To those of you following this project, I'm sure you've noticed the lack of posts that have been added in the past few months. We have been on the road!! We rushed out as quickly as we rushed in it seems. Not every little detail was worked out or every dream project was finished but the majority of the work was finished and it was time to head West. We had no idea how long it would take to get to BC this time, a journey we've both done multiple times, and so to avoid being late for another tree planting season we finished the bus on a Friday, had an open house in the Home Depot parking lot on Saturday morning and were on the road that afternoon.

For a little background on Phil and I we are career tree planters, Phil a 4th year planter and myself a 4th year foreman with 8 years in the bush. We plant in British Columbia and this career provides us with the freedom that has allowed us to take on this endeavour. Looking back over the past 8 seasons of being a planter I've come a long way, from a rookie, soaking wet in a tent to an experienced foreman driving what can be considered a planter condo.

The trip West provided us with a great chance to try out our new ride and new lifestyle, and definitely within the first two days we learnt a lot and faced some anxiety causing realizations. 

The first lesson learnt was a reminder from school days passed about just how bumpy a school bus can really be. Our incredible dinning table that I'm in love with slid straight across the room, as did the dining chair, and lets just say everything else loose, whether big, small, heavy, or light. Things jumped, doors slid, I thought the whole thing would fall apart!

The solution? To attach large eye hooks into the wall and use bungey cords to hold all of the large items to the wall. It may not look the best but its super practical and put a stop to a lot of headaches.

Another lesson learnt was that school buses do not handle hills very well and that overheating is a real possibility for our bus which struggles with cooling itself. Not a fun surprise second day on the road, to have to pull over, mid-hill, and watch coolant boiling over from the engine. 

On the other hand, we learnt a lot of great things about our new life, the best of which was that all of our planning and hard work actually worked! The first time we set up at a campsite, plugged in, and listened to the record player was incredible. Only to have our excitement topped when we made dinner on the propane stove and had easy access to fresh coffee in the morning without having to drive anywhere or get out of our pyjamas.

Over the course of this project Phil and I have made a ton of friends around Parry Sound and have really had tremendous amount of support and excitement from so many people. We were super excited to share this project with even more people through an article in the local paper. 

The bus wasn't totally ready, however, we cleaned up our worksite and the result was overwhelmingly  beautiful. We had actually created a house! A home! All the plans and work and scrapping by had created exactly what we had dreamed of. 

You can read the article here

And see some behind the scene photos below:

The propane installation is the one single part of this project that we called in help for. A propane leak is not something we wanted to mess with and despite no one actually checking out our paper work (see future post for details), the propane installation technically needed to be certified by a qualified propane technician. 

We opted for two 20Lb propane tanks mounted to the back of the bus. This sounded dangerous to everyone we shared the plans with so my dad came up with an incredible plan to make a stand for the propane tanks that folds up when we are driving so that the tanks can be removed and tucked under the bed through the back door of the bus. 

The bendable metal propane lines run from the automatic regulator mounted to the back of the bus, under the bus and along the frame of it to the various propane appliances where they come up through the floor. The lines are protected by wire loom and placed in a way to avoid the possibility of becoming snagged on anything or dented by derby while driving. 

The propane appliances include the tankless water heater discussed in the previous post, the three way fridge we were gifted from the salvation army, and the stove we bought out of another RV.

I'd like to provide more insight to this process or information on how to install propane, however, my only advice would be to have someone help you install the lines and oversee the process to ensure safety. 

Even more than electricity, water and propane are crucial to how our skoolie will allow us the comfort of having our house with us everywhere we go. So many times while staying in my van did I wish I could wash my hands without finding a public restroom or cook in comfort without taking a small camping stove out into the rain or to heat up the limited amount of food that stays good without a fridge or the safety of a pantry.

Here is how we set up the first of the two:

We ran through many scenarios of where our water would be stored and how the system would work. For example, we could have a large tank under the bus or a small tank inside the bus; we could have an electric water heater or a propane heater; and then a heater with or without tank. There are many ways we could have done each step of our water system, so rather than going through each possibility, I will explain what we did do and the reasons for it.

​Our fresh water tank is a small 50L tank we found in an old RV. We went with a small tank in order to be able to keep it inside in our utility closet to avoid freezing. Along side the small tank we also have two Calligan jugs of water to re-fill it.

