Mini Bus to Tiny Home! His craftsman cottage on wheels!

I really like this layout that I picked mostly because I was able to fit everything comfortably that you would want in a house. It took me about nine months to build. I wasn't building every day. I'm really excited about this kitchen. This is a huge upgrade. I'm not a fan of the cooler style fridges. I live that life. I know what it's like. I know you can save space and Tetris everything in there. I don't like it. I'm not about it. One of the challenges with the bus was buses tend to have all this wiring. I don't exactly know what all this does. Over here I also have these magnetic knives and you don't have to worry. They've never fallen off. They never will. Fingers crossed. Hey, I'm Kevin. This is Nova and this is Otto and this is Bev the Bus. My first endeavor into van life was back in 2017. I was climbing at a climbing gym and I met a guy that was living out of a van. After we got done climbing he showed me his rig and was telling me all the perks of living on the road and just saving a bunch of money. Eventually I ended up finding a ProMaster and when I started looking at the cost for rent in San Diego where I was living versus the car payment to have a brand new ProMaster, I started thinking that that was going to be the most sense for me. After a while I started realizing that my passion was gearing into music and it was hard to find a balance of music on the road and traveling and so I decided to settle back into San Diego. I ended up selling that ProMaster and I ended up buying a house fortunately in San Diego and building a studio. After a couple years of being in a house I did still miss the nomadic life and I started looking around at different builds again. I kept coming around to these mini school buses and how affordable they were and I ended up finding this one on Craigslist. Having this bus it allows me to have my music community in San Diego as well as I'm able to rent this out as supplemental income and that's something that's allowed me to have some flexibility to take trips when I want and it's not as painful on my wallet. It allows people to get out and see the road and kind of try out this lifestyle. I really like this layout that I picked mostly because I was able to fit everything comfortably that you would want in a house and in my last build I didn't have a shower, didn't have a toilet and I didn't really have a couch area so I was able to optimize the space. It took me about nine months to build. I wasn't building every day. The cost for the bus was $15,000 and with the total for labor and materials it was $130,000. Welcome to the outside of Bev. This is a 2011 Chevy Express. It's a five window. The length of it with the ladder is 22.5 feet. It's about eight foot wide and 10.5 foot tall. When I bought the bus it was painted white but I wanted to do this rhino liner type. It holds up really well against scratches and I took it down to Mexico and had somebody paint it for me. Some of the mods I did on the outside was adding this big roof rack. I think it's about 20 foot by eight feet and that was done by a custom fabricator. The roof is arched. Most of the companies I was looking at didn't offer anything. It took me a few months just to find someone that was open to building and customizing this for me. With the rack installed and a ladder and the powder coating it was $6,500. This is a six liter Chevy engine and it runs off gas which I thought was pretty interesting when I was looking into these. I thought all the buses ran off diesel. I reached out to my dad who has a lot of mechanic friends and they said that these six liter engines are some of the best engines out there so I was really comfortable about getting this. This bus I bought with a hundred thousand miles so I knew that if I did some preventative maintenance on it I could have this for a long time. The gas mileage that I get with this is unfortunately around nine or ten miles per gallon. Coming around to the side of the rig one thing I wanted to mention was the ground clearance. This is probably my weakest point on the bus when it comes to off-roading and so at some point I might get a leveling kit to bring up the front of the bus. The back definitely is raised up a little bit more. I don't have too many issues with the all-terrains off-roading. I can't do anything too much on four-wheel drive but I'm able to get around and I'm pretty experienced as an off-road driver. So looking at the awning I decided to go with this automatic awning through RecPro. You know if it takes more than five minutes to set up I knew I wasn't going to use it and I knew from spending so much time in Baja that I wanted to have an awning that was fixed to the bus. This has been really nice for me. The arms actually attach down here and up here and this allows it to be able to stay sturdy even in high winds. You'll see it starts to lower down a bit and it automatically stops as well. There's it and when you're in high winds you know your typical Walmart tent is gonna you know fly away and so this with these strong arms it's not going anywhere. So as we move to the back I'll show you the electrical system. We got the ladder back here and just the overall garage. When it comes to my power I have 600 amp hours of AGM battery. I have 700 watts of solar, a 3,000 watt inverter, and I have a 12-volt fuse block that all my 12-volt accessories are going to. I also have my alternator hooked