The Tiny Living Course - School Bus Conversion Basics

1. Welcome To School Bus Conversion Tiny Home Basics: Hi everybody, My name is Chris. I'm going to be your instructor for this class. In this class, I'm going to give you the basics of purchasing your school bus, everything you need to know, attributing to that how to get insurance, how to register your bus, how to purchase a bus. And then I am also going to go into different design aspects. I myself have been on the road for 12 years now, being that I have the experience of living in multiple camper vans, I lived in a class ARV, and I settled on a school bus. I have a lot of insight into the nomadic lifestyle and also throughout my experiences, I've been able to come to the conclusion that the school bus is the best platform to build your mobile tiny home on. What I had in mind when I was designing this class, trying to think of all the information that I wish I had before I started the journey of building a school bus conversion. I've put a lot of thought into this class and I really hope that you do enjoy it. Be sure to check out the PDFs down below. They will help you design your potential school bus conversion and also give you some mental exercises that you're going to need to know to successfully build a school bus. Thanks again for taking this class and enjoy. 2. How to Buy a School Bus at Auction: Hi everybody, Chris, here. Today we're gonna be talking about gathering information on your school bus. This particular lecture is going to be more geared towards those that are looking to buy a school bus at auction. So I by happenstance, happened to come across this and I think it's really important for you to know because it saved me about $8,000, probably a little bit more honestly. But when it comes down to it, I have a friend that works at an auction yard. He told me that some school buses were coming up for auction. I had one in mind. It had the d t for 66. And I started doing some research online. And I learned that if people don't put the right Cool And then like the school district, then it can erode the seals and eventually water is going to get into the engine, which basically means you need an engine rebuild. So I was curious, I decided to call that particular school district. I told them that what I was about to do, I wanted to buy one of their buses. They transferred me to the maintenance department. I then spoke to the lead mechanic and he's like, Yeah, that bus absolutely has water in the coolant. That's why we're getting rid of it. Now, if I would have purchased that bus at auction, I went anywhere $3-4 thousand. I would add about a 3,000 to 4,000 dollar engine rebuild on top of just picking up the bus that's without anything else that could be wrong with the bus. Sure. I'd get a fresh engine, but I really didn't wanna do that. Obviously, I passed on that bus, I started doing more research. I found that I wanted the commons 83 engine. I wanted to 30, 60 transmission. I want to know 40-foot bus. And I wanted the bus to be from down south so I didn't have to worry about any rust. I found this bus, the bus I'm in right now in Florida. And I started calling around to the school districts because on the oxygen side, I got this bus from public surplus.com. It listed the school district that the bus is being sold from. So I called the school district, asked to be transferred to the maintenance department and talk to the head mechanic on that particular auction site. They did have the bus number. This is bus O2O one. I asked me about this bus and he said it was a great bus, but he also said that the injection pump was bad and you'd have to replace it, but he had a friend down the road that could replace it. So I started doing research on his friends shop. And it had absolutely terrible reviews. Long story short that was absolutely fabricated for those that don't know, the injection pump on these buses are incredibly expensive. I had thought about just getting a new injection pump that way I wouldn't have to worry about it. I went ahead and bought the bus anyway. The reason for that is after looking at the shop reviews, I didn't really know if he was telling the truth. So I found a different shop that I had the bus towed to. And like I said, it turns out there was no issues. I mentioned all that just because you have to find the balance between are they telling the truth about the bus or do they have ulterior motives? Basically, if they offer this is my personal opinion. If they offer to fix it themselves, I would probably run from that school district where if they just tell you flat out, yeah, we've had issues with that bus. That's obviously a bus that you don't want to deal with. The other shop that I took it too, had amazing reviews and something to consider which helped me out with this being that I called earlier. I didn't know what issues would happen with the bus. So if you are out-of-state, you're planning on going to get the bus. It's not a bad idea to have the bus towed to a shop that's close by that has good reviews. Have them look it over. Because when they got the bus, all the tires on this particular bus when I bought it were bad tires and they were able to get new tires on it. They were able to get some small things fixed that helped me get on the road and make it 3,000 mi back home. So that head mechanic wasn't the most honest person. But what came from that? When I said I called the main office and ask to be transferred to the maintenance department. The person that the phone was really intrigued to what I was doing. She got my social media and she afford that onto the school bus driver that drove this bus for 15 years and we're still friends on Facebook. She comments on the on the posts from time-to-time. Like you got to realize that these school bus drivers, the ones that drive these, these buses are their babies. They spend the entire school year with them every morning and then every evening. So sometimes you can even reach out to the school bus driver themselves. They know the bus better than anybody, better than the mechanics, better than anybody could because it's something they drive every single day. And if you are able to get that contact information, you can actually reach out to that school bus driver and you can find out that the bus has had a lot of issues or if it's a bus that has been awesome, just the general maintenance and it's been on the road for awhile. And then also you can find out if the bus is an activity bus. Activity buses are good because there's not a lot of stuff and going like obviously the school bus, they have to drive up to the house, stop. The kid comes on and they continue on to the next house. That isn't the best for the drive train. Whereas if you get a activity BUS, those buses are pretty much all highway miles. There's not a lot of stopping and going and they're treated really well. I've also linked the last maintenance record to my bus. That's something that the person at the front office sent to me. Sometimes you're able to get this, sometimes you're not. But when you make those calls and your personable on the phone, more often than not, they will share that information with you. You like there's a couple of buses that we bought here at the shop where I have the maintenance records from when the bus was first purchased. And that just gives you a really good idea of if the bus has a bunch of issues or how well is maintained. Typically, a lot of these buses are in Fleet Maintenance. A lot of the mechanics don't want to see that bus back in over and over because it's just more work for them. So they will replace parts when needed. They'll do a lot of preventative maintenance, which is another benefit of the bus. But being able to get that information and have it for yourself. So great thing to have. So thanks for watching. I'll catch you in the next lecture. 3. Pros and Cons of Buying at Auction versus from a Dealer: Buses are what they are and, you know, to four or $5,000 stuff, people should expect four or $5,000 stuff doesn't run and Dr. sure. You'll end up with you end up with something that's got a smaller engine, it's lower horsepower. That's for sure to one probably what the ATN it to break condition is there but it's the pads are thin. When tires, everything, you know, it they're just like cars. When we talk about cars and we talk about buses. Buses really cheap because I'll tell you the amount of metal in a car. And I mean, even the engine in the body, we can have made a couple of cars out of that. So when I'm asking, telling people or just in general saying hey, you know, a nice bus for me and my ideals, whether it's front engine, rear engine, whatever. Conventional. I do believe that's seven to 10,000 dollar range is a really good pocket for somebody to be comfortable about building their house inside there. I know you're building a house. You're building your drains to meet these things are giant art project or direct reflections of you. You know, why would you start out with a porous late? So here's the dealers and this oxygen. I got my bus at oxygen and I just did the math last night of how much it actually cost me to get to where I am today. So we did the rear main seal here as well as the rear differential doing the leaf springs and then bind the bus, new tires, transmission flush and filters with the new the new bolt guides because I had the aluminum 30, 60 and when they took the bolts out, it shredded the insights they had to put castings in there. So basically, everything that I got the bus to where it is now, it was around $11,000. And that is one thing that I didn't realize going into it, like I just saw the the less price auctions because I got my bus, the purchase price was $3,000, right. But if you add everything into its an extra seven to 8,000 And you know, just playing devil's advocate with it. Some people do walk out like they get a bus, that was a transit bus and it was kept up well, and it's good to go. They go where there's no doubt about it. Like me. And wefts we put, you know, 2030, $40,000 into the build, and then we're committed to that project. And I really didn't understand the importance of investing early into a solid platform. So then you can invest that 2030, 40,000 into it and not have to do what I'm doing now is basically just building this bus up. Because if I knew that there was options out there where I can get a bus like basically just explained. Okay. You're getting this repaired, you're getting this done. We know it's good to go instead of just hoping it makes it back. You know, I hear you there. Well, I mean, you know, two oxygen I buy buses, an auction. I mean, every boss I buy, I have this sheet right here and I'll go through it. I mean, it's just it's just making model. I'm monitoring all the fluids. What did they look like? And I mean that it is far from motor trans coolant, steering and differential. I have a slot right here. I'm doing a computer diagnostics, so I'm checking the status of the pump. If it's electronic, I can look at injectors, pumps. Just for starters, I probably have about $45,000 invested into my computer. For scanning capabilities. I can scan motors, transmissions, brake systems, and here, this stuff costs a lot of money. You're never gonna get this at an auction. These buses are brought in. Whether they run or not. They're sold. So yes, there you can buy and don't get me wrong. I buy buses that oxygen to. But I'm gonna go through this list and explain to you, I end up fixing a lot of these buses to so I buy something for 3,000, you know, when I'm turning around and my advantage of this, and we can say oxygen and dealer. Let's say we buy a bus for $3,000. I bring it in here and I start looking at it and I'm gonna go through the sheet. Hey, I'm going through I'm checked to fluids. Fluids look pretty good. I get into computer right away and I see some codes and neuroma. Alright, I got to fix this part. Needs couple of sensors. Let's say the sensors are two, $300. For me. I'm lucky. I've spent ten years dismantling buses in feeding my warehouse. What parts? It's very easy for me to walk upstairs and get that part, put it into Bus and fix it. Now when you start talking about a dealer, it's a very expensive shop. So let's say $225 an hour in a charges back to the shop. They gotta go in there and get that sensor that cost 300 and some dollars paid out, mechanic and hour-and-a-half worth of labor, which can add up to 100 bucks. And then they start going through the list. I mean, these guys are sitting down in scanning them. I do business with these guys. I know how they do business, I know how they conduct themselves. I understand it's about money. These are big places they need a lot of dollars to run. They have to streamline that and you've got to think about it from their point of view too, is just, Hey. They're selling a bus for four or $5,000. They don't give a ****. They don't care. Or a salesman, That's their job. They don't own that place. They're doing their job, they're doing what they're told. And I don't know how many times I said this. I own AAA boss. I am the dealer and I am a mechanic here. I am an employee of my own place. When I start going through the breaks here, we scan it, we fix a sensor. Now I'm looking at the brakes, hate a brakes are thin. Look at this. There's a tire and it's split. What are we gonna do about this? You notice price it as buses growing hay, it's dead. We got to jumpstart and we tried to charge a battery. A battery isn't good. These are things I'm checking right away on these buses. I'm scanning the computer, I'm looking at the breaks. I'm looking at two tires. I'm checking the battery condition. I'm going through the electrical and right away. It says right on here, I'm checking the battery condition. I'm making sure that the alternator is charging and I'm looking at the dash, what is happening on the dash? Does everything. Is everything matching up? Hey, you notice battery is charging at 13.6 v and I got 14 coming out at alternator and it's reading that on the gauge. Their great everything looks good. I check all the lights. All the lights. I look at the suspension. I want to make sure I don't want anybody to crash. I've never had that happen. I will not have that happen. You know, we're checking ball joints, stuff like that. We are checking in gracing the entire front end and every bus. We are looking at the steering components. We spent a good time looking at rubber tires years. You know, what's going on with it? Same thing when it says rubber on here. It's belts, cooler lines, transmission lines radiate or lines, heater lines. We're looking for oil saturation on lines, hey, this thing has been leaking on this rubber hose and now this hoses impregnated and bloat it, you know, that thing has got to go because that blows out on the road for you. We don't know how bad that problem can be. Somebody make the big mistake of not paying attention. I mean, it can overheat some and blow a head gasket. I'm looking for leaks, even everything. We're looking at interiors and buses. I mean, I'm walking around in a boss and I know how to walk through every bus. I I'm pretty proud to say that I drove for the most part, every make and model of school bus. I know how they should drive, I know what I should expect from them. I have a lot of experience in this. I mean, I'm looking at the step well, what is the condition of it? Because I'm going to say this like five times in a row right now. Do not buy a rusty bus. Do not buy a rusty bus. Do not buy or rusty bus. You know, we're we're gonna chase this off like it's a ghost because it is bad news. And I mean, from so many levels, you know, just just body wise, frame wise, we'll wise everything. When we had a very rusty bus and here recently that I can see a lot of problems with rust being an issue with that over time, every little thing you work on is an issue. And if you have to remove a part to get to a part, you know what the bad part it says, hey, I got to remove this rusty part in my break and in the process to get to the broken part, now we have two parts that are an issue. So when I say this now I'm looking at floors, step wells, you see a rusty step well, something like that for one thing as a bear to take out because it is bolted glute and tack weld it. The floors. I look at floors, I walk on floors. I'm jumping up and down on floors because when heaters fell in the rear of the bus, just like your heat or corn a car, hey, it starts dripping down. You know what, a firewall goes underneath your rug, saturates it. Some people can't smell the pancake syrup. And that's what I'd like to say. Green coolant to me smells like is pretty sweet. These kids don't mention it. It leaks on the floor. It gets underneath a wood. It starts writing it out. It starts buckling the floor. I don't like floors that are buckling in there. We don't want to know. I've seen some pretty big rust holes even here in Arizona. So if they keep on letting that happen, it's something to look for. Nobody is