She lives in an ambulance?! Box truck Tiny Home for $19k

Hi there, welcome to my channel where I take you on tours of unique homes and showcase stories of people living alternatively. In today's episode we're going to meet up with Jana and take a tour of her one-of-a-kind ambulance turned tiny home. In just two months Jana built her home on a budget using reclaimed materials to create a comfortable space for less than $20,000. By choosing adventure from the comfort of her own home, Jana is hoping to redefine what it means to settle down. And if like videos like this one, make sure that you subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you know every single time we publish a new episode. Hey guys, I'm Jana. This is the Jambulance. This is my home on wheels. It's a 2001 E450. I can't wait to show you guys all about it. This is my home on wheels. I've lived in it for three and a half years. Right before I bought this thing I was teaching and I'd been teaching in the Virgin Islands for like seven years and I decided I needed a little bit of a change. I started talking to some people about van life and somebody suggested that I check out ambulances because it's a box truck and it would be a quick build. This just seemed like a really cool opportunity. I bought this thing on eBay, sight unseen. I had to fly up from the Virgin Islands to pick it up. I drove it cross country to Iowa where my parents are and I built it out in their yard. That build took me about two months and for anyone that's built their own house I think you'd probably agree with me a little bit in that it's a pain. It's a process. I watched a lot of YouTube. Growing up my dad always had a lot of construction in our house and I helped him with projects but nothing like building your own house especially with like solar, propane lines, water lines like that was all very new to me. I bought this rig for 12k and then I paid a mechanic to come and make sure that it was good and then the build out was under 7k. So definitely did on a budget, used a lot of refurb materials. It was a really cool process to kind of build with some of new and old and all kinds of things on the budget. So the Jambulance gets a lot more attention than I do. People are very interested in box trucks and I think that's kind of rising. The Ambulance is a perfect skeleton for a box build. My family on the other hand thinks I'm nuts. The biggest thing I hear from people is when are you going to settle down and I'm like yo I am settled down. This is me settling down. This is my house but I would say most people think I'm crazy or they secretly wish they had the balls to do it. My home is eight foot wide by 14 foot long and it's about 112 foot of living space. This box was actually finished out as a Red Cross vehicle so there's a little bit of a difference between Red Cross and traditional Ambulance builds. The biggest one is that the Red Cross has less outside storage which means you get more inside storage or inside space which is great. It also came with a window. The door was not here. The window spanned from here to here so it was a really wide window. I found a friend actually that can weld aluminum so we took out that that window put a door in. This is my battery box and then over here is a garage storage which keeps extra hoses and tools and things like that. Up on the top up here is an awning so this is great when it's too bright when it's not too windy. It can't be too windy for me to pull it out. It is not a draw one so I have to actually unzip it from the roof rolled out and I need an extra helper to help me pull the poles down. So by myself it's pretty hard to do, possible to do, not necessarily the greatest idea ever. And then up on top of the roof I have 400 watts of solar. Other side of the Ambo we got another battery box and then we have another garage. This is my favorite one. This has my spare tire along with a shovel and some extra things like my hose, my extension cord if I ever need extra power. This is for shore power if I ever wanted it which I have done but not very often. Well that pretty much takes care of the outside of the ambulance. Let's go inside. Come on in. As you enter into my house you'll see some of the original cabinets from the traditional ambulance build. So I kept this cabinet. I also kept another cabinet. I also have my hall of fame, some of my artwork that I've created over the last couple of years. I have a seating area here. This actually is the tabletop and inside this is just storage right for all your extra things. But I have the the leg for it and it sits right here and so you have your own little kitchen area right where we can sit down and have food or I do work here as well. I also have a standing desk that I do work at. Working on the road. One of the most popular questions we get. I'm pretty much a jack of a lot of trades. Not all trades but a lot and I wear a lot of hats. I'm a teacher. When I'm in a place for a while I can substitute in that state. You just have to be certified or licensed in the state that you are in. Other things