up so anytime I'm driving I'm actually charging the batteries as well which I think is crucial because you just can't always rely on the sun to be out. When it comes to cooking and hot water heater I use a propane. I have a five gallon propane tank in here and I actually have a diesel heater back here and that's how I keep warm. All right so now it's the top side of Bev. As you can see this is a pretty massive deck. This is the entire length and width of the top of the bus and up here I have four 170 watt solar panels from Renogy. I have two max air fans and I also have this skylight which I think is really cool. One of the unique features of having a roof deck is it just opens up your floor planning and gives you a whole other space to host people and when you're on the road you're constantly making new friends and it's fun to be inside but it's nice to have someone that has a big deck to hang out up there. I've also thought about the fact that if I ever did some longer trips I could attach gas cans and toolboxes up here and has the space to still allow me to host people. On this side of the bus I wanted to show you my hot water heater. I like this kind of setup because it's an on-demand hot water heater and it's a little nerve-wracking cutting this out but I got this mount from Skoolie.com and this allowed me to rivet this in and it was pretty easy to do. When it comes to the water tanks on this side I have a 25 gallon gray water tank and then I have a 41 gallon fresh water tank on the other side. Having 41 gallons of fresh water is good for a few days. You can definitely get two or three showers and wash the dishes a few times. One thing most people don't know about buses is that the windows tend to leak and so it's important to actually pull the windows out. Surprisingly it's only a few bolts per window and the windows will just pull out and you can clean all the gunk out put some new beetle tape on. That's definitely vital to getting a nice clean seal because the last thing you want to do is build your entire bus and then have it leaking later. All right so before we head in I wanted to talk about this door real quick. This is not the original door as you know most buses have the bi-fold doors and based on my research I learned that a lot of them don't hold insulation well and let a lot of air in when you're driving and so I was looking at different options and originally I looked at you know mending the two doors together and having it on one hinge but I accidentally broke one of the pieces of glass when I tried doing that so I found this as a solution. This is just a typical RV door. I'm not much of a welder so I just used a pressure treated wood up here just to fill in an extra two inches or so that didn't work for the the size. All right so now let's head inside. So as soon as we come in you'll notice that I have this cockpit seat here. Something I missed from my last van is being able to have a passenger close by and so I found this alternative and this is a little cockpit seat that drops down it has a seat belt on it. It's not the best for super tall people you kind of have to put your knees off the side but most travelers this works just great. And then I over here I have some shoe storage and I just like having a little area to put some knickknacks and put your keys and stuff right near the door. The cabin area is really comfortable. I added a swivel seat on it and I have a really fun time driving this. One of the challenges with the bus was it didn't even have a stereo system in and so I put in a couple tweeters and these speakers and then I had a backup camera installed as well. And another thing is the buses tend to have all this wiring. I don't exactly know what all this does but there is a lot of wiring that you have to kind of work around and so I just built this little access panel just in case I ever need to get in here but so far I've never really had to deal with anything in there. So this is the shower that I installed. This is a 30 by 26 inch shower. When I installed the shower pan I actually cut into the subfloor of the bus and that dropped it down an extra inch or two and for me being tall this allowed me to be able to stand up and just have a little extra room in the shower. For a toilet I used the Airhead composting toilet. I really like this toilet. It has a separate urine diverter which is definitely a big thing. You don't have to change the solids as much as you do the liquids so I find that to be super helpful. A couple other things with the shower. I did this like low flow shower head. I still have to do kind of like a military shower because I only have 41 gallons. One of the main challenges that I would say with the shower is if I could go back I would just move this shower head up to here just to get the maximum height possible and the only other thing I could have done is do a roof raise and at that point I just wasn't in the market to do a roof raise. I also installed this I think it's Nautilus is the company but this is a cool easily compactable shower door. So now moving on from across from the shower I have my dinette that I installed over here. When I was building I decided to build the bed and then put the shower in and that determined the kitchen which we'll talk about and then on this side I had the dinette and I knew that there were certain dimensions I wanted for it to be comfortable and that was going to determine how big my couch was. To create