looking at any of this stuff, you know, and I have everything on here is just, you know, what are the conditions of the bumpers, the exterior of us. And then we have written down here any additional repairs? I mean, in an auction, nobody's out there saying this a lot, I think has a pretty bad air leak. Why don't we fix that before they drive out of here? No. You bought it as is right there. So I mean, and that's on you. And if you don't know enough about this stuff, I mean, you're driving that thing, you know, where's the leak coming from and why is it leaking, you know, can you live with a little bit of air leak in there? You know, I mean, you can you can get by I mean, but you want to fix anything like that. It is very important. Are there any particular advantages of going with oxygen other than rolling the dice? If you roll seven, you're good to go. But otherwise, yes, you can get a cheaper bus. I mean, but you know, like I'm going to say here, front engine All-American, 8.3. If we watch that Boston oxygen, which I do the bus and we'll say let's pick 11995 and has some side compartments. The bus will easily go to 67 $8,000, no problem. You know about like when we say when we're looking at that particular boss, that front engine all American, the prices escalating because we have different eyeballs on it. I'm an exporter. So in Central America, it is their favorite boss, like a front engine, a 0.3 bluebird. They go for good money, you know, and then we turn around and look at the sister to that is the rear engine. It's an all-American, has the same older. It's slammed in the back. And, you know, that thing in oxygen is going to bring maybe three $4,000, you know, and then we get back to that thing. Hey, anything what 180,000, 200,000 mi. Does the motor run good? Yes. Does a trainee work good? Yes, but we gotta go much deeper than that to figure out the truth about It's true life expectancy out there. How good is this really? Does it start and oxygen shirt, I wasn't running an auction, yes. But especially when you get somebody out of state that's gonna go and buy a bus from an auction and travel States. I know horror stories. I know, I don't want to sit here and really tell them, but I've definitely helped a couple of people just right off the top of my head. In the same situation, I bought a bus. I had a major failure in. My initial thoughts were to come to your shop and buy a bus from you, somebody I had many conversations with. And not only was did the bus have rust and the motor blew up in it, but as he built the motor or any spent to $10,000 to build his great motor because he's committed to this bus, you know, not a rib to radiate around this thing and it's a nightmare. Everything's bad, you know? So I mean, rust for one is stay away from it, please. I'm gonna say it two more times because I said five and I already said three. Do not buy a rusty bus. Do not buy a rusty bus. We're trying to warn us off. 4. Hiring a Mechanic to Look Over Your Potential Purchase: Well, say somebody goes to look at a bus, it has the TC 2000s or any AT is it possible to hook up a a computer and what is the likelihood that you could hire somebody, say you're at an auction over in main or you're at a dealer in main, is it possible to hire somebody to come over and actually hook up a computer and look at those present. So there's a TMT can all 545 or six have already three no computer. When we get into 2000s series and 30s, 60s, Yes. There is a computer and just make sure if you do hire somebody to do that. I've had many mechanics come here to, you know, and just to get us and we not only applaud that, if anybody wants to bring another mechanic in here, look at a bus, please do. Please do. I mean, I love it. Sometimes I like it just for the fact that, you know, it's it's funny, but guys will come here and not even have the equipment to even hook up to a boss. If a guy just starts running around crawling all over your boss and I asked him, Hey, where's your computer? What are you gonna do right now, your visual inspection. Where did you learn this stuff? You know, I mean, ask questions before you hire anybody. I'm telling everybody straight out, hey, I'm an Alice and training builder by trade. I sat there in-built Ellison's. I sat there and worked in a heavy diesel shop. That's all there was was Allison comment Detroit in all that's all that was happening in there all day long. So when you get these mobile mechanics, make sure for one, he's a diesel mechanic, please. Whatever you do, don't set a a gasoline mechanic over and error to look at a diesel engine. Like for me, for instance, I say all motors are the same in line or V, somebody's guys do not get this scenario. They're fueling systems. Yes, the internals are different. We could get technical about this, but we're not, there's no reason to throw around all this crazy information and try to confuse people. It's just, it's very simple. Make sure if you hire somebody, asked a lot of questions before you put them on the job. And the biggest question is this. Are you capable of scanning this engine? Are you capable of scanning and transmission? Are you capable of scanning as brake system? Because if computers are present, it will have all three braking system as well. Bringing system as well. Really? Yes. Absolutely. I have Ben deck stuff. I have everything in there. So Minotaur whenever you want. Yes. So I mean, we could get in there and start skate. Yeah. If you have an ABS light on or something like that, most likely it could be a monitor and wanted a wheels or something like that, but that is fully scannable. That light is fully explained in that. So I mean, just having them tools to do that stuff is very important where you get a mobile guy out there, just ask them questions, make sure you have these tools before I pay you to do any of it. Because if he comes out there and just does a visual inspection and pulls a stick and looks at the oil. I was willing to tell you all this stuff for free. You already I gave you this knowledge. You can go over there and check it. You can pull the stick and, you know, hey, check the fluid into training while it's running. If you don't do it running, at least pull a stick out and make sure it's over fool it has to be overfull because fluid into converter drains back. Here's this big circle. And when it sits there, that halfway point, it goes down to here and it drains back into the trainee. So if you can't start it at that moment, at least pull the stick and lets say, Hey, this thing is over full. Well we got a good ideal that there's enough training fluid in it. If it is low or not showing on the stick haters a big issue. This thing is very low. I mean, we're talking like a gallon or something in there. So pay attention to that stuff. You know, pay attention oil quality in the motor. You know, sometimes you want to say, hey, it's even like when we go back to it, what Rust? Look inside to fuel tank with a flashlight. You see rust well, there's a potential for problems and they're, you know, something like that. And if you can do it, if the tanks very accessible, you know, it's, it's very easy to try to siphon off a little sample at a gas or to fuel and take a peep at it and just see what it looks like. What is the condition of it as a rust float and in it, you know, and I mean, we could probably have a small video and just talking about a fuel tank and just fuel in itself. But 5. Pros and Cons of Purchasing an Incomplete Skoolie Conversion: Hi everybody, Chris, here in this particular lecture, we're gonna be going over the pros and cons of half converted and fully converted school bus conversions. So obviously, the number one pro is somebody else has put in the sweat equity into a particular rig, e.g. at least before the pandemic, you could buy fully converted school bus conversions. Basically, for the cost of the conversion, people were not necessarily factoring in their sweat equity. Basically, they would look at how much they have invested into the bus and then they would just factor that up and then put it on the market to sell it. Since the pandemic supply and demand, there's more people that are looking to make a little bit of a profit. But at the same time, you're able to not put that much time into the school bus conversion itself. The reason why that's important is it's very common for people to look at the school bus conversions and think that they're gonna get it done on a budget. They think they're going to get it done fairly quickly and more often than not. Typically, it costs twice as much as you think it's going to cost and take at least three times as long as you thought it was going to take to finish my bus just now like a week ago I had a carpenter finished up some stuff in my bus. And that was three years. Granted. It was about a year of straight solid work into my bus to get a livable. Once it was livable with solar and water, I hit the road for about a year. I didn't have a ceiling in and nothing was really completely finished in here, but it was livable. I wanted to get on the road. I wanted to build the business. And then the last year, slowly getting projects done that I need to get done, my school bus conversion is a bit more of a extensive build. I built this to be my full-time home. So I have some bells and whistles using different materials that it takes a little more time to install. It takes a bit more tied to save them money up and buy to install. My school bus is a little bit different, but typically with the fully converted buses, you're still paying a little bit more, but the person's went in, but the sweat equity in and that way you're able to save your time and get a bus. So this leads me to another pro of buying a half converted or fully converted school bus. A lot of people that actually do these conversions, they've done their homework, they've done their research on the engine and transmission. A good example of this, my boss personally, it's a Bluebird. All American has the commons 83, The Allison 30, 60 transmission. And being that it's an all-American, it's more of their heavy-duty chassis. So it's able to carry 36,000 pounds stock. Good friend of mine, Wes, he bought a bus which has the Cummins five-ninths to smaller engine. He has the 54 or five transmission, which is a slip transmission, and it has hydraulic brakes. It doesn't really have that good awake capacity as we're working on our buses, as things pop up with our buses, he has consistently saying he wish he would have started with a different bus. So typically again, people, especially these days with all the resources online, people being able to do their research. If people are starting to school bus conversion, they've already done that research. They have the best engine, they have the best transmission. And obviously you need to do your own due diligence and research exactly which buses which and what engine and transmission it has. But typically, if they went through the investment, the time to convert a bus, they're going to have that right engine and transmission. Lastly, another pro for buying a half converted or fully converted school bus is the bus has had rowed time. For my boss in particular, I got very, very lucky because it sat for awhile. I feel that the Florida picked it up and drove it 3,000 mi without any major issues. A lot of times, if somebody has converted a bus, they're going to have some miles on them. Typically, when you buy a school bus, it has what what what we'd like to call it a break-in period to where basically you're taking the bus down, you're on the road, it's under strain again. If there are any issues with the engine, if there's any issues with the transmission, anything with the drive train, the breaks that's really going to show up on the road. So people, particularly with a fully converted bus, they've, they've taken it out, they've camped with it, and they've had to work through those issues. Because with school buses, typically it's not something that you can just kinda limp along. If something goes out, it goes out and you have to get it fixed. So that is something to consider as well. Again, the half converted bus, they might not have driven it too far. They might've drove it from the lot to where they were converting it. A little bit of a break in. But the school buses that have been on the road, you know that the people have gone through and if there is any major issues or if there were any major issues, they directly would have got those fixed or if there was underlying problems, those underlying problems would have popped up when they were traveling with it. Now we are going to go in the Econ Department of buying a half converted or fully converted school bus. One of the major cons, if you have a particular floor plan, if you have a particular layout, if there's certain creature comforts that you want in your bus. If it's halfway converted, it might be worth using a little bit of their stuff and tearing out what you don't like. But a fully converted bus. It's pretty much locked in. There's gonna be a lot of work, a lot of sweat equity that may not be worth it if you're looking to build something custom to suit yourself. So another con, is you are at the mercy. The skill level of the person that converted the bus before you, the school buses aren't necessarily regulated. You know, you have different levels of carpenters, you have different levels of electricians. You have different levels of knowledge of the people driving it before you even got it, You know, like they might have been vomited up a hill at 60 mph, which you can't really do with these big diesel engines. And there may be some underlying issues because they didn't know how to drive it, right? So basically you're at the mercy of the previous converter in so many more ways than you can imagine. That really is a big con. You know, the, the quality might look good when you pick it up, then all sudden your upper cabinet start falling down. Or there may be something underlying with the issue that pops up later. This next con kinda pairs with the previous con that I mentioned. They may be selling it for an underlying reason. And what I mean by that is say they did vomit up the hill as 50 mph and there's a slow leak in the head gasket. That could be a major issue, a very costly issue that they're not telling you. They know it's a big issue and they're just trying to unload the bus to get rid of it. Also, it could be something. Again, going back to the previous part of this lecture, maybe they realized that they have a bad engine just in terms of the quality of the engine. One of the more famous examples with many school buses is the Ford 60 diesel. It's known to have tons of problems. You know, if you get an eGFR delete kit, bulletproof it, and then it's a pretty solid engine. But if it doesn't have that, then you're looking at some pretty costly repairs if that engine goes out, which is common. So they could be, you know, they, they, they started the conversion or they finished it. But then during the conversion or once they finished it, they realize that 60 is not a good engine to have. So they may try and pass it on and get the 73 instead. So just be a little cautious, a little wary. Ask the people why they're selling their bus? Because that could be a red flag. That's my personal experience with the pros and cons of buying a half converted to fully converted school bus. It could be a great way to save a ton of time and energy. With my raised roof school bus conversion. I had no idea. It would take three years. You know. It was kinda one of those things where I was like, Yeah, you're at most year-and-a-half. There's there's no way to take that long. These do take a lot of time. And the school bus conversion is kinda looked at the budget option, which it is. But at the same time you got to really look into how much is your time worth. You know, if your time is worth 20, $30 an hour and you spend a 1,000 h on working on the bus, you know, of course you get the satisfaction of building your bus. You know, it's an experience you were there for every every piece of furniture, every stick a furniture in there, every board you were a part of. But at the same time you got to kind of look at it as we only get one life, you only have so much time. And it might be better to buy a fully converted school bus. That way you save all the time, you do forfeit a bit more money. But these things do take a lot of time and money to finish. If you're doing something a little bit like mine are a little bit of something where you're looking to do it full-time and you want good build quality. Basically the bill is add up. So hopefully that helps and we'll catch you soon. 6. Conversation with a Thrifty Bus Builder - Buying Partially Converted Busses : Today we have Ray Ray go ahead and say hello bud. Everyone doing. So out of my experience, ray is the guy that is the most thrifty when it comes to every single school bus conversion I've ever seen. So can you touch base on the system you have