DIY Double Decker Bus tiny house conversion - Family of 8

Everyone, my name is dane irely, my kids call me big daddy, I have six kids and my wife live here in our

double

decker

tour bus that we converted, come on in and let's check out my

house

, walking past it. door we have my home office uh slash bus cabin um this is where I do all my work we have my computer screens that we set up every time we're parked somewhere and uh all my GPS stuff like that right up here in front , so moving from the office back on the bus, we have our kitchen area, so to start, we have our refrigerator and freezer on one side, freezer on the other and then we have our full kitchen back here.

So on the driver's side, there's really just the cabinets, with our countertop and then the storage underneath, and then on the passenger side of the bus, we have our sink, which is a 30-inch sink, and we have a stove. two burners and an oven in there also a little bit of storage on this side we wanted you to know that we did this whole farm

house

style and we chose to do an induction oven just because we didn't have gas on the bus other than that. It would have been anyway, so we went ahead and just made the oven induction, we made two burners because, frankly, we do a lot of things in our Instant Pot and then we cook outside a lot and we knew we weren't going to use it very often, so which we just made a two burner stove and then we made a pretty deep sink, 30 inches and it's actually pretty deep with the cutting board and the grate on top, so behind the kitchen we have our dining area and one of the Things we really love about this space are all the windows, now we have these big giant windows, which was one of the reasons we bought the bus in the first place and so we have all the natural light.

Here the backs of these seats fold down to create a dining table and

family

dinner is really very important to us so that was very important so we have this whole area that is full of storage space where we can know. The kids have their cereal and other things here in the mornings, we have a lot of food that is stored there and it reaches practically to the floor and then on top of that we have our air conditioning. We have two air conditioners here, one for while we're driving and one for when we're parked, so one of the things with these two air conditioning units here we don't feel like this one is enough while we're there.

We're driving, so we really wish we'd gone with something a little larger for this driving air conditioner and for the one here. Going back and doing this again, I probably would have put a second unit down here, probably one up. closer to the front and instead of just having this well, I mean, it keeps this area cool, it has to be pumping all the time, so it's kind of a learning curve, we've never done anything like this, so it's a learning curve for us, well here towards the back of the first level of the bus we have our bathroom and it's a smaller bathroom obviously the toilet is very low that's because we have some access panels in there that they should be able to open and with the bathroom we have a macerating toilet which basically means it pumps everything into the black tank that is higher than the toy, so this is our little bathroom down here, sink, pretty basic things, uh, and One of the things about here is that this is not the only bathroom we have on the bus, so we decided to have two separate bathrooms and then a completely separate shower with eight people living in this space.

We wanted to make sure that we all had access to what we need when we need it, so we didn't put the shower in any area of ​​the bathroom that is a totally separate space and apart from this small bathroom, we also have another small bathroom upstairs, yeah, like that The real reason we wanted to try something new, something so drastically different from what we'd done before, is just that we felt so tied to chasing money for happiness, thinking that the more money we made, the more, the better. job title. If we were happier, we would be, but ultimately chasing that money meant spending more and more time away from

family

and we realized that we were actually on a road trip and driving back from Utah, who we were with, We had all the Kids in the van and we drove to Utah to see some of the sights in Utah and then as we were driving back we passed the big sand dunes in Colorado and at that point I got really angry. because I looked in the rearview mirror and I saw all my children, they were all very well behaved, they all did very well and my wife and I are very happy and I immediately knew in that moment that this is it.

Happiness, this is what we want, and so why are we rushing back to Texas? maybe spending two days a week with them and two weeks a year, that seemed like a very small amount of time to spend with my family over the course of the next few years as they are so young and growing. Like a small amount of time, so as we were going over the big sand dunes, I had kind of a conversation with my wife and we were chatting with the kids and I just said, "To hell with everything," the next thing we pass, we'll stop over there.

I don't care what the roadside attraction is, we'll stop and do it, and if I'm late for work, who cares? I don't like it anymore, I don't know there is a switch. In my mind I didn't care about that money anymore, so we know we kept driving. We were just beyond the large sand dunes. At this point I saw a sign for Capulet Volcano in New Mexico and I've driven from Utah to Texas many times before and went to college in Utah, so I mean, we've been back and forth there, but I've never seen Capulet Volcano. , I didn't know. which it was, but sure enough we decided it was a few miles down this road, so we took the way we went there, this ancient volcano walked around the edge and walked in, you know, we had a great time and when we got there I finished doing that and we got back to the car and I immediately looked at my wife Dina and said, do you know why we don't do this all the time?

