drive and just enjoy the ride for the moment and we'll probably find a place we really love and we'll find some land and we'll probably park and build our own house, so we were talking about that the other day and I think living on the bus at least since we've been perfectly fine for a year, yes, three years, even better, I think five years is probably our maximum and we may go through some changes on that number. of time, but five years, I think that's what we decided would give us enough time to find land, buy and build, but we have no plans to get rid of teo anytime soon, so unless you want to buy for 60, everything happened very quickly.

I've been watching several other bus builds on youtube. My family, my dad, got us excited about the idea, which was kind of fun, but we had been looking and we wanted something bigger because we had certain space requirements that we wanted to now have a big bus. I think we could actually be a little smaller, be a little easier to park and ride, but we were looking at a certain price range under four thousand dollars. You know, some buses we had seen had gasoline engines and we didn't. We didn't want diesel and then this one showed up fresh off its route in the Nashville metro, so I can tell you we wanted that because they don't run the buses during the winter, so there's no salt or anything like that. possibility of snow schools being canceled so they won't run and this was a rust free bus that had a fabulous front engine.

I think I would prefer to have a pusher now because they are much quieter, but this we can still have a conversation. It's not so bad that we can't hear each other, but it's a 3126 caterpillar with the tone. Some people love it. Some people hate it so far. So far it is working very well for us. We both loved the school bus. aesthetic so we opted not to change this, it was functional, it's not the prettiest, it's a school bus and we live in a school bus, there's no real reason to hide it in its entirety, but I wanted a flat front because we wanted the space additional the mvp thomas has an amazing range of vision that you can see so i think everything got in the way of us finding this bus, it was local, it had been repaired up to six weeks before we bought it and they only got rid of it because Safety requirements change every 14 years in the state of Tennessee on school buses, but I wouldn't trade the flat front for anything.

I love it. I rode this type of bus to school when I was a child. and I always enjoyed it and now I live in one which is great but everything works they didn't take anything out except the cameras when we bought it which is great and you can still use the toggle switch here to open and close the doors it was under 200 000 miles when we bought it, now it has 204,000 and we put them all on our first trip to 17 states and about 4,000 miles, but We are getting about nine miles per gallon of diesel right now.

We got the Allison six-speed transmission approved for a breakout, so we're expecting another gain of probably a mile or two, which is huge. We have a hundred gallon fuel tank. We're averaging that. from here to madison wisconsin madison wisconsin to camden maine and camden maine back it's been amazing we had a problem with the huey pump a seal blew and we just bled oil all over northern indiana and Freightliner fixed it they didn't just fix it . True, they didn't replace the o-ring, they just tightened it, so we lost oil for the remaining 3,300 miles until we found out we were still bleeding oil from the same place, but it has air brakes, we wanted it to be automatic.

I know some old or manual buses, it's great, you know we are rolling right now locked in fifth gear at 65 miles per hour as the maximum speed. I know some buses are maxed out or governed at 55, luckily we are not and we don't do that. I don't really mind the extra speed 65 is great in the west 70 will be good once I unlock six speed we haven't actually installed the backup part it's a four camera system and I have them both on the sides and I wanted that just as a safety precaution while driving down the road to get used to driving this.

You do not need to have a CDL license in Tennessee when converting to a motorhome for them to be functional. I wouldn't say they are the best thing we did was get them online, it was like a kit for about $200 with the four cameras and the receiver or monitor. The monitor is horrible, the color is out of control, so I usually keep it black and white instead of viewing it. You know, green roads and purple trees, but it's nice to be able to see both sides of the bus. You know, we still have the six mirrors in the front and they're great, but the rearview camera is wired and ready.

I actually have to mount it in the back, which will be very useful with 40 feet of bus here. I think the biggest part of driving this bus was the initial fear that it's a 21,000 pound vehicle and you're driving it. Nashville traffic for us but after the first 50 miles on the bus it felt like driving a normal car to the point where when we get in a normal car in your honda or my jeep it feels very strange but I don't know if It's the flat, you know, the flat nose buses, it's very easy to drive because it's very easy to see where you are right away, you get used to it, you know, floating on the front wheels, guys, we really appreciate you taking the time to watch the video.

I hope you enjoyed our bus as much as we enjoyed our bus. There are several ways you can keep up with our travels because we are going full time. We are full time. We have sold our house. Our instagram is adventure bus, that is teo adventure bus. it's easier if you just yes, everything will be below, we are on youtube and instagram, so also everything will be like a link below our two accounts and the youtube channel and the tio ventura instagram account, it goes without saying if you want see the makeup on On the road, she freelances full time and gives tutorials on both YouTube and Instagram, mainly Instagram at the moment, but you can follow along, follow along with her, how I make this happen here and that link too will be below.