going and how it's going for you. What happened did is I bought a bus about a year-and-a-half ago and just fell in love with the whole idea. And just started and add more and more of them after I finished my first one. And what I can tell you is you can find buses all over the place. You can go to a dealer. You can find them at a church, which I've done both of those. And I've bought two of them off of Craigslist. And it seemed to me that offer Craigslist, there's a couple of things you can look at the people that are selling it. If it's in a storage unit and how much work has been done on it. So a lot of people will buy school bus with the idea that they're going to remodel the whole thing and then get halfway through or get the cleanup part that they can well done. And then they can't go any further because it's just too much work. And so what for me? I kind of looked at this guy's taking storage in Arizona here. It's super hot in the summer. If if the people that buy the bus and then have the idea to remodel them, which there are a lot and there's good reason to. It gets so hot. And if it's not at your house or real close, it's a real burden to drive over to a storage unit and work on the bus. And so you automatically know when you meet up with someone that's got their buses, it's storage that they're paying money every month. Then you get on top of that, you know, how much work can they do on their own? And so the one bus I bought, I think they paid oh, I want to say they paid almost ten grand for it. And when I met them, they were still beating from working on it. And it was right in the middle of summer. I gave them an offer of about half of what they paid and then he took it right away. So if you search around, you can find deals like that. Now, my my probably my best deal. I got from a church and the bus was too small for them. People were breaking into it. It was maintained, it was taken care of. They were using it. So I was able to get that loss pretty cheap. The thing that people don't understand is even getting the seats out. How much sweat equity people put in to get the seats out of these buses. And just like you said, they paid around 10,000 originally, you are able to offer half. They took it in a heartbeat. I mean, the thing is you can find buses like that where they've already taken the seats out, they've already taken some of the interior metal out, or they might have done some sort of structural work on the inside, which can be good or bad. But I guess it's just overall, people don't understand how much work time the energy goes into even getting the first steps done. Absolutely. I mean, everyone goes into it with the idea that it's gonna be a great project and it looks easy online. It looks easy on everything you've seen. But once you get into it, then you realize that I better have some skills and some of the things you've got to be creative. And so then the cost start to go a little bit. Because everyone thinks, oh yeah, just grab a couple of cabinets, I'll do this or that. All that stuff costs money. And you can all come in and most people can come in and unbelief seats, which is not easy to do, but it's something that they can do because it's you just look at it and you see, okay, I got to take this bolt off and I'd take that one off. The one bus I got was that they pulled all the metal sheeting off. So that was a huge thing. But then they didn't have the skills to do electrical or any of the framing or plumbing, anything like that. So they were looking to hire people. And when you hire somebody, they're going to want to get paid. And so it becomes starts becoming more and more expensive. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if the thing is in storage, that's costing them at least $50 a month and it's not near them. And so, you know, and as far as picking out of bus, I've been pretty lucky. But again, it's one of those things where you meet with the people that own the Bus and let the my my big bus, I can tell you that you could just talk to them and you knew that they were kind of nerdy and they spent a lot of time picking out of us. And so they did all the hard work of finding the ones that test out, well, don't leak, run really good. I mean, there's no guarantee. But when you meet up with someone like that, then you can kind of say, well, okay, they had the idea that we're going to build this. And live in it. They spent their time their homework, and they picked out a good boss at Rupp, good. And now they're beat. So that's, can come in, maybe you can get a deal out of them. That was two of my buses were like that and I could tell right away in the first place I got that guy was definitely a mechanic. He knew everything about it running, but just didn't know how to do framing and that kind of stuff inside. So if if someone is, you know, they're considering school buses right now, Where did you find yours? Do you have any insights to negotiation techniques? I mean, is there any insights that you could give someone that's looking to replicate what you did. Well, I'll tell you a couple of things. If anyone's seen the videos, you'll see that I've always said Don't settle. So far. I've gotten for buses and all four of them have been exactly opposite what I thought I would get. So in some ways you can settle if you find the right bus. But as far as picking out of us and making sure that it's going to be the one you want. You just got to feel it when you get out there. You'll know. I mean, you said did you see it? I just bought a bus from Tony. Aaa. We're walking around in this thing was a block style. It's called a mini bird, the Bluebird, mini bird. And it was the ugliest thing ever. And I just got inside and it's got a high ceiling. Those are something you want to look for. And he was like, Yeah, I'd love to get rid of this thing. It's been sitting here forever. I looked at it and said, Wow, I can make this hitting amazing. So as far as picking out of bus, obviously you want to have something that's going to run good and not can give you too much trouble that way for money. I've mentioned it before. Tires are a big deal. But when you meet with a person, you kind of get a feel of where they're at in the desperate mode of either selling them AS or because there's a lot of people that have buses. I just got a phone call this weekend. So my guy, he's like, I'm buying a house and I'd really like to have the extra money and it's just been sitting and I'm ready to deal. Well, that means you can offer him less money. Find your spot, offer what you think the buses worth or what you can afford. All they have to all they can do and say yes or no, right? Right. I mean, it's I feel bad if somebody sell something for less than they wanted to. But if they sell it, then they wanted to sell it. So that means is you're offering them more money than anyone else, right? Right. Well, thanks for the insights. But I, in this course that I'm putting together, suggestion, I always suggest to people that look at buses that the buses that you find are completely finished buses because they've they've done the homework. The they've typically been on the road at least a little bit. So, you know, it's not going to break down immediately. You know that it has some legs underneath of it. You can get a little bit of better idea of the bus. And then you don't have all the sweat equity. The weeks, months, a year of work, you know, you could just cut out instantly by buying a certain bus. It's halfway done. So appreciate your time today, but absolutely. No problem. Bye. 7. Insuring Your School Bus Conversion: Hi everybody. This is Chris here today I'm going to talk to you about getting your bus insured. So I got my bus three years ago and things have swayed back and forth in terms of ease and convenience and the companies and companies that will ensure buses, companies that won't. I personally go through State Farm. One thing to know about State Farm, each brokerage is independently owned and operated, so you can call ten state farms and two of them will ensure buses, eight of them won't. It took me about 13 different brokerages to find a brokerage that would actually ensure my bus. But they were actually really helpful and they worked with me and a lot of different ways. Before the bus was actually converted, they switched it over to a commercial policy just because the weight of the bus, the air brakes, they put me on a commercial policy which was very inexpensive. And then once the bus was converted, once it was good to go, then I switched it over to an RV policy. So state farms worked for me. I know people that have used progressive. I know people that have used small brokerage is local to their hometown. But it really is a war of attrition when it comes to finding a brokerage that will work for you, just don't get discouraged, post online call around to the different brokerages. And I was pretty nervous there for a little bit. And finally, I got on the phone with someone that allowed me to ensure with them. And now I have seven or eight buses insured through that same brokerage. One thing to keep in mind in terms of what I've learned with insurance is a fireplace is a huge no-no. In terms of insurance, I've known people that installed a fireplace and their insurance brokerage solid on social media. And they said If you don't take that out, we're going to drop you. Also, if there's a fire and they do an inspection of the bus, the ERV plus RV afterwards and they see a fireplace and there doesn't matter if it's an electrical issue, doesn't matter whatever, they're not going to cover it. Also, fireplaces are typically heavy. Just just for your own safety. I would not installed fireplace. Anybody that asked me about that, I highly suggest you don't do it. It just seems like too much of an issue. Side note, I went with a Dickinson marine diesel heater, which I told my insurance agent That's what I was installing. That's totally fine. In these units, at least from the state that I'm covered in. And yeah, I would not install a fireplace. And also more recently, people there's always the people out there that ruin it for everybody. More recently, a lot of people have been buying shuttle buses and school buses and converting them into party buses while telling their insurance agents that it's gonna be a RV conversion that has caused a ripple effect. I had to resubmit photos of every single one of my buses is showing that it was not a party bus. So that's something to keep in mind as well. In a separate lecture, I talk about the Vermont method. Be sure to check that out. That will also help you get insured with a brokerage. Basically, if you haven't seen that section yet, what that allows is you send your money and you fill the paperwork and you register as an RV, then you get a registration back stating that your bus is an RV. I did that even before I went and picked up my bus, which definitely helped with the insurance. So definitely check out that section. So once again, this is Chris, thanks for watching and we'll catch you in the next lecture. 8. Registering Your School Bus as an RV: Hi everybody, This is Chris. Today we're going to talk about how to register your school bus. So what I did is I went through a method called the Vermont method. Basically, it's a workaround to get your bus registered as an RV. Basically, since I've had the bus, I've had a registered as an RV because even before I went to go and pick it up, I submitted the paperwork to Vermont and basically you send your money, you fill out the paperwork, and then you get back a registration stating that your bus is in RV at the time of recording this this is still a thing that's still happens. You don't want to take it back to Vermont to get it inspected. You don't have to get emissions. Basically, you pay your money and you get to registration back. Now I've been using this method for three years now. Absolutely no issues at all. I know a bunch of other people that have gone through this method to get their bus registered as an RV. This also helps people that are in states that are having a hard time finding insurance because you can go to your broker and you know you don't want to lie to them, but you can say, Hey, this this bus has been converted into an RV. The registration shows it's an RV and it could potentially help you get your bus insured. 9. Chris's Skoolie Office Design: Hi everybody, Chris, here in this lecture we are going to be going over my school bus conversions office area. As I mentioned many times, the number one priority for me to be on the road was be able to work remotely and my three different office areas helped me do that from the very beginning. This is my main office area. This is where I spend about 80% of the time in the bus. I eat here, I'll watch movies here, or on the couch with my iMac here. So this is my main area in the bus. I absolutely loved the way this is designed. It's working really well for me. So we'll go ahead and get started. First. You'll see my 27 inch iMac. It's a 1 tb addition. I upgraded the ram to 40 gb, so it's incredibly fast uploading, downloading, basically working on the computer, whether it be video editing, whether it'd be browsing the internet, sending emails, this thing is absolutely fantastic. It does draw a decent amount of area when I start doing some heavy-duty editing, especially exporting videos. But I invested pretty heavily into the solar kit, so it's nothing that I really have to worry about. But I absolutely loved this. It is mounted on an Amazon basics wall mount. And that has worked really well so far. I've never had any issues. I do have a hole in my butcher block to where I can screw in a t naught. Basically, I just have a washer. It clamps down on the bottom of the iMac. So when I'm driving, it doesn't move anywhere. You'll also see my podcast mic. So I do a lot of Zoom podcast, especially with COVID and everything. Not really doing many interviews in person. But also if I'm having team meetings, if I'm just saying hi to friends, this Mike's awesome. It's just a Blue Yeti, their basic one and another Amazon basics wall mount. This one secures itself basically you can lock it down and it doesn't move. So far that's been working okay. As well. If you move further back, you'll see my dry erase board. That's where I put notes. That's where I put my daily tasks. So as I'm sitting here working on the computer, I can just look up real quick and then I see what's on my daily task list and then I knock that out and I just erase it as I go through for me. It helps me to write out my daily tasks. So having that right above my computer is awesome. Up above that is a very special little note that I received on YouTube. Basically somebody was saying that they were waiting for me to crash and burn and that this YouTube business was going nowhere. So I have that up there. I have that taped to the wall. Simply put, that's my motivation. Whenever I'm feeling tired, whenever I'm feeling lazy. Usually that gives me an extra hour or two of work in the evenings. Little bit further over, you will see the blinds, you'll see this one's blacked out right here. This one's blacked out as well. But these are two-stage blinds. I got them from blinds.com. You basically you just go on, put your length of the blind you want and they ship them to you. I really do like these. It's going to blow me out a little bit here. But if I'm working during the day, I want some ambient light in the bus, I could do that. And also I have the option of obviously lifting the blind to look outside. But they're really helpful for heat right now we're in Kansas is the end of August. It's pretty toasty out. And they do a really good job of blocking out the heat as well. Going further down into the desk, I have inch and a half butcher block. This is black walnut. I absolutely loved this butcher block, as I said before, the reason why I got to school buses, I could use materials like this. Not only is it beautiful, It's very strong, very sturdy. Many hours spent at this butcher block. Also, I have my printer. As the business grows, you know, obviously you need to print things. It's been really helpful. It does take up a decent amount of office space, but having the printer here has been a great addition, especially if I'm out in the middle of nowhere and I need to print something, I don't have to go into the local library. I don't have to go to the local OfficeMax. It's the HP 37, 52. It's one of the smallest printers they have. It also scans, it copies. It's hooked up to the Wi-Fi in the bus. Speaking of Wi-Fi, I do have a separate wifi system within the bus. I don't have a video on it yet, but I have a pet wave system. It takes to cell phone SIM cards. And basically my phone is Verizon. So I'll get a AT&T and a T-Mobile mobile hotspot card, throw that into that Pep wave system. And depending on where I'm at, if AT&T's better in that particular location, that Pep wave system will then take that data from that card and then it will transmit it as a Wi-Fi