I work in software. If I wanted to, I could make my work go anywhere with me, so we talked about it a little more and before we knew it, two hours from the Capulin volcano we were researching RVs and what it's like to be a full-time RVer and We live on the road all the time, so we immediately joined some Facebook groups, before we even got home, we joined some Facebook groups about full-time living and started looking at Class A RVs and Quintas. wheels and we quickly decided you know it would be cool to do it with a schoolboy so we were looking.

At some schools we were looking at artist coaches because they already had bunk beds and then maybe two weeks after we got home we saw a two story flat and we knew right when we saw it we were like that's what we want. Making a

double

decker

bus I would really like to be different and at the same time you know that would be everything we want to do. We could travel the country towing our truck and seeing all the places that give life to our children and also spend money. all this time with our kids in some of the most precious years they've ever had, so now that we're done with the downstairs, we're going to go ahead and climb the stairs and I'll show you everything that's up there, about halfway up .

Going up the stairs we have our shower and it is a large shower. I'm a slightly bigger guy and I have plenty of room to move around here and shower. It has the Nautilus door that we have. I really love it because it hides out of the way very easily and you know, we cut this door or the shower in the bus storage area to have a full seven foot shower so that the shower head is actually above me and we can letting you know all the showers we need without having to crowd in and have too little space so the other thing with this shower is we chose to make a cedar shower and cedar is water resistant and mold resistant and we.

I've sealed it with a little bit of oil to make sure it's going to last a lot longer than the bus, so it's pretty nice and it actually smells really good in here too, so here on the upper level of the bus, we have our washer and dryer, this is a ventless washer and dryer combo unit, we actually wanted something a little bigger but we ended up with this one and it's really nice not being able to do that. I don't have to change clothes and stuff like that, just to have one unit on the bus, it doesn't take up as much space, so with this smaller washer and dryer, this is a 2.5 cubic LG washer dryer, which is a lot. smaller than what we were used to in our house before and the unit we wanted was 4.5 or something like that and this is definitely smaller and because it is smaller it means we are running it all the time or we will have to leave.

You know, the laundry mat periodically we try to avoid it as much as possible and just try to use it, but it means that it's running all the time and it really means that we have to be connected to the water a lot and just. because you know it uses water so there are some pros and cons to this washer and dryer so it's another unique feature of this bus and I don't think we've shown it to anyone but it's one of the things we wanted to make sure cleaning the bus with six kids, obviously we're going to have a lot of dirt moving around here and stuff, and we didn't want to just sweep all that up the stairs, so up here we put what's called a sweeping vacuum under the washing machine and the dryer, so here under this washer and dryer we just sweep everything right up, press this button and put everything in there and it's easy to clean, it takes all of our brands, it makes cleaning the upstairs so much easier and we're not just brushing all down to make a bigger mess, so we headed back to the bus at the top of the stairs.

We have the kid's bunk beds that each of the kids essentially has. It's a double bed. It's a double motorhome. and then they also have these shelves at the end of their bed. This is the only one that actually has a window and that's only because this is the kid we feel most comfortable with having a window without having to sneak out. You know, this one has a window and each of the kids picked their own space as we go along, they'll be modifying and customizing their own space right now, although they all look pretty similar, so we'll back up a little bit more.

This is the second bathroom, it was as small as the one downstairs, maybe even a little smaller, but that's the one that the kids mainly use because it's right here, next to their beds, so back here, at the back back of the bus, there is this seat that I use. My wife uses this to read them bedtime stories when they go to sleep at night and then on each side there is closet space so everyone has their stuff hanging here as there are eight of us on this bus. We've minimized a lot, so it's not like they have a ton of clothes to put in here, but we have the towels and things like that in here too and then the kids will use these hooks to hang whatever they want.

I feel like they need to get it right, so as we move towards the front of the bus, upstairs, we have a little bench here and then we have this is actually our living room, the backs of the chairs do the same thing. like downstairs where they fold forward and we have a bench that's full of all of their school stuff because we homeschool the kids and then another one that's full of all of our board games and fun stuff, here's this one and then we move forward. We have another mini split unit again, like below.

I wish we had a second one of these up here. I think it would have made things a little more comfortable, but it's very, very hot up on this bus. I don't spend. That much time up here is a slightly shorter ceiling, but the kids are here quite a bit, so in this area I wish we would have had a second mini split unit here, but this is enough from time to time. As we go from here, we have our king bed and kind of an area that we use, obviously, my wife and I, this is our bed that's here, it folds down with a headboard and footboard at night, but during the day.

I wanted the kids to have an area where they could play so that it folds up and they can play with whatever they need. We keep a bunch of his toys there in the front, in front of the dresser, and I mean, you can see the Nerf Blaster hanging over there and everything, so this is kind of a kid's area during the day and then at night We turned it into our room. We really wanted to make sure that the kiddie areas didn't have to do it, you know, most kiddie RVs. Areas must be converted, especially when there is a familynumerous.