the comfortable space I was looking for I actually started carrying a tape measure with me and every restaurant I went in I saw a booth I was measuring the angle of you know how big the arch was in the back and you know looking at you know cutting back the angle on the feet that was another one and that allows you to have extra foot space. As you'll see I have this butcher block everywhere this is actually mostly all one 12 foot piece that I just cut up and so I was able to use it for the table for up here and for all my counter space as well. Underneath the dinette I actually built a raised platform this opens up and usually I just put all my tools in here I have ratchet straps bungee cords stuff like that and you just need to maximize as much space as possible and I knew I didn't want an overhead above the dinette because then you're going to bump your head on it so I figured I might as well use the space below and just elevate the dinette. All right so let's head to the back now. So next I want to talk about the couch area as I said before this was determined based on the dinette that I had and this is the size I came up with. Some of the cool features I have in here is I put a bunch of extra storage underneath these I put in this little step here just to help the dogs get up but then I actually utilize that as somewhere that I put their dog toys. So next let's talk about the kitchen and I'm really excited about this kitchen this is a huge upgrade versus my last van. I'm not a fan of the cooler style fridges I live that life I know what it's like I know you can save space and Tetris everything in there I don't like it I'm not about it. I really like this Dometic 110 fridge I found this to be a good size that I could actually fit everything that I need in here it's just such a game changer to be able to open the door and everything's not you don't have to pull everything out to get what you need. So with the space that I had over here I decided that I really wanted to put an oven in based on the oven size and the fridge size that left me just enough room to fit this deep sink and I highly recommend like a deep sink. On this side of the kitchen I added a recessed spice rack and the reason why I decided for this is I like that all the spices are off to the side I don't have to pull them out from any cabinets and I can see the labels on top over here I also have these magnetic knives and you don't have to worry they've never fallen off they never will fingers crossed. I wanted to keep all the windows in the bus originally and get that 360 degree view later I kind of changed my mind and added these wooden planks to kind of block out some of the light. I didn't originally intend to have this design for the curtains but I had to pivot based on the seamstress and I added these straps that allow for the windows to be fastened up. So here's a this is my little mascot in here this is Monty the mountain goat and I always joke that my spirit animal is a mountain goat. Another cool feature that I had is I installed this kind of secret compartment that I just have like a space for a laptop and you know some important documents and I just thought this was kind of a cool use of space and it also keeps my dogs away from getting onto the counter space so it kind of creates this divide. I just took a 10 day road trip recently and something that I just discovered is that I forgot about putting a laundry bag in my rig and so I came up with this design that I haven't executed yet but I'm going to cut out the bottom of this cabinet on the bottom and there's going to be a false floor and underneath there's going to be hooks where there'll be a laundry bag underneath there and that's just a cool way to still have access to that laundry bag for laundry days but I'm able to keep it out of the way and it's in the garage space. So next I want to talk about the ceiling and this is probably something I get complimented on the most and I decided on this kind of layout I found a YouTuber that had an accent wall that looked like this and I decided to just maximize it and put it in my entire space. I went to my local lumber store and I decided to pick out a bunch of colors and I used this I think it's cedar pine and I was just able to stain them all different colors and shout out to my friend who helped me and with getting the layout and making it kind of more randomized. So moving on to the bed area first thing I want to talk about is I put this Seraco 360 fan now these are really nice fans they allow you to turn it any direction it has three different speeds on it it locks to the wall super crucial for when you're living in a hot space especially to have something that you can put on the bed when you're sleeping on the couch when you're hanging out cannot recommend that enough. I decided on a full-size bed because I wanted to maximize the rest of the real estate in the bus and I noticed that a lot of other people end up sacrificing because they put a king-size bed in. In my experience two people can easily sleep in a full-size bed. One of my favorite features in the rig is this skylight this allows me to be able to look out at the stars at nighttime I also get some more airflow when I'm in a hot environment and it actually has a screen and a shade on it so if bugs are an issue I have that covered or if I just want the sun out in the mornings I can just close the shade. 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 Tour.