signal within the bus. So far, the three years being on the road, I've only had one time to where I had zero internet and I was out in the middle of nowhere, Montana. And another time where I had enough Internet to check my email, but I didn't have any internet to stream or download or upload. But other than that, every single time I've been somewhere, I've been able to either get Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. And that particular peptide system does have a booster up top. So, you know. I think it has a three mile extension range on that. So if you are at the middle of nowhere, it really helps. Again, we don't have a video on that yet, but that'll be coming to the course soon, right here you'll see my books. I'm a big believer in journalling, just like the dry erase board when you write things down, it helps us productivity. So I have the productivity journal, I have the five-minute journal, and I have books there as well. So a lot of the work that I do is on line sometimes you just need to take a break. I'll grab one of those books, leaf through it, read a couple of pages, and then I'm ready to get back to work. Also have this outlet right here. It has USB ports as well as 110 plugs for charging my phone, AirPods, camera batteries. And if I need to plug something in up here, I have five outlets that I can use readily available, and that leads back behind the Imax. Imax plugged into itself just in case I didn't hit a break or something on there, it won't turn my computer off. And then this is up here as well. A little bit further down from that, I have my filing cabinet. One of my favorite comedians said that, you know, you're getting old and you need a filing cabinet. I have a filing cabinet and the bus just again with business with important papers, have it right next to me as I work. Just running there, grab it. Good to go. Also, this office area from filing cabinet to the bulkhead here, I do have range to go back and forth. It's not uncommon for me to have my laptop either here or right here. And that's for uploading and downloading videos. So like I said, my phone's Verizon, I get 75 gigs on that. If I need a dedicated Internet source that doesn't have a lot of traffic on it. I'll hook my phone up to the iMac so I can browse the Internet, checking emails, doing all that stuff. Then I'll use the PEP wave on my laptop to upload and download videos because that's a longer process and it really slows down the data, especially if you're using the, the, what's it called, the hotspot data because they prioritize the hotspot data, at least from what I've seen, a little bit lower than cell phones. So it's a longer process, so I'll just set my laptop up, upload and download from that and then I can get my main work done on my iMac. You also might notice that I have a little really chair. So this is for guests when they come over whenever I'm driving, what I'll do is just push this in and I will put something heavy right here. Sometimes it's a propane tank. I work out on the roads. I have power blocks. Basically, they're 70 pounds. I'll just do that right there. And then it secures it so it's not rolling up and down. The first time I got the chair, I didn't think about securing it and I'm driving down the road and the chair went right up to the driving area. So move it a little bit further back. I have my drawer again, just like the filing cabinets that this is more for hard drives, pens, pencils, batteries, audio gear, camera gear, just fast access. Little pro tip here. These are solid state Samsung drives. They use these for internal drives, but you can get these cheaper than the ones that are dedicated external drives. And there's $114 little USB piece that you can get. I have a bunch of these I have for these that I can see right now ranging anywhere from 1 tb to four terabyte. The iMac does have a four terabyte solid-state drive, which is incredibly fast moving files around editing on Premiere Pro. That's how many videos we go through. How much raw footage like it's just tons and tons of data. So I have all my hard drives in here, hard drives dating back to when I first got into photography back in 2010. So I have all these hard drives arranged in date. Obviously the older hard drives, I don't need as much. So the newer drives are up top. Absolutely loved this drawer. And this is office area number two. So this is dual use. This chair that I'm sitting in is out of an RV. So it swivels this way to facing forward and then a little bit over here. So if somebody is on the couch, you can hang out with them, you can talk to them. Also, if I do podcasts in-person, I'll sit over there. The other person will be sitting right here and we can do a podcast that way. And this is the second office area. Again, if if I need to get more work done on the laptop or whatever, I'll bring it over here. Work on the laptop in this area. And what I've found is actually switching up my work zones really helps. So that's the main office area. Like I said, 80% of my time in this bus is spent right there other than sleeping. And this area is kinda switches it up room for guests. And then like I said, it's dual-purpose to where this chair faces forward. The seat has a seat belt built-in so somebody can drive with maybe buckled in, nice and safe and good to go. So moving a little bit further back back behind you is the main office area. You're actually technically in the kitchen right now. This is the hallway. We have the bathroom right here, and this is my third work area. So this is more of a standing area work zone. I have my dry erase board right here so I can write notes right now the laptop is here uploading videos. I don't have it over there right now. Just depends on the day and how things are going. Have a very large window right here. So as I'm standing, as I'm working, I can look outside, talk on the phone. And these are those dual stage blinds from blinds.com that I absolutely loved, but right now I have it blacked out so you can actually see me have a couple of bluetooth speakers right here. They hook up either to my phone, the iMac, the laptop, depending on what I'm doing, centralized locations, so the sound goes throughout the bus. Also have a little seating area here if I do want to sit and get work done. But honestly, this area right here is where I do a lot of my phone calls or phone calls like negotiations, team meetings from time to time. So I have the dry erase board right here, basically anything that's kind of a pivotal call, like be able to stand and be able to look outside, kinda walk back and forth, right notes. This is more of the interactive office zone, but also dual-purpose. I do eat here from time to time, especially if I'm out in the boondocks in spot and I just want to look outside. I've been working on the iMac all day. It's time for me just to sit back and relax. I'll sit here, kinda clear my mind, look out the window. And this window as well is a emergency exit window. So I can pop these open open up the window, get some fresh air, and then also the sliding window so I can let a breeze in. Awesome. Really do like this. Third option for an office area. So as I mentioned, the office is one of my main priorities in this bus. I am so glad that I have these multiple office areas and you might notice that they're all dual-purpose. I'll eat here, watch movies on this, sit on the couch, either sit right here. The front swivels to the front passenger seat, to hangout area, to an eating area as well. And then the third office area is another place where I can eat and hangout. Kind of clear my mind and do a little bit more interactive business negotiations. It is a large portion of my bus that's dedicated to this, but it's all dual dual purpose. And when you do these buses, you got to think about what your main priority is, but what else it can be used for. And hopefully this office setup gives you a good idea of how I attempted to pull that off. I'd like to think I did, but, you know, just, just some insight that might help you out. Thanks for watching this lecture and we'll catch you in the next one. 10. Skoolie Kitchen Design Ideas: Everybody, Chris here today in this lecture, we're going to be reviewing school bus kitchens. As you can see in this frame, this is a kitchen that's a little bit more forward in the bus. It's a bit unique. As he'll talk about in the video. He likes being able to just drop his groceries off up front. I don't see too many of them like this. I do like this concept because it allows the bedroom and the living area to be close together where my school bus, I have the office area, then the kitchen than the living area. This keep it all in one spot. It's going to be up front because when I'm bringing groceries, I wanted just to be able to walk in there stuff in the fridge. So I have the fridge here right when you walk in. I'm usually a pretty heavy refrigerant user as far as like getting fruits or vegetables or whatever. And so that's definitely a challenge. But I started realizing there's a lot of things I just didn't use as far as like condiments and things. And so for right now it's been working great down the road. If I want to get a larger one, had plenty of space in here to put a full-size refrigerator. I've got my microwave up here, that storage. So one thing with the microwave, I know that that is one of those things that you either love or hate them. I did not include a microwave in my bus. I have an oven. I have a vintage 1960s from a camper and just two days ago got Pizza Hut and, you know, it would have been easier to throw it in the microwave, but the oven works just as well. I just clicked it on, left the pizza in there for 3 min and it was awesome. You know, just just warming it up. Bike ways do draw a lot of power. It's quick and easy. You know, there's, you know, depending on who you talk to, microwaves are bad for you or they're not bad for you. If you do decide to go with a microwave or an oven, just one little hack that I do want to mention. That's open space. So if you have pots and pans, it's storage that you can use and you can close it, then it's sealed and the pots and pans aren't going anywhere. So that's a little hack that I didn't notice. And really it just comes down to your preference. If you want a microwave cool, it does draw a lot of power. So you're going to have to have a pretty beefy solar setup if you're wanting to run the microwave. I have the solar again, I just didn't want to microwave. I had the oven. It works well for me. So just something to keep in mind. These different places have a convection oven here. One of my favorite things is just to repair this pickup. Let's hear so I can bake clicks or scrambled eggs, stuff like that for most. So another point right here. Counter space is limited, right? So if you cut into your butcher block and you put a cooked up in there, it's permanent. You can put a butcher block over top or have some sort of cover that were top of it, so you get that counter space back. But as you saw here, there are options where you can put away your stove top and he went vertical with is that storage down there? Save a lot of space. He has to cook tops and that is electric as well. So he's not dealing with extra small Bupa butane tanks or propane tanks to use as his cook top. But I should mention with this, with the microwave and that cook top, you do have to have a fairly decent power system in your bus. If it comes down to where you've had three days of cloudy weather and you need to cook something or throw something in the microwave, your batteries may be low. So even having a backup generator might be something that you'd consider if you are wanting to go this route, you know the convection cook top and the microwave or have it set up to where your engine charges your batteries. So basically the alternator of the engine can charge your power system, your house power system. And you can click that on for 15, 20 min, get some juice into your batteries. So I just want to preface with why he's talking about here. He does have a decent solar setup. You can see back here even as an air conditioner. But that's something to keep in mind that you are looking to go this route cooking, I use an air fryer, which really power. Mike takes power to run those things. One of my favorite parts of this kitchen, because I can just throw it up here. I don't have to worry about like cleaning a lot of pods. I don't have to worry about the power I can throw it on. And it's really easy for kicking like rice and vegetables and stuff like that. Other things in the kitchen. Sink here with upper cabinets storage and lower cabinets storage. I have a instant hot water heater underneath the kitchen sink here. So as soon as I turn water on its warm water, I don't have to wait for thrown a little back from the front. That is another important aspect. If you are going to be doing the boondocks in doing the off-grid stuff. What he's saying there is from the tank to get to the water heater. You have to basically bleed the line of cold water until that hot water gets there. If you're off the grid, every single drop of water counts, you don't want to waste any water. So having that instant water heater directly underneath the sink, he doesn't have to leave the water running to get the hot water there. And again, if you're doing off-grid, it's very important if you're considering campgrounds or an off-grid property, it's not as important. It's always important to conserve water, whether you're in a school bus or a house with my humble opinion, but there's one important aspect to keep in mind as well. So one of my favorite features are these countertops. So these were actually semi truck beds in. So I got all all of these countertops for like $40 and slide them down, stain them. And it was really cool to be able to see that Ra, so much like bird. And then now to see how it's my kitchen countertop, really seeing the most economical way and durable. So one important aspect of the truck beds and this is something that I've experienced. You can find these on Craigslist. At least I did. I tried to go this route. I actually went with old bowling floors, found those on Craigslist, picked him up, but the way it was, It's too heavy to use. It was too thick. And you have to realize if you're wanting to go this really cool DIY repurposing route that it's gonna be a lot of elbow grease. And that isn't why I ended up not doing mine again, mine were too heavy. You can see behind me well, I got a cutting board right here, but these are butcher block slabs that I got from lumber liquidate. They are black walnuts. I have a ton of these in this bus. I absolutely loved them, but I did pay a little bit more for these. And there's there's basically tons of options you can do lie that. You can do slab. You can just go to lumber, liquid daters or Home Depot. But if you are wanting to do this DIY route, just know that it will be some elbow grease and make sure you don't get anything too thick. The Boolean floors I got were like 2 " thick and just the weight would have been it wouldn't have been worth it. I'd rather move that, wait around for water and food storage. We actually love our kitchen and our space. It works great. A family of five. We made it an L-shaped because we wanted to be able to work in the space, but also let the kids, um, be able to get in and out of the bus and back into their living space. So this is obviously a family situation when you have multiple people trying to move around in the kitchen. One thing I will mention is you do have the golden triangle here. What that is is basically like I did mine on accident and my bus. But you have the sync the stove in the fridge, so you have that in a triangle. And that seems to be the best route because you can literally stand in this one spot right here. And then you have access to everything. You're not like coming over here for the fridge. It just seems like a really good way to design your kitchen. So I just wanted to point that out real quick and not be bumping into one another. We have plenty of storage for a family of him. So our upper cabinets, we actually store like our candidates in here. As prices go up here, coffee cups and things like that that are not breakable. I absolutely loved the upper cabinets. If I could change one thing, I might have had him come out just a little bit more. We're afraid that it would impede our space, but I find if we would have come out just a little bit more, we would still have a lot of space that we'd have a little bit more storage in here underneath we have our plate. One thing I do want to mention with that, you know, for storage is definitely your preference, but she did say bringing them out because what she's referring to there is as you're cooking, you look down as you cook, right? You don't want to be bumping your head up here. So there really is a fine balance from keeping this headroom space up here to having more storage. So literally what I've my bus is set the oven where it was gonna