We wanted the kids to have their own very private personal space where they could have their own retreat, so we decided to make our area an area that was convertible as we moved forward. Yes. So all of that took place in 2020, that was July 2020 when we were coming back from Utah. We normally spend the 4th of July in Utah, so it was July 2020 when we returned to Texas. We bought the bus in August 2020 left it at the builder in September and uh and then we picked up the bus from the builder in December 2021, it was not finished at that time, when we picked it up, but we picked it up in December 2021, it we brought back to Texas to finish the construction and we are actually going on the road full time in three days so we will be going full time very soon so I'm sorry the kids aren't here right now and this will probably look a little cleaner than it will be in a few days. um, but that's where we are now.

We've spent a total of seven nights on the bus while we were trying things out, we went to a few different places and tried things with the kids in tow and we had a great time, so so far I've tried it a little bit, but not a lot, we're really newbies to all this, um, but we're enjoying the experience of learning everything as we go. of our plan as we go forward is just a chase of 70 degrees um we don't like cold weather we don't like hot weather so 70 degrees is where we set up that's ideal and that's where we're going to do. chase, so we're going to chase 70 degrees wherever it takes us with the plan to spend an average of two weeks in each of the lower 48 states and we've told our kids if we can manage the two weeks per state If we can do that in the next two years, we'll fly to Alaska and Hawaii so they have all 50 states under their belt, so that's the plan for the next two years and then beyond, as if we don't have it.

I really have a plan, we've talked about a lot of different things, uh, continuing on the double decker, going on a world cruise, you know, going from one country to another, you know, doing Airbnb and just taking planes, uh, jumping from one country to another or simply settle down. down, you know, no, we don't know, we think it's very important to involve our children in all our decisions. This is obviously a really big life change, not only for us but for our children. It's going to have a big impact on them, so we've talked about just reevaluating every six months.

Reevaluating is what we want to continue doing. Do we want to change this? And that is our goal right now and so on for our first six months of travel. Um, the first six months will take us back here to Texas, which is kind of a base for us and we'll re-evaluate it again at Christmas. Um, only if this is what we want to continue doing, I mean, the plan is two years, but if you know, if the kids don't really like it or if my wife really doesn't like it, if I don't like it at that point, then we'll completely re-evaluate it and make some changes, you know, it's one of the things about this lifestyle.

I feel like if you can, you can make those adjustments, it doesn't have to be permanent, but it allows us that opportunity to go out and explore and do things that we wouldn't otherwise do, you know, and the proof of that. It's just that we lived in Texas, we had a house here and, you know, we started a family here and we never did anything other than travel to Utah, so that's just proof that a lot of people get stuck in that rut. do the same things, take the same vacation every year because you have two weeks off and two weeks is not much each year to spend with your children at their youngest ages, so that's the plan we have now: we go about two weeks per state, okay, so that's it for this level of the bus, the second level of the bus, let's go ahead and place the ladder, so let's go ahead and go up to the roof platform here on the roof of the bus, we have our deck, this is actually just an area that we like to rest in, the kids like to put a hammock between the two rails and when we're driving, these rails are lowered and that makes us, you know, 13 feet tall and medium height.

So we have no problem driving it, but when we get to where we're going, we put the rails down and the kids can come here and hang out. They love hanging out here. We do quite a few movie nights here. and the kids like the rows on the hammocks or the cool outdoor chairs that we use and this is really more of a private outdoor space for us, we don't have any slides or anything like that on the bus and So this gives us that little bit of extra space that we need and it's a great space because we are very high up and we also have our solar panels in front and behind, we have four uh 355 solar. panels, so they work very well for us and give us some power when we're off the grid, so one of the things about building this platform here is that the top of the bus is not reinforced and in fact , it is also very slippery. if it was just the bus stop, then we go ahead and put the boat pad on and it's just a sticky boat pad which makes it not like that, it's more non-slip and it has a little bit of cushion and it's not very thick, that It's the other problem that we saw and had when we saw all these other school buildings that had wooden terraces and it was going to be too much, there wasn't enough space to put something like that up here, so you know.

The fake deck is just a boat deck and comes in all kinds of different patterns and colors. We chose this one that looks like wood, but it actually works really well to make it safer for the kids, they don't slip around here and stuff like that and then the other thing that we do just for the safety of the kids when we come here, I usually go up just for the front hatch and then I come, you know, I'll make my way across the lot. panels and we set up these rails, we set up the rails on each side, they're held up by some gas struts and then we have them and we don't have them right now, but normally we have these rails down here that we then pick up on top and they actually attach to each side to make it much safer, we have the front and back ones and that gives the kids a little bit better area that they know to stay in and we don't have The kids walk to the front or the back of the bus where they shouldn't mess with the solar panels and falling off the bus, so here we are on the outside of the bus.