The water tank feeds both the sink and the shower. We have a Flojet 2.9 GPM(Gallons Per Minute) water pump with 50 psi, that uses 10 amps and runs on 12-volt power. As a safety measure we added a switch that allows us to turn power to the pump on and off, something I would definitely recommend because as the bus bumps along the faucet could shake itself on. We didn't add an additional small sink in the bathroom as some people do because we found it both unnecessary and it would have involved additional construction to move the water to the other side of the bus. The way we designed the bus we put the sink at one side of the closet and the shower on the other side, creating a short path for the water, making life easier on the pump.

We looked for a water heater for a long time before deciding on the Eccotemp 1.7 GPM Liquid Propane Heater. 1.7 GPM is the lowest amount of water pressure you would want for a shower, but with cost in mind (as always) we were happy to take the hit on pressure.

Hooking up an indoor/outdoor tankless water heater inside a bus is tricky business which involves a lot of safety precautions. Luckily (as always) we had my dad to help us install it in the safest way possible. This started with the installation of fire board behind the heater, and ended with re-venting the heater probably three times. This heater gives hot water on demand and therefore produces a lot of heat out the top of it. We decided to vent the heater out to the side and needed to protect the wall behind, the wall beside and the wooden ceiling; this involved using a double-walled chimney pipe. 

From the sink and the shower the water drains to a 150L grey water tank under the bus. Simple right? Hardly. Being the scavengers that we are, we found this water tank in yet another old RV; being the RV novices that we are, we didn't realize we had found a fresh water tank or that somehow there was a difference between the two.

My dad explained the whole thing to us and took on the very complicated task of putting in the new holes in the tank we needed to make it work. Someone else may have paid the $300-500 for a real grey water tank, but instead we took the hard way out. Note the hole cut into the tank in order to attach fittings on both sides of the tank wall and then resealed to avoid spillage.

Another step to the water drainage problem was how to attach the newly customized tank to the bottom of the bus. And voila, a day of welding later, we had a custom frame installed. I say voila, though we all know that is no simple feat and that I was not the one welding. 

Lastly, is the tricky business of running the drain pipe the short distance of the length of the tire at an angle downward enough to drain the water effectively. Its not a very comfy place tucked in between pieces of the frame behind a school bus wheel well. 

While on the topic of water, here is a look at the snazzy shower that will benefit from all the hard work to get running water into our home.

The electrical system of the bus is set up similar to an RV and though its a little complicated I will do my best here to make it super simple!

Our main power supply consists of two 12V deep cycle marine batteries connected in parallel. This means that the wattage is doubled but the voltage remains the same. Some people use 6V batteries and in that case you would want to cross the battery connection to increase the voltage to 12V. 

Our batteries are stored under our bed in a tight-sealed box with a vent that leads out the side of the bus. When the batteries are in-use they release a gas so its important to have a way for the batteries to safely release it if you as well are keeping your batteries actually inside. Most RVs have their batteries accessible from the outside because of this. 

Our batteries are also connected to a fuse that will prevent them from being overloaded and potentially setting fire. You can see this on the wall above the battery box.

The battery cables are connected to both the inverter (12V to 120V) and the converter/charger (120V to 12V). This allows us two power supply options, plugging into an an external source (like at an RV park or a friend's house), or running entirely off of our batteries. 

To run the whole bus off of the batteries we simply plug the 120V fuse panel into the inverter. This changes the 12V into 120V and makes our receptacles active.

To run everything off of shore power we run an RV 30W extension cord from the receptacle you can see in the photo above to an external power source. Then we plug both the 120V fuse box and the converter into the receptacle. The converter/charger trickle charges the batteries as well as powers the outlets in the bus.

The whole electrical system took a lot of planning. We spent hours talking to different people and doing research to make sure we, first of all hooked everything up right, but also had the proper pieces of the puzzle to handle the load we had in mind and for everything to work well together. Keep in mind we don't have any large appliances running off 120V like microwaves or electric blenders. As well, our TV and record player will be used as luxury items, only run when we are on shore power. The internet can be pretty confusing for piecing things like this together so I definitely encourage you to stop by an RV or battery shop and talk to people who really know whats going on.
​

If you're going to use a school bus for anything other than transporting kids to school you have to, by law, paint it. We were finally blessed with a couple days of nice enough weather to paint ours and went hard to get it done in one day.