be. And then I put my head down like I was gonna cook and then cut cut a board and put it against the wall. Just so I had reference to where that would actually where the upper cabinets would actually go to. And from that, I was able to adjust my upper cabinets. So I actually brought mine out about four more inches and I'm really glad I did. You know, I kinda wish I would have went a little bit more. But just getting that representation, if you are doing a DIY bus, just actually standing there and then just getting a scrap piece of wood to see where your uppers are gonna be. Really helpful. This is R down here. We chose to go with plastic just because. When you're dragging, you don't want something to bounce out and break. So plastic dishes, obviously really important as you're driving down the road, your school bus, your camper van, you're whatever you're traveling in, if you're traveling full-time, it rattles around. I'll actually show you something real quick there with me. I went with stainless steel, got these from Amazon. I think it was like $17 for a set of four these. And it looks good. My bus has a lot of stainless steel, so it matches the aesthetic of the bus and they're not going to break. The plastic is not going to break either. But I just ended up going with the stainless. I really do love it. We have our stove top or it's worked well for our family. Down below it we have an air friend microwave networks as a microwave and an air fryer and an oven. And we can utilize that with our generator or when we're plugged in at a camp site. So that goes back to the power. You know, those do draw a decent amount of power. If you are using it as an oven or an air fryer, that's more of an elongated amount of time, you know, like little surges for like say, we'll go back to the pizza example. Say here, just warm it up. Pizza on the microwave function for thirty-seconds. That big draw power. If the sun's out, your batteries are full, it's not a big book. However, if you are making a quiche and it's gonna be free five-minutes of straight oven use without electricity. It that draws down your batteries a massive amount. So you just got to keep that balance. Here. On this side, we have our garbage can. And if you do have a family of five, we needed a space where we could but all that and we do have dry goods down both. One thing with the trash base and I'm so very glad I did this is I actually went with two trash cans. Eventually I want to get one recycling, one regular, especially if I'm parked in one spot that has recycling and I can separate those two. But the trash is going to fill up quicker than you anticipate, especially the family of five, I'm sure they probably take the trash out every single day with my bus. I put multiple and again, the thought process behind that is I do a lot of BLM public land. And when you're out there and you don't go into town for four days, it starts to add up. So if you are looking to do more boondocks, I would highly suggest a two trash cans setup on this side like cereal boxes and things like that. And then we did put in a pantry over here so we can store just our extra snacks and goodies and things like that down below, Josh made it so that we could actually fit our vacuum in there. It collapses and then it slides in down below and then it's tucked away. And then when we're driving, it doesn't bounce all over the place. We actually splurged on our fridge if the domestic RV fridge, and we wanted it because we wanted to be able to boondocks and this runs off of propane and there's plenty of storage. And then we also love it because it clicks shut. And so when you're driving, it doesn't fling open and all your items come out on the floor. So she said she's splurged on that fridge. Those fridges are not cheap at all. My bus has a residential fridge. I'm actually switching it out to a 12-volt fridge. That is a splurge as well. 12-volt fridge units are not cheap. They're incredibly efficient. My fridge with the residential fridge in terms of power draw when I first got it, It withdraw 100 watts, hundred and 20 watts. Nothing crazy as it's aged. And this is something you don't notice if you're in a residential home. But at least for me with my fridge, as it's aged, it's actually become less efficient. So now, typically when it draws, it's about 320 watts. So you're looking at a 300% increase in a power draw that's consistent. And then when I'm in warmer weather, it's obviously kicking on more. But typically in warmer weather the sun's out. More. Solar is able to compensate, but your fridge is a big investment. The art fridge units, they are known to be temperamental. My humble opinion is to look at a 12-volt fridge unit and still be drawing power. But at the same time, it's not as finicky as the propane units. That's my personal experience. Every propane fridge that I've had is temperamental. There's always something randomly going wrong with it. And my RV, it would randomly just throw codes for no reason. And then the fridge, this wouldn't work, so we wouldn't be able to open it because you try and you have groceries in there and if you keep opening and closing and all that cold air is going to get out and ruin your food. He was a big pain. They may have awesome luck with that fridge. But the 12-volt fridge is what I'd go with. Martha from home was so generous and she did all our curtains for us, and she just did a wonderful job in that way. It adds a touch at home and it's cute. But also at night we can close it and it adds a lot of privacy for the lovers. Think here we put it in the corner because we wanted to have as much counter space as possible. And we find that it works great for us because at dinner time, we'll do kind of like a buffet style will put everything out here on the counter. And then people just walk around this up on the stove, get their side dishes, and then they'll go around the table and sit down. So we have found that the corners think has worked out great. The only thing I would say is, is back a little bit. So when you are washing dishes, It's a little bit farther away from you if you're shorter but like the kids, but they haven't complained about their backs. They just complain about Washington. We had to install a couple of things here. She's going to talk about the faucet. I have found the cheap Amazon version of faucets to work really well. I mean, no issues whatsoever besides one busting when it got 20 degrees in the bus. But with the sink, I'm a little hack. Something that I've learned is people use big goals for their St. like not the pans, but those stainless bowls. And they just cut a hole in it and they filled up with a drain. And the only difference is the packaging at the store. One says Sync. One says bull. The sink version of that, of that bowl is about 60, $70 more. It's the exact same thing. You just cut a hole in it, seal it up. It's good to go. Just a little hack there for your your sink. If that is something you're interested in, that comes out so that you can read everything. These are bouncing around. So we found a basket that we can suction to the window and just keep that nice and secure so nothing falls or breaks. Another feature that we love in our kin is our skylights. We wanted to have a lot of the outdoors in and with all the windows. And then again with a skylight, it just brings all that light in and it just creates a space that is happy and inviting. There was an area there for the emergency hats for when it was a school bus. So we thought we would utilize that and turn it into a skylight and it worked out. Great. One thing I see people do a lot. What that actually is their old emergency exit. You can build a frame around that, put some plexiglass over top. And then you have an awesome skylight. And as you can see from the video, the light and the bus is beautiful. Little DIY hacky, especially in your kitchen, makes it light and airy. Pretty cool little setup. Well, first moving in, we're then I show you our countertop in our kitchen area. Again, going back to the countertops, I've seen so many different styles. It's really your preference. I went with the quick and easy route with the pre pre milled countertops from lumber liquid. But this is a really cool setup that they have right here. Our counter is from the Jacksonville Beach pier, which is where we're originally from. And it got destroyed during Hurricane Matthew. So we reclaim this. And it took a while. I've never done it before, but I would do a solo cup a day. I'll do five of them a day for seven days. So 35 total pores to get this level and to get it flush to look like the way it is now, we burned the words Jacks Beach pier into it. And in some of the other pieces in the bus, we actually hit sharks teeth. And that's like a cool little piece of it. We love it. It's great and I mean, it's a good piece of home. Moving on, we have a table, so this actually folds out into a table that we can sit right here while we're on the couch and eat. And we have this hose. That's great also because we can put it outside. When they went to table. I wanted to include this video because that particular setup is very clever. Having a place to eat is, you know, kinda, kinda rare unless you go with the dynamite and that takes up a lot of space. And that DynaMed is the dynamic. With my setup. I have the place in front of the computer where I'm at right now, just move my wireless keyboard and trackpad and then E right here and watch something as I eat. If somebody is over you right here, have a seat up front, then I also have the breakfast nook in the back for places to eat, but I don't have a dedicated spot like they do right there. So it's a really great DIY designed to have a table and not take up that much space. And it looks amazing. Wash off if we need to. We have our three burner stove, and this is a propane stove. And we also have a nice little oven right here. We cook on a regular basis. Christian loves cooking and coming up with new ideas. So it's something we use almost every day, if not multiple times a day. And we have a 16.5 gallon propane tank and that's typically lasts us for about three months while we're on the road. Very efficient. We have a lot of overhead. One thing with a propane tanks. If you are looking to do the propane route, the class I had had a built-in propane tank. Now I use the removable your typical barbecue propane tanks. I much prefer that. The reason for that is you can go through months with my setup. The only thing that runs on propane is my stove and oven. One of those tanks will last me a month or two. My water heater is electric, so that's probably where a lot of the propane goes in a lot of these units. But the reason for that is when you haven't built into your rig, you have to go to a truck stop or propane place, pull your rig up and get it filled. They're not always the easiest to find. However, with the removable the barbecue, you can go to gas stations, you go to Walmart, you can take them out and get them filled. I have four of them in the bus. So that is something to keep in mind. It is nice having that larger propane tank. But for me personally, it wasn't worth always trying to track down a place to get it filled. And all the sword right here, this is a lot of electronic area. You've got the storage right here for our two functions that are toiletries. And then a lot of our pot and pans and even our pantry over here. We wanted to full freezer and refrigerator. And so we went with the nor cold refrigerator, and this is a three-way fridge, so it's AC power, DC and LP. And almost 90% of the time this is off of LP and it's super efficient. No, LPs propane. We have plenty of storage in here, three rows of shelving. We've got two rows of Shelby right here for all the freezer goods and it's perfect. We're really glad that we went with this. So for the final bus, I did want to include a minibus. So this is a five windows short bus. They did a really clever design and I hope you enjoy it. So welcome to the interior of Stu. This is our kitchen area. So we went with a pretty big sink because we knew it would be easier to wash dishes and occasionally wash my hair and the sink. So it's much easier having a big one. And this actually swivels outsides become our shower. Slide the window down. So it was right outside. And if you haven't been on the road and you like to shower, like I do. It's not a big deal at all to put swimming trunks on, go out there, lather up, wash off, you're good to go. You can also get one of those little, little bathroom tens of people use for camp grounds and just shower that way. If you want a little bit more privacy. But having that option built-in to your bus is something. Again, if you'd like to shower like I do. And it gets to a couple of days without showering and your sticky like I hate sleeping when I'm sticky. A little bit of a little hack for you to consider is that when it's hot water heater down here. But we've actually never used it on the road because if it's too cold to be outside showering, then we're just going to wait and not shower could say, yeah, we didn't really plan this out, but it just barely scrapes over the window cell. And then it does come down like this. And you can do full body ladder and everything. And it's got a little shower mode sprayer, which is pretty convenient. Then up here we've got kitchen stuff. Coffee of course, are from Seattle, and then just measuring cups, other kitchen tools. And then this is our bathroom area, bathroom bags, and then our monogrammed it's due the bus towels that my mom made for us. It's my mom also made these custom blackout curtains for us, which was super amazing. And we over lots. And she also so the upholstery for our couch over here, which we are eternally grateful for. And speaking of help and dad custom-made this counter-top for us out of some reclaimed barn wood. And it turned out super cool. We're just stained and finished it and it's super easy to clean. And we love it a lot. And then we use these little bungees on our dock plates, which are super easy way to keep these doors shut. So that is a really clever DIY hack. It looks good, works well. When you're on the road and you forget to put one of those clips on it, it can be a massive mess. So having those on there is very, very important. The only thing I'd mentioned with this particular style, you can see how those are sticking out. Like there's been plenty of times when I've been in Riggs where my pants or shorts or something like latches onto those. And that is one of the downsides to this particular type of setup. But if it's further in, it shouldn't be an issue. And so down here, we've got our giant propane tank, which powers the water heater that we don't use. Josh, this is our gray water tank, water pump, and freshwater back there. So we've only got 21 gallons of fresh water, which isn't a ton, but it works for us. And then we just got sort of other assorted cleaning supplies down there with their 21 gallons of where we can usually go about a week. And that's just kind of cooking and washing dishes. That's if we don't shower or do anything super water-intensive. And then here we've got our little sort of junk drawer. We've got these little rebel lock things just don't Amazon. They're magnetic. Super helpful for keeping the doors shut when we're driving. And in here we've got silver. So with those locks, those are great as long you don't lose your magnet. So if you order those and that's something you want to get, make sure you have extra just kind of a general junk drawer, all of our electronics supplies, some little lights and stuff like that. And then back here we have our chest freezer or refrigerator. We originally had a dorm fridge that fit perfectly into this hole, but it used way too much juice and the door's always flew open. It just wasn't ideal, so we replaced it with this one. And it has been perfect so far. It was a challenge to find something that would fit in our 19th wide slots. But and it's just a chest freezer we got from Home Depot. And then in here we've got a with that basically what they're doing is instead of putting it on the freezer, setting, they just bump it up. It's about 35, 40 degrees and use it as a fridge, which is, I've seen people do that before and they really enjoy it. Because one of the benefits to the chest freezer, like the dorm freezer, did take a decent amount of power. The doors flew open, but every time you open it, all that air rushes out. When you have a chest freezer type setup, all that air settles in there and you don't lose as much every time you open it. Johnson temperature controller that turns it from a chest freezer into a refrigerator. And it actually holds quite a lot, even though it looks small. We're just kinda stuff everything in there and it works pretty well though, with this size of fridge, we can usually go about a week without having to buy groceries. We do have a lot of dry goods and stuff like that that we can heat if we're in a pinch, shiny may get lost. But