that I've done. Face painting. It's super fun at events. I also own a company. It's called Art and Soul and I teach yoga and breath work. I also am a Reiki master and I incorporate Reiki into those two things. So back here is all my solar setup and this runs my lights, the water pump, the fan, and the fridge, and the diesel heater. I have 400 watts. I use two marine batteries so eventually I'll need to revamp my battery system and go with lithium but at the time I'm just using what was in the truck which was two stereotypical marine batteries. I have had to replace them one time since I've owned the vehicle but I took it as just general maintenance. I also have an inverter that sits on my computer screen right so I have this for my standing computer. Behind it is an inverter so I can plug anything in that I need to. In this space I have kind of some of my tools and I have an extension cord in here. I'll have to plug it in on the inside with the inverter. I run it either out the door or through the driver's window if I need to run any power tools on the outside which I've done many times. My lights. I have six lights. I usually don't run with all of them on but you can if you want to. The cool thing about these lights is you touch them on and off so you don't have to have them all on at one time and if you hold them they dim and they get brighter so that's a dim and then it gets brighter. So that is something I would highly recommend for anyone doing a build. This is my art storage space so this houses a lot of my sketchbooks and paints other supplies. It's definitely a creative space here. I did this piece here. This is a piece that a student created for me a number of years ago as well as this piece and I've cherished them. They've come with me in all of my homes. On the inside of this cabinet is a closet so I have my mirror with some jewelry hanging and then this is where I house most of my clothing items. I use really strong magnets. This doesn't come open very often on the road. Underneath you see my fridge. Pull it out. I just have a set power fridge. It looks very much like a cooler. It is not a fridge and freezer. It is a fridge or freezer so I have to decide. Most of the time it's a fridge. We'll go ahead and we'll transition over here into the bathroom. I wanted a shower, right? A full-on shower. When I was doing my build I went back and forth on the traditional size for a shower pan but I didn't really want to build out too far into the walkway so I created this one completely on my own. This is all made out of wood and then I used red guard on top of it and then I epoxied it. So from the base of it you can see the drain. It's had to be in a specific spot because of the battery banks where it sits and I wanted it in this place for a number of reasons. This is kind of where I ended up with it but I was inspired by the ocean. I'm definitely a water baby and so this epoxy is water inspired. So there's a lot of creativity that goes into epoxy. My shower is epoxy as well as my countertop in the kitchen. So this is a full-on shower. It also houses a toilet. This is a compost toilet. Highly recommend it. Also in the entryway is my diesel heater, right? So it's in the entryway and then into the kitchen. Welcome to my kitchen. Anyone that lives tiny knows that you find very interesting things for small spaces. So I actually used a like a shower hanger inside this window because it was the only thing I could find that would be like a holding space that fit into that. So it fit perfectly into that frame. That houses a lot of things like obviously sunglasses and some plants and just some gadgets. This actually is something that I've carried with me for 15 years. I was working in Brazil and they had this in all the classrooms. It houses your soap so that when you turn it upside down it comes out but when you move around it won't bounce out of there. So that is my my hand soap. This is an epoxy countertop. I decided again to go with a little bit shorter of a kitchen space than the traditional countertops which would come out to about here because when I created the space I wanted to walk all the way to the back of the ambulance. Fun story, I actually created my sink. I didn't buy it. I made it out of a stainless steel container and used a jigsaw. Don't do that. Just buy the sink. My window coverings are all made. They have on the inside of them a fabric that's supposed to be kind of like heat resistant. Keeps it cool or warm in here. That's really great. They fold up and then they are just velcroed closed. Otherwise they roll down. Magnetic rack is great for all the knives and everything that you need handy constantly in your kitchen. This art piece was done for me by a friend in Durango. Allie is a beautiful artist that created this for me. That's front and center in my house. It's one of my favorite pieces I've ever had. Over here you'll see my stove. I actually got this second hand. I found this on Facebook Marketplace and the lady had been building out a bus and decided to scrap it. I am the lucky second or third hand