We have a little more work to do. On the outside we're going to put graphics and things like that to make it look more like a motor home, a class A motor home, and less like a bus. One of the things we did most recently was replace all eight tires on the bus which I actually did. that yesterday, um, it's not something cheap, it's not something cheap, but the tires that were on had some cracks on the sides, they were seven and eight years old and you know, when it comes to family safety, there's nothing that Uh, no.

There's no amount of money that's going to stop me from doing that, so we went ahead and put the new tires on there. That's ten thousand dollars worth of new tires, and by all accounts we have eight new tires, so that's probably the largest amount. expenses we've had on the outside of the bus so far, we're going to redo this wrap, this gray wrap is really terrible, the work that was done on it, so we're going to redo all of that and get the set. Graphics appear here, we have some stamps and things to do too.

One thing that some people may notice is that our front and rear tires are the same but these middle drive tires are different so the front and rear are michelins and they are 365 70r 22.5 but these center um these are the tires of traction these are actually yokohamas and that's only because the company we built and bought the bus from before building had converted the front and rear and they'd already changed them to this tire size and Michelin is the only one which makes this size tire so we went ahead and did that and then the bus company had us do this and we made sure all the weight ratings were correct, the bus itself weighs just over 47,000 pounds, we went and we weigh it, we weigh all three axles on the scale and we make sure that the tires that we put on here are safe for the weight that we have on the road and then we also have an outdoor shower and in this area this is also where we open for go into our black tank and so we do, we can drain everything from here and just a big storage area that we have back here.

So all of our tanks are back here and anything that we need, all of our storage, everything that we carry with us while we travel is here in the storage area and we don't need to access it from there, we can access it as well. Through this door where we can enter the bus, so this is where I say we can enter the bus. We have our black water tank that's up high and then we have our fresh water tank like it's inside. the middle one and our gray water tank down here a little further down and the black water tank is 70 gallons and then the other two are 75 gallons each, so it gives us plenty of water as we go, you know, we try to stay connected to the water. wherever we are, but if we're not, we have a lot of water on board and that works pretty well with the one tank that you don't see back here, which is actually our fuel tank, which is a 166 gallon diesel fuel tank. .

The common question we get is about the fuel mileage we get and with a full load we get about six and a half miles per gallon depending on the headwind, I mean if the wind is coming directly at us we're obviously getting a lot less. because it's a brick, but I mean, we normally run about six and a half miles per gallon here on this side of the bus, this is actually our power bank where we have eight lithium ion batteries, these are from Lion Energy, they're the Safari batteries and 1300, I think each one is 105 amp hours, so we carry all this here and we have our 6000 watt inverter and then we have All our power stuff back here we carry a generator with us just in case, but we have never We really found ourselves in a situation where we needed it so this is where all our solar energy comes in and this is what powers our bus when we're standing anywhere we just connect to the 50 amp ground and then We also have our water connections here and coming back here you would see that we have a 20 gallon residential water heater so yeah I mean I know that many people are interested in these trips and in the two weeks we are here. we're going to spend in every state and all the things we're going to do, obviously, a big part of this is also inspiring others to get out there, maybe get them to take that leap, that big risk in your life, uh.

It will be worth it, you know I never set foot in an RV before doing this so it's a whole new life for me but I think the reward is worth the risk we've taken and you know if anyone wants follow our trip and see the things we are doing and the activities we are doing and you know the parks we are visiting or the hikes we are doing, anyone can follow us through social networks whether it is facebook instagram tick tock um youtube anything that let's use like two story family or two story family we also have a website that has nothing to do with our travels right now we'll probably put things on there but it's just dbl dkr means double decker um the same as our license plate um we have that website which is ultimately a blog with a lot of troubleshooting stuff for different appliances and whatever, but at some point we will start blogging about our travels around the world. the board, if anyone wants to follow us, that's where to find us, but we will be on the road, we will normally post, obviously, for the safety of our children, the safety of our family, we will post late, uh.

Not that if you watch a video, it probably won't be from today, there will be a four, six week delay and that's just for the safety of our children, but certainly, if we get to your trailer park, if we get to the city ​​and see. Don't be afraid to come say hi, we are definitely willing to meet people and share our adventures with you, so any questions you have feel free to ask them here on this channel or visit one of our channels, ask us any questions. What do you have? We will be happy to answer you.