yeah, About a week with the size of the fridge is feasible. And then up here is just dishes, cups, extra silverware, stuff like that. Then over here we have our pantry area. So we've got our stove and our cooking supplies. Then this is all just dry food in here. Yeah. So we're just pulled the stove out and we either proper right here on the counter to cook or one times cook outside depending on the weather and how hot it is. So when it comes to school bus kitchens, you have a myriad of options. It really comes down to your personal preference just like everything. But I do hope that these examples were beneficial to you. But what you've seen in these videos is people making different things work for them while also making them aesthetically pleasing. So again, thanks for watching this lecture. I'll catch you in the next one. 11. Skoolie Bedroom Design Ideas: Hi everybody, Chris, here in this lecture we are going to be reviewing school bus bedrooms. So let's go ahead and get started. The first bus that we see here is a very typical design. When I say north-south, north is the front of the bus, South is the back of the bust, east to west. So this particular bedroom is an east to west bedroom. There are some pros and cons of this. This type of layout is the most simple and it utilizes the most space. We'll get to that here in a little bit. But what that causes is like say for this particular bus, if there's two people in the bed and the person that is on the south side of the bed needs to use the bathroom to climb over the other person. But again, this utilizes all the space the best. And then coming into here, we have a queen size memory foam mattress with the mini split. And then we also had a little TV that just kinda smart TV that pulls out a couple of things to notice there. Put the mini split up above the bed. I have the same setup that allows you to heat and cool the bedroom area. For me in particular, I do have a drape that cuts off a particular section of my bus. But if you need to get work done on your laptop, if you're trying to sleep and it's hot out, or if it's cold out, you can also turn the heat pump on the mini splits. It just makes it more comfortable in the place where you're sleeping or during the day. You can open the windows, you can turn fans on. But when you're trying to sleep, it makes it difficult if it's incredibly cold or incredibly hot. Also, queen size mattress is what a lot of people use. Besides mattresses are 60 by 80 typically. And the AT length. It works pretty well with the east to west of a school bus, just because that's about how wide the school bus is. It allows a little bit of extra storage at the head of the bed. We have a little bit of storage. We have a shelf behind. So we just kinda keep our nighttime by lotions and books and extra stuff like that. My favorite part is that this is how another way we can get onto the rooftop deck. So before we go on to the next one here, the emergency exit the same way with my bus. I do climb up on my cabinets to access the roof. I need to clean the solar panels. So depending on the bus, typically you can have that skylight over your bed. It's just the emergency exit of the bus and you can put in either just a marine hatch, which is a lot of a lot of people use that. Also. You could just put plexiglass over that and seal it up well, and you have a skylight and your school bus on to the next bus. This is a bus of a young family and they incorporated a crib into the back of their bus for their young child. Take this one specifically because it has this which makes it super simple and say put her in an out of here. When she goes to sleep. We have blackout curtains behind here, so we put them around that and then we make a little blackout curtain wall right there that lets us be able to stay awake when she goes to sleep at night time because she goes to a better at 07:30, just way too early to go to bed. We went with the pack and play instead of a crib because well, first of all, because she's gonna be growing and changing a lot. So this will be really simple to just change whenever she becomes a bigger toddler into being a little kid. But two, when we tried to go to credit, like we did try to build a CREB around here at first and it just didn't really work because underneath here we have stored, so this is be able to lift up. And when we would like secure the crimp to it, it would just kinda hit this or things would happen and we couldn't quite make the mechanics to make it all work. So this option was the best and we just slide it over whenever we need to access the storage under here, our closet space. And this is actually split between me and Rome. So Rome store, my jewelry store, and then we all have a little bit of stuff hanging up here. A lot of people whenever they're like, Oh, I could never live on a bus or in a tiny house because I had too many Close and Load Close. I used to have a closet that was basically the size of our bus right now, and it was just full of clothes. And now I have this in this drawer and a little bit of there. So I can do it. Anybody can do it. You just have to really want to live this kind of lifestyle and then getting rid of all the stuff that you don't even actually where it's actually really simple process. Recipe, eating his bone. We have our massive bedrooms, so we have a queen size bed back here, which if I would do something different back here first, we will always help people. We would turn the bed the opposite direction than it's going right now because it's kinda difficult at night. I go to bed early, it will goes to bed late. So he has to crawl over me because I had to sleep on the outside to deal with Rome and she wakes up in the night. And then it's just kind of like a complicated mess they get out of. And so we would have turned it the other way than a lot simpler to get in and out of a cell. Or I would have just gone back in time in the kingdom here because we had a king bed before we move onto the bus. And so downside to this bed with this guy who sleeps with us. It's kind of automated closet smaller and bigger. But other than that, that's really comfy. We just got new bed back here. We have plenty of storage back here to our headboard is actually more storage. That goes. Another example of headboard, and she gave another example of having to climb over each other. My original design in my bus was that way going from East to West. I am so glad that I ended up going north to south. My bus is coming up a little bit later to show you exactly what I mean. Having the access to go around to the sides, put stuff down there for storage. You have decided the bed. And also if somebody else's in the bed, you don't have to climb over them. You can just go out the foot of the bed and you're good to go behind the bed. So we keep screen for the Windows and actually toys for Rome there. Before we had to basically crawl through this hole to get anything that wasn't like right here. And our laundry also goes right here when we have laundry. So that'll be the first thing in the way and it was really, really annoying to access anything under the bag. So now that we have it as just the best thing, so highly recommend that if you aren't voting, embed a tiny house, you may get lifted out somehow so you can access the storage. So that was an incredibly clever design because for me, I have to pull up a queen size mattress and I just have a stick that what up from the base of the bed up to the bed whenever I need storage, I have a lot of storage underneath my bed and I can't access it very easily where they had a really cool hack right there. So this is a very clever design. This is an elevator bed. This was a couple that built a DIY raised through school bus. And I wanted to include this because it is very unique. It's not the system I would have used, but at the same time it shows how you can incorporate different different pieces like this is made for garage doors and they incorporate it into their school. And I thought was really clever thing. This is the biggest question with the elevator bed. I wanted to make a report. Note that when we were considering this, it was really difficult because you have two options as you're building a school and you want to make a bed, you can either have it on the ground and have your stored above with cabinets or I don't know any way to configure with Sheldon or you can have it lofted and then have all of your storage underneath and you have to climb into bed and maybe you don't have that much space because of the ceiling are ceilings are raised and we did a roof rays and we'll talk about that later. But it really helps with the elevated it's you commit to doing a Murphy bed which seems like the median between a lofted that are a bit on the floor. You're also committing to always putting the Murphy bed backup. If I'm honest, I never make my bed. A thing like you just wake up, wake up and you leave your bed. You don't make it every day? I personally do not make my bed every day. And therefore, I wouldn't commit to putting my murphy bed up every day. And if you commit to doing a Murphy bed, you're committing to having the space under it all the time. So with that in mind, we're like, You know what? I really wanted to do something different. So I do want to touch on that point real quick. It might sound trivial like making your bed every day. One of the big keys about being happy on the road is not thinking. Once you get on the road, you're going to think differently or do things differently. The problems you had before, they're still gonna be with you on the road. You're just gonna be mobile. So him being completely honest with himself and knowing that a Murphy bed was not for him is really important. And again, you might be listening to this course and thinking, once I get on the road, I'll act this way. You got to really keep in mind your own personal preference and how you want things to be. Because that way, when you are happy on the road, you're going to stay on the road so much searching. And I found these garage door lifters. They're called them my lifter. I don t know if I'm gonna get a plug from that and they're pretty expensive. It's our home. Again, we wanted to put more money into it. You can do a schooling for a lot less than we did. My wife is pregnant. I did not want a chain or a way that she would have to turn a wheel and be difficult on her. And so obviously, Krista showed you, I believe is Bluetooth, things that goes up and down totally fine. So putting it in the garage door rollers on each of the walls, it didn't work first try. We tried so many different configurations. There's a ton of little holes in the bed because I actually put the cables through the bed and put them on pulleys under here. And I'm like, Hey, you need two points of reference of pulley to, for it to work really well. And then again, I didn't want this cable is going alongside the bed and it will be yank on the sheets and it would get stuck in the pulleys. And now if I was just kind of a bummer, I said, You know what? We're going to try all these different configurations and this one works the best so far. It hides the wires the best and all of the all of the lifters are tied into the ribs of the bus. If you are building your own Scully, the ribs of the bus are the bones. Those are what you want to tie into for anchoring anything and they work really well. So once again, trying different stuff. If it's a new design, be prepared to try a couple of things. Again, that's a pretty fancy setup. But if you're not wanting to do a Murphy bed, if you're wanting all that storage underneath. It's really important to just have an open mind because with that particular school bus, that area underneath their bed was actually their play area. So that cabinet that you saw at the bottom left there had all their kids toys and that was like their kids playroom in the back of the bus. So this is moving on to my bus. Once again, this is a bed situated north to south. I have a queen size bed. And here we go. I have a closet right here, storage all the way down on this side and storage all the way over on this side. That isn't all close. I really honestly only where probably ten shirts that I wear all the time and I have the exact same pants besides my work pants. So just wanted to share As part that when you get a hallway bedroom like this, like north to south, there is the option of having a bunch of storage on this side as well as this side. This goes all the way to the ceiling, this goes all the way to cylinder as well as the open face storage. And I have more than enough for myself and multiple people really have some tools, storage. I have some camera gear, junk drawer right up here. And this is just extra storage for anything that I might need, open face storage on this side. And I have my camera bag which lives right here. So it's just quick grab anytime I need to grab it real quick. And underneath that, another vintage map with some epoxy over-the-top. And just kinda keeping with that map is static and then moving even further back out of the bed, queen size bed and online with north to south, I was thinking about going side to side with this, like I was mentioning before, my bed goes north to south. You can see the walkways on the side right here, and right there, which allows access to the side of the bed. I do use the side of the bed for storage because I rarely walk around the side of the bed. When I get into bed and out of the bed, I just jumped into bed and we're starting to get out of bed. I just jump out the foot of the bed. I've never had any issues with that. It's not like it's a big hassle, it's not a big pain. And I don't really see too many school buses that have this north to south design being, then I have a 40-foot school bus having that 80 " from the bed was not an issue. And I'm really glad I went with this design in the end. I wanted the storage underneath the bed and it's a lot easier to raise from this side. So there's tons of storage underneath the bed. There's walk around storage on both sides of the bed and then up above the bed, storage on both sides and little shelves on each side. I do spend a decent amount of time working on my laptop in bed as well. Main reason for that is the mini split is right above the bed, so I'm able to both be heated and cooled as I work on stuff. And that just helps out in those adverse weather environments. And then over here, I have the readout for all my solar gear. So I have a drunk color control display, which goes into a lot of detail of the system. I can track how much sun is coming in over time. I can compare charts and see which way I need to park my bus if e.g. I. Was using that one time to get the exact right angle during winter for the bus, for the solar panels. So I was kinda moving around, kinda tilt in the bus around, trying to get the best solar to get as much solar in, I have to NP PT charge controllers and a 3,000 what they've drawn inverter. And that system has been fantastic along with the 900 and amp hours of battle born battery. In terms of the power at this bus, it's been amazing. Basically never really worried about power from time to time. During the winter, like I said, I would have to hook up to a generator a little bit, but that's mainly just for the water heater. So I wanted to include the solar aspect of this is because before I like first thing I do when I wake up, I check the power before I go to bed, I check the power so I can adjust the generator if I need it, I can adjust the bus. I can check the charts of that color control to see how much solar has come in during the day. And then also it's a little bit of safety. So a lot of times with with the solar equipment, when things start going bad, it'll start ticking. I'll start making noises so I can actually hear the solar gear. You know, as, as I'm embed as I'm getting work done in the morning, as I'm laying there at night and the inverter, one of the lugs was loose and I started here and it ticking. And then I run some diagnostics. I learned that one of the lugs was loose on one of my main wires is able to get that tightened up and everything was fine. But being that I had that in the bedroom area as able to hear that and prevent anything from happening. 