owner of this wonderful propane stove top with an oven which I love. The reason the oven was so important is because I brew sourdough. I have sourdough and I have kombucha. Over here you'll see the sourdough in my pantry. My wonderful collage of pantry. I just fed it. It's popping out. It's really great to make fresh bread almost daily on the road. We have the magic space of tea and things like that. I like to collect different plants from places that I go and try them out so that I can try different teas from all the different areas with the medicinal purposes of each. I do like to collect things secondhand. Some of the things in the kitchen that are purchased secondhand mostly from Facebook Marketplace include this cabinet which I had to restructure on the back so it was supported. These are actually oven racks. I sanded them down, repainted them, put them up and now they are kind of holders of different things in my kitchen. Another fun thing that I got secondhand are these Pepsi crates. I couldn't find Coca-Cola crates which would have been my first choice and I turned them into my drawers. I have all those that holds most of the kitchen appliances, cups and all that fun stuff. I decided to keep my water tank on the inside. This was important because I go into different temperatures and I didn't want to deal with anything freezing either my water tank or the water lines. The water fill is actually on the back side and you have to open up this door in order to fill up the water which is another safety mechanism just to make sure nobody puts anything in it or I don't put something in it. Everything is here. It's a 33 gallon water tank. That's where I store it. All right we're gonna move on into the bedroom. Okay so I went with a futon-ish bed and I have a slide out bed. So this actually pulls out. It's what we call a finger bed where it slides out. When it's slid out it only goes to about here so I can still move all the way to the back of the ambulance. There are some things that you can't compromise when you move into a tiny space and one of those things for me was I like to get dressed up and and have fun like Halloween is my favorite holiday and so I had to have a party drawer. So this house is like onesies, some wigs, a skeleton costume, just some of the more fun outfits that I couldn't part with. This compartment was original to the truck when I first got it. It was double the space and it went into the shower and I cut it. So right here it used to be twice as long and I cut it because I wanted to build a shower and I needed a place to put all the propane and the water. So over here as we move into this space we have the propane water heater. So this is where the hot water comes and heats up for my shower. This is another refurb right. I took old kitchen cupboards actually and you can see they have this lip and I cut them so that they could be my shelves. The reason I thought this would be really good is because this lip creates a space where it catches so not a lot of things will fall. Then I used extra support with bungees and drilled it all the way through so that everything kind of you know stays put as much as possible. This backing is actually metal so the other side of it is the shower but I wanted metal so that I could have what I call the love wall. This is where I house you know like cards or gifts or pictures. I had a cat for two years that lived with me. I mean he was 11 years old when he passed but he lived in this for two years and so this is kind of like his little shrine area. Another fun story is right before I drove the ambulance after I built it out and I was leaving Iowa I went to my mom's house and I don't know if she knows this. So this might be the first time that she ever hears this as she watches this video but um I don't know if you guys remember glamour shots but when I was little my mommy took me to get our glamour shots done and in her spare bedroom of her house she had a glamour shot of herself and I stole it off of her wall and I've had it in here ever since. So this is my mom in the 90s in her glamour glory days and um I've stole it thinking that she would it was a joke and she hasn't said a thing so it's been in here for three years. Fun fact I steal things off of your wall watch out when I come to your house. The biggest lesson and I'm still learning this lesson but the biggest lesson I've learned from living in a moving home is surrender and go with the flow. When people ask me you know when you're gonna settle I don't have an answer like I am settled I feel like I am settled. Wherever I go I'm home it feels very comfortable to me I like the flexibility I definitely want to do some international traveling whether or not that's in this rig or not I'm not sure yet but I don't foresee me slowing down or switching gears or being somewhere stable for a long time and so yeah I don't really see myself stopping anytime soon. Thanks for watching this week's episode I hope you guys enjoyed it please make sure to like share and subscribe and I will see you soon with another unique home story.