12. Skoolie Living Room Design Ideas: Hi everybody, Chris, here in this video we're going to be reviewing school bus living areas. So again, myriad of options with the school bus conversions being that they're all DIY. But an advantage that the school bus has is its width. So you're able to build on both sides with plenty of room for a hallway. So let's go ahead and get started. I'm going to Bus is the part where we out most probably our bar here, which was great for meals and doing homework for the kids, were doing homeschool on the road or road schools would like to call it. It's pretty cool to be able to pull up to a new place and have a new view of whether it's Beach or mountains or something fresh. That's one of the cool things about a bus to all these windows we left, There's 20-some windows, so it's had a great view and a nice breeze coming through. On this side is our cell phone. There's just a good spot to hang out, whether we're hosting friends for a little dinner party or just chilling out here and we can watch a movie on the couch is also where the rest of the family usually road. I put seat belts mounted through the floor into the frame. They come out in my couch here. So this is where they were most of the time. So a lot of school bus conversions, especially the bigger ones, 30-foot, 40-foot. They will have the couches. It's funny. I'm looking right behind me, blink it very similar to the one in here. I have a couch in my bus, and yes, it is very nice to have a spot to where people can come in Hangout. Also, it's important to make sure that the couch is multi-functional. I do have storage underneath my couch. I did not mount any seat belts, do it. I do have a RV chair that has seat belts mounted to it in my bus for a passenger. But a lot of people will install seat belts in their couch mounted to the frame. Obviously, you need to make sure that you're following the standards to make sure that's legal and safe. But you can definitely get creative with the couch. You know, it can be converted into a bed like mine, as mentioned before, you can add storage, you can add seat belts. Just as you're thinking through living areas, make sure that you make everything multi-functional. Like he's talking about the bench that he's currently leaning on. A lot of families on the road. We'll do homeschooling and having the adequate seating for your kids to do schoolwork. If that's the route that you're wanting to go. Putting USB charging port and drink holders here. So this was kinda comfy going down the road? Yeah, big storage underneath. Everything has got big D drawers. So we put in a ton of storage, not know, in this place, but the whole rest of the kitchen behind me, like 19 drawers and five cabinets, which turns out to be just a little more storage that I have in my house at home. This doesn't pull out, do a bed. We've slept people on it in a pinch. But we didn't want to have to convert things back and forth all the time and we can up our blankets every morning. I made the kids their own bunk spaces so that could be their room and they keep it the way they like. And this way we just keep this open and clean. This part of the bus. I wanted to make it as big as possible or feel as big as possible. Setting would be hanging out here a lot. Didn't want it to get cluttered right off the bat. This bar is a live edge black walnut. This is some work that I milled from a locally salvage city tree as part of my business that urban lumber company use the same type of material for the bar stools, even leaving a little bit of a live edge here. And they're taught my son how to weld. And he actually did a lot of the welding on the frame. So these bar stools. So that was pretty cool. That the curtains up here, which are nice, they're double insulated. I broke up my sewing machine. And so those up kind of last-minute gives it that kind of camp roll vibe. And they work really well on the sunny or cold out and we can rollers down and helps insulate the bus. Since these old school single pane windows aren't the most efficient. That's a good bit right there. With the blinds themselves. I ended up going with new made blinds. I didn't do the DIY route, which DIY is just as good. But I went with blinds.com. It's a double shade so you can completely block it out. And then one of them is opaque to let some of the light in. But the main point that I want to mention there, for your living room, obviously, you might want privacy from time to time depending on where you are camped. But they're also really good as thermal barriers. They kept their stock school bus windows, skull bone, those are very drafty. They're single pane as he said. So they let a lot of heating or cooling or out. Basically, it's hard to control the temperature of your bus if you're in bad weather, whether it be hot or cold, and having those blinds is a massive help. Like you really don't know how much it helps until you've been in a school bus. But in terms of wines, definitely keep that as designed factor as you're thinking about school buses. I've got a TV up here, so we would use my phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot. And we'd be watching Netflix and comfort on the couch and hanging out, which is pretty cool. That's all part of the electrical system that I put in the solar system. So it was pretty cool that'd be able to have efficient LED lighting and different gear, but also 120 volt AC household power for the TV, the refrigerator, the coffee maker, appliances like that, which all runs off Solar. Yeah, So being a woodworker, I wanted to highlight some cool Wouldn't here, I was trying not to overdo it, but I use this pretty neat old reclaimed spruce. Fencing from Colorado. And it's got that just cool patina that only years of whether it can provide are some gray and some brown and pretty rough, but I tried to randomly mix it all in. Let's cool. Compliments to the floor and contrasts well with the rest of the white walls and white cabinet tree. So onto the next school bus conversion. As you can see, this is a little bit of a different aesthetic. I wanted to include this one because this incorporates a lot more comforts from home. As you can see in the bottom right, there's a PlayStation, there's a large TV gaming. This looks more like your typical apartment. So I'm going to include this and hope you enjoy. Welcome to our bus. This is the living room. We bought this bus about seven months ago and limited full-time ever since. It was originally converted on HGTV, big looming tiny house. But we bought it and read it the inside to fit our lifestyle. When we bought this bus, the couch was pink and you couldn't access this orange underneath. And we also built the little succulent shelf there and the shoe cabbie. And so now you can access all the storage underneath from the front. The conscious, hey, Rachel needed a place to organize all her work, so I built a shelf customs all her needs. The TV and you have to you have we play video games, so we had to have that. Oh, yeah. For sure. As you can see, these walls have shipped lap on them when we first bought the bus, the plywood whereas meeting was cracking, installation was coming out. So we redid the whole thing was shipped lap and or windows were just plywood cut. There was no it wasn't framed out at all, so we did all that as well. Cancellation was starting to come out as we were driving, so we bring it out. So it does look nice and feel like a home. And we loved the curtain. See how these kinda hide. They come down, are they the skill up and hide out of the way? So those particular curtains that's very similar to what I have, my bus, it's not the exact ones. I got those from blinds.com. This tool has been very handy. It's comfy, sit on or rest your feet on at the same time. We can lift it up, flip this around, have a little desk or table here. Plus we store all our games and stuff inside. So that's been a huge help as well, looking at tiny space. So we're on to the next school bus conversion. This is an example of a family on the road. The living room seems to be the spot where a lot of people go to hang out when you have multiple people, you need to be clever with your design. So I really loved the table that they incorporated in their built. So enjoy. So this is our living room, craft truly slash dining room slash homeschool space. We have two tables and pulled out to the sides that are just actually the back of the couch and storage inside. We have all the kids, games and toys and art supplies, sewing supplies, as well as households advise under here, began incorporating that storage underneath couch is very important. Every single-space you can get to store things is important, especially when you have a lot of kids on the road with you. So you have a ton of stories that are catheters, which has been really nice. The one thing we do a lot when we're driving is put one side so that kids can be doing our projects, are working on schoolwork or whatever. While we're driving. We do have for seat belts on each side of the couch. And it's actually one of my favorite features, a table space for the sewing machine or the kids art supplies or where it's happening at the time. He really excited to show you his room. Like I said, this is where we do all of our schoolwork or family meals are in here. We're very much and eat at the table, kinda family. And that was part of our family culture. We didn't want to sacrifice for tiny living. We knew we wouldn't always have a pygmy table or maybe rainy days or wherever we wouldn't always be able to eat outside although we do a lot. And so it was really important to us to have a table that are less confident. We've actually had a lot of people request the plans for these that are building buses. And we're happy to share those with whoever, whoever thinks they could make something like this work. It doesn't need to be on this biggest scale. It can be a smaller table, something just for a couple of people even but still a table that tucks away really easily and doesn't take up very much space. So I'm carpeting musical family. That was another part of our family culture. We wanted to bring along on the road. Or daughter writes a lot of music and his ukulele, my husband plays the guitar, so we have it up on the wall and then my son plays the drums. And obviously that fit a drum kit and the bus. We've gotten this little box drone and it actually serves as extra seating or a stool. So it's actually really multi-purpose. The washroom. And the next school bus conversion is a couple. The road, I just really loved the aesthetics of this particular bus. As you can see on the left side of the screen, they have a dynamic and a couch. This is just a great example of a place where most people can come in and chill. It's multifunctional. You have your chill area, you have your dining areas slash work area. And hope you enjoy living room slashing and calls office space slash slash second bedroom. This is the outdoor area. This title action folds down to a little bit as well. It also backs up as Nicole's office so she's able to work. We've got storage under these chairs. We basically will storage that we can hold a little cat, litter and stuff. You'll kangaroo, which a buddy of mine, Botswana is dense granules. He's got some Aboriginal paintings. So we are the abacus truly the Updike being massive in Australia. The app back, some of that color schemes that you will see throughout the entire bus will be kind of like the outback fame. As you can see, the slide, the slide wool panels here. This is just part of what we stain them twice employed as well, kind of gives you that rusty would feel this is our catch. It folds down. It folds the answer double bed. We've got storage underneath here as well. That's hows extra blankets and stuff like that. We keep these couches and say this is for a level that we used. We cut it cut out of plywood because plywood, he added the cushions and then we just live with it up in the staple them together. Work really nice, actually really, really comfortable. The ceiling here we've got PVC panels that we bought from Home Depot, super easy to use. They're waterproof. We just blew them up and then just a couple of nails through the top. We also installed a blackout curtain. It comes across, gives us a bit of privacy during the night, or blocks out this during the day as well. It gives us just a little feature reporting super-easy way boost. Real quick. I want to mention that front blackout curtain. I have blankets for mine, but it's privacy. And he mentioned briefly that it's also keeps keeps the weather out. And the front of school buses typically, it's like a little greenhouse. Lets a lot of heat in like during the summer. It would be 100 degrees plus upfront behind the blankets, it'd be 75. 80 degrees is just a massive difference. And if you don't have a divider upfront from your living room or whatever you put in front of the bus. Typically, the setup here is how it goes. You have the living room right up front, and then more of the bathroom and bedroom a little bit further back. Having that divider is definitely keep that in mind as you're designing your bus or thinking about a bus having that area to be able to block up not only for privacy, but also the weather is very important. Now we have our last school bus example. As I mentioned, a lot of times. The living room is right up front where this particular design, the kitchen is there. So I wanted to show you an example of a school bus that had the living room, kinda chill area in the middle. You enjoy. Walk further through the space like 61. And so its base is a big issue for me. So I definitely wanted a way to build up, like walk through it and not have to duck all the time when I'm in here. This hole in the ceiling and reinforced with metal tubing and then two-by-fours and then built the way up. This is plexiglass I got. And then up here is just plywood with installation and then ten on top. So this really gives me a chance to let in natural light. It gives me a space to work. It makes this area feel a lot bigger. It's really just a cool feature. It's one of my parts of this build. And so it kinda opens up this dining room area. So in this dining room area, of course I have like under countenance storage, the ones that the lights are in are my drinking cups because they're always going to be cleaned. This countertop is actually my senior year in college. I lived with five friends and everyone who came over that year. The first time they came over with sine this wall we had, this is a part of that. Well, so it's really cool to have these memories to see different names of people used to spend a lot of time with. And then also play several different instance. And so in order to feel like home, I needed instruments in here. So I have this keywords that slides out where I can just sit here if I'm doing homework or just to be stressed, I can play. So as we move to this side, this is my closet space. So I made these with a CNC router, these closet doors. So they kind of look unique and match both this pattern, but then also pattern of the walls. And so as you can see, sudden feats of closet space, which is plenty like I have more than enough. Then I have bins underneath further clothes are different storage things. And then I have my shoes down here, my inverter and breaker boxes right here. It's all math uses. And then here's my voltage rating from the battery. So I can tell when those are getting lower. Water pumps and then just USB chargers, which are plugged right into that further. So you can see with this particular bill and it's kind of like a hybrid of closet areas slash hangout area, and incorporating instruments into the bill. There's two examples of people incorporating instruments into their build. And that's very common. But again, that goes back to the living area, being comfortable in your space, bringing what's important to you. I hope these videos helped. If you have any additional questions, be sure to reach out to us and we will get those answered. Thanks for watching. 13. Skoolie Kids Area Design Ideas: Hi everybody, Chris, here. It is a nice crisp morning here in the school bus. And today we're going to be going over kids areas in school buses. So as we've mentioned multiple times in this course, school buses are a good option for families. We go into detail there, but simply put, with all the customization with the space, with the weight capacity in the school buses, you can be creative with the kids faces. So the first video we're going to start with today is actually broccoli bus. They fit four kids in a school bus conversion. Their kids rooms are sectioned off towards the bed bus or actually in the back of the bus. And we'll go ahead and start the video here. The main living area is the kid and the laundry area. So this is like utility land over here. We have for a walk or dryer and a washer. They're all solar-powered and run off of just the sun. We have our book area for storage for homeschooling that other books and things in here, it was gigantic skateboard. Then what we have here is the four living arrangement areas for the kids. So one thing that you're going to hear me harp on about throughout this particular section is, take a look at how unique each kid's area is and what I've found with people on the road in terms of families. I don't have a family on the road, but what I've seen, how I've seen them be successful and the kids enjoy themselves on the road, is giving the kids their own unique little area where they're able to design it. It's basically their room. It's a micro room. It really is a micro room. But when it comes down to it, each kid has their own aesthetic, their own design, and the parents allow them to have that safe space, if you will. So just check out how different all four of these different kids beds are. Bricks be Anders and Audrey. This is their beds here than they have their own air conditioning setup in here. This is to keep them comfortable. Over on the side over here is their clothes, so all of their clothes comes out. So this is this their closet doors that they've yet so they can tuck things away in their beds. And they also have these these first two coming back a little further is this is the hump where the engine is that right underneath this area is open and available so engine work can be accessed from the backside here. Work table, little work table here. To feel whatever. So lots of playdough things and all sorts of other stuff happens here. Sometimes schoolwork happens. This is litter box for the cat. So he's got his little cat flap and there's a fan that Vince everything out of about. So we don't ever saw that, which is really fantastic. So one point I do want to make here, another thing that I've seen where families are successful on the road. The kids have their pets with them as well. Obviously, a cat and a dog works in this situation really well. I see more cats than dogs with families. I don t know if that's just cats are easier to maintain or if people that travel as families on the road just have cats, I'm not too sure. But having the pets with the kids as well seems to be a pretty big deal. And it seems to allow the kids to have, again, more of their own personal things within the bus, that a laser printer for schoolwork and office things and whatever. And the kids have their little TV back here, and then various stuff, cubbies for baskets and stuff, games and whatever else it might be that's back here. This is the front area up here where we drive. When we're driving, everybody rides and I thought this was important as well. I get asked a lot, how do you keep safe while you're driving? There in the back, you can see Anders little booster seats because he's the youngest of the coup, but there's a couple of options. So Aaron actually mounted seats to the frame. They have seat belts built-in. So you can get these from minivans, you can get these from cargo vans, just mount them to the school bus itself. But actually what this family does, Broadway bus six, they have a vehicle, they don't tow it. But Amanda, his wife drives the car, he drives the bus, and then the kids are able to be in a seat belt and car as well. So a couple of kids might ride the bus, couple of kids might ride in the car or vice versa. But there are different options with this. But having seats that are actually mounted to the bus is very important because you need the seat belts, you need to make sure you're safe. But I decided to keep this in the video just so you can see an example of a custom way of getting that done. Anders has this this receipt. The kids all have seats. Amanda has her seat. And then I have mine. Of course. These are seats that came out of a minivan. They're pretty comfortable. One of my favorite aspects is that they have what's called strlen go. So there's the third row or center row. So all of these seeds can pull down like this. And if we want to reconfigure or change our Setting things up onto the next kid's area. I wanted to contrast Aaron setup, which is fairly fancy to this setup. And I'm not saying one is better than the other. I just wanted to show that you can do something as simple as two-by-fours and plywood and get the job done. This is deliberate life bus, as you mentioned in this video, that they plan on rearranging this, but I just wanted to get on the road. But again, you don't have to be super fancy to make kids bunks. Like a lot of times if you have more than two kids, they'll put the bunks and that'll be coming up later in a sample video. They'll put bunks on one side and the other. And being that the width of the school bus is wider, you still have a perfectly usable hallway throughout. But again, just wanted to show a little bit more of a simple setup. If you're intimidated by potentially building something like Aaron's, be sure to pay close attention to this particular build. A bathroom on the passenger side of the bus. We have the Ken's bunk beds. These are one of the another one of those areas where we didn't quite finish it when we got ready to hit the road, we just slapped up a couple of three by four. So whoever's on the top bunk doesn't roll out and has a way to get in because there's a ladder and we just hit the red. Since then I put up like a coat of paint which is currently wearing off. So I'm going to have to figure something else out. But eventually we want to let the kids choose how they paint their bunks. Want to give them some freedom because we haven't really given them any design freedom. And the bus yet, again, that goes back to the kids having their own unique areas. When I recorded this, I recorded this video. This was this build right here. A lot of it was put together towards the end because they were wanting to hit the road. And I do believe that kids have their own unique bunks now. They're able to design their own space. They love the bank. So our older daughter, Sadie, she's eight and she sleeps on the bottom bunk and our five-year old friend gets the top bunk. This is a decision we made because they've been about that together for years and runs always have the bottom and say he's always have the time we left them swap. And run. Just loves her little upper space. She likes to pick out the door and look towards the front. She thinks it's cool to try to get grabbed things out of the cabinet that she can reach around the door. When we're designing our bus, we didn't want the beds to be something that they grew out of quickly. I mean, eight-year-olds, not that far away from having like really big growth chart. So we designed the kids bunks full length, like a twin size bed, whatever that standard length is. But we narrow them a little bit because even as the kids grow, we don't know how long we'll be doing this, but wanted to be flexible that we could do this for very long term even into their teenage years. So we've got the length. It just narrowed it by like, I don't know, six to 8 ". We felt like that's gonna be plenty of space for them to grow into the bunks. Another important factor, kids real quick. So they were very intentional on making sure that if they decided to do this longer, they wouldn't have to completely redesign their bus to fit their kids as they hit a growth spurt. The problem that causes is the sheets. So obviously sheets don't fit bunks that are visitor narrower. And also the math is, is we have really about 6 " thick there ikea mattresses, so it makes it a little harder for sheets to fit. And then the fact that they're like wedged into these little cubbies makes it really hard to actually put the sheets on the bed and make the bed and keep it looking nice. So we just recently gotten new bedding for them. It's the Betty's betting, which is like a zippered betting is really cool. They make their beds by thing, it just can open it up. It's like this cozy fleece on the inside. And then if they don't want to be wrapped like zipped up, they've got this extra flaps so they can lend because the unit without having deserve or too cold at themselves closed, that allows the kids to actually make their beds not like they do. I mean, we tell them to do on their own, but it makes it super easy. So when we do make the beds, it's a lot quicker and then it has a whole lot of elastic underneath it. Like sometimes fitted sheets have like just the corners of elastic, but this has got a heavy-duty elastic all the way around. And I found that that kinda help hold it in place on the really thin mattress is a little bit better. So you might notice we have an enormous TeddyBear in here. And minimizing the Qin stuff was easy for Sadie, who's our older daughter. She really got into, let's only keep the things that are really important to me and what is it? What's the stuff that I really play with and lots of stuff. But I just kind of leave sitting around my room. But our younger daughter ran, had a lot more trouble with it. She is really connected to everything she loves all her thing. She lost all her stuffed animal, she lost all her books. So helping choose what to get rid of is really hard. And when we taught her, we're going to get rid of big there, which is our normal TeddyBear. She was devastated. She had the satisfies I've ever seen. She was crying and asking us to take pictures of her with the bear through remember him by who were like, Okay, we can't get rid of this bear. So they where it lives with us. He is our third child, but he's so there's so much to unpack there. One working with kids, different personalities with this. This was a perfect dichotomy of one kid. Really be an end to it. Getting into the mineralizing donating stuff where one kid just wasn't having it. But also you saw the parents being flexible, understanding their kids and understanding that they're unique and they have different needs and desires because overall, if your kids aren't happy on the road, odds are you're not gonna be happy on the road. And there's an important point here where the parents choose to do the road or the kids are just along on the ride. So again, I don't have kids, so take this with a grain of salt. But my outside view is if the kids are not necessarily choosing to be on the road, it's almost the parents responsibility or duty to make sure that the kids are as happy as possible. Not only will it make the parent's life better, it will obviously make the kid's life better. And having a bigger bear in a bed might not seem like that big of a deal. But just from my experience on the road, ten plus years, it's 11 years in like a week from now. Just being flexible and V and understanding and the small things do start to add up in terms of your happiness on the road. So I think that is a point that should not be glossed over. I think it's really important one, basically what they did there because they're going to come back. We are on to the next kids living areas. So as I mentioned before, if you have more than two kids having bunks on both side of the bus is a very common thing. Again, the width of the school bus is key here. You can see that there's still a fairly decent sized hallway and there's room for for kids. Points that I brought up before. The different designs of each kid's bumps, its own unique thing. You'll hear that shortly. And also, the privacy that the kids have in this particular build with curtains is pretty cool as well. So we'll get started farther. We have the four bunk beds that we made. These two on this side are two six-foot bunk beds. These are two five-foot bunk beds because we have some younger kids that just don't need that amount of space. And as the older kids get older and move out, we can just rotate people into the bigger bunks. So we have our 16-year-old, our 10-year-old boy here are 10-year-old girl down here. And then our four-year-old, when we decided to live this lifestyle, we obviously talked to her kids and we've got their feedback. But a lot of it was kinda beyond their control is what we felt was best for our family. Um, but this was completely in their control. They gave them something to say, Okay, this is my space, it's my decision and I get to control what happens in here. Even though it was a hard transition for and they still had this thing that was there, wanting to be able to vote. So again, main point. Their kids had their own unique setup. They had something under their control which gives them ownership into life on the road. I wanted to include this one. The audio is a little bit more low. This is a video that I recorded about three years ago. And this is a very clever murphy bed setup. As you can see. It just looks like a normal cabinet right there, but it does transform into a bed, a little hideaway murphy bed. And just like many other things, the key points here are the child has their own unique area and being clever with the space. So I'll do some magic on the audio here. So you can hear as a truck drives by people from coming out and we have plenty of the bed just fell down. Depending on the inside. You can see he has all of his little shelving storage stuff. Is there, his boxing and whatnot. And then it can also be used like basically as an ouch. Want to come in and sit on it and not a real comfortable work. So again, having a multi-purpose is probably most important thing. So it gives us the couch without having to have just the couch because we've calculated the couch but there was no storage. It left us lacking that source for him. And we wanted him to have his own designated placing the bus as well. Yeah. We did not want to be folding up bedding and putting it away and we talked about a full-time type couch, but during the day, if we wanted to invite you, couch, embedding had to go somewhere. With this, everything falls within it or we can sit on the bed and it works great. Then plus the AC unit here is kinda not in the way of anybody walking past because it's analyzed under his bed, works out as what the bandwidth this side. So we're onto the next keys area. This setup is similar to Aaron's, but this is a little bit more of a rustic setup. As you can see. They incorporated a lot of wood, but I really enjoyed the aesthetics of this particular kid's area, as well as different aspects of homeschooling and just areas where they can come chill out, have their own space. I really enjoyed this particular setup and I'm sure you will too. The buses, the kids area, we're actually right behind the wheels and the shutter. After we step down off of the great tank and the water tanks just right behind the rear wheels, decided to turn this into the whole kid's area again, how many iterations we went through, I don t know. Having four kids, they needed their own space. We did recognize that that was needed. Their space is basically their beds. They actually really enjoy. They like changing it up. We felt that it important that they have, again, what space, little space they had, they could do whatever they wanted with. So kind of went with a different setup. Triple bunk bed with the youngest here. I'll just start with hers. Again. Hers is just really low so that she can get in and out. She's got her herself, that she can put books, you know, trinkets, toys, whatever she wants to put in their oldest sleeps here and again, her stuff is against this wall. She's got a couple of shelves that she can do whatever she wants with. So we felt that the necessary that everyone has their own space, they could do whatever they would like to do to it just to feel a little bit more like there's this area here is more of a play area. There's a shelf here that has baskets for everyone with a little bit more space there, toys or whatever they want to do with. We brought along a record player from my wife's grandfather who passed away. They loved this. We listened to old records, can be wine at the old country music with new songs. Radio, they control it, they listen to whatever they want and it's really fun to hear. One day they're listening to country music. Next thing you're listening to Irish songs about goats from Ireland. It's really been fun for them to do what they want to. Next to the window, we actually put a reading bench. And at first we can think that there was gonna be used a whole lot. But they just loved this to do Legos up there. They'll open up the window and yells stuff outside. Dogs are barking. They yell at the dogs, but they really just loved this air to get their Legos, their toys out, plan the floor. And again, it's small enough space that it doesn't take long to clean up. The last area. Again, apparently kids need close to run around and play outside. And so again, some more built-in shelves with some reclaimed pallet wood and corrugated steel finish here. Again, space is a premium. We'd have a little bit of space for everybody, but this is their closet. And a lot of times I forget it's even here just because of the nice front that we decide to put on it. So that gives you some insight to how families are living on the road. Again, it can range from super intricate, two very simple. But the key points seem to be that the kids have their own space where they're able to design it and be part of the journey of being on the road. If you have any questions, if there's anything else that you'd like to know about them, he's on the road, be sure to contact us and let us know and we'll catch you in the next lecture. 14. Thank You For Taking Our Class!: Thank you so very much for taking this class. I really hope that you found it useful. As I said in the beginning of this class, I really tried to think about every aspect of the school bus build that I wish I knew when I first started this journey, it definitely would have saved me a lot of time, energy and money. And I hope this did that for you. Once again, I appreciate you taking the time to be here and have a good day.