Despite warnings it may look like a prison bus we chose to paint it white. Truthfully it was cheaper to buy white metal paint in large quantities then to try to get anything mixed.

Be prepared the process of painting a whole bus in one day is quite extensive. The taping alone took hours with three of us doing it. We decided to leave the black accents (lines across the side, hood, etc) so as to add a little bit of character after Phil completely vetoed any ideas for colourful designs I had in mind. Come on, who doesn't want to live in a flower-covered house?

Before painting we spent a few separate occasions with a sander, roughing up the yellow paint. We were careful not to create scratches that would show through the white paint but rather remove the smooth shine of the paint. We went through a lot of sandpaper and some areas we had to do by hand; the front of the bus has a lot of small nooks and crannies.

The decals came off easily with a paint scraper, but the yellow paint dust on our clothes seemed to linger.

With our first warm day we washed the bus really well to get off all the yellow dust from the sanding.

We were racing against time to get the outside of the bus finished so mom pitched in to help. We used regular rollers and brushes, and though some areas needed a little fixing up to get rid of brush strokes, in the end the paint job looked pretty professional. Typing this months later I can share that we've had probably half a dozen people ask if we painted it ourselves and were surprised to hear that we did based on how well it looks. 

If I could give any advice to someone looking to paint a bus it would be this, don't rush it, pick a season that isn't in the winter! Other than that, the whole thing was pretty straight forward.

When we started this project we used to look up cabinets, furniture, and the like at IKEA and similar stores, dreaming of how this whole project would come together. We took measurement of things and matched colours and styles. As the project progressed though and we faced the reality of very limited space and odd dimensions, so we took matters into our own hands. We switched from fitting our space to products and created items instead which fit to our space. Here are a few of the items we are most proud of, created by hand, by Phil and I.

We found the template for building this couch early on and decided it was perfect for the bus. It was free, created on Sketch Up and advertised as a simple build. When it came time to actually build it however, the fact that the creator of the template had never actually built the couch became overly apparent. What a nightmare the whole thing was!! On top of bad instructions, measurements, and a ton of spelling errors, we also changed the dimensions to better suit our space and the math for that alone was hard enough for the two of us. Phil spent a total of 4 days (full days) working on this beauty; building, rebuilding, adjusting, cursing, and kicking, until it all came together, just how we had imagined. Never, will I take for granted a functional piece of furniture again!

Under the couch we have two deep, but low, drawers where we plan to house blankets, sheets and towels.

As well, the couch pulls out into a bed big enough to sleep two! Two people who know each other quite well, but still two. Finally while travelling we have the opportunity to have people over! This was never an option when living in my minivan. 

I discussed in a previous post how the kitchen cabinets were put together, but here is a loo at them completed.

We've created ample space for everything we would need to store in the kitchen, plus hopefully extra space for all the things we are forgetting we will need to store, in our little home on the road. I know they don't look perfect or professional, but they are definitely something we can be proud of, having made them entirely with our own two (four) hands. 

Who says you can't have a tiny bus house AND a trendy brick wall? We certainly don't! I found these amazing Z-Brick tiles in the garage and HAD to use them. Instead of grout my parents also had in hiding, some mortar repair cement in caulking tubes. Together, they made this wall in our kitchen look like a classic brick chimney rising up through the room. 

I love watching tiny house shows, but whenever I do I get so upset that people are forgetting about closet space! Where will they put their food and clothes? Tiny living doesn't mean you stop eating, and so I made sure we utilized the space above the wheel well for a pantry. Never did I imagine though it would look this gorgeous! 

We are using three stains in our bus, all meant to mimic old, weather-worn wood. It may be tiny and it may be mobile, but that doesn't mean it can't be trendy. The stains are Coffee and Slate, semi-transparent wood stain by Behr, and a third we are making at home with a layer of tea and then a coat of steel wool + vinegar (the steel wool needs to soak in the vinegar for at least 36 hours). Together, they all give a really beautiful look and offer some depth to our very white look.

Is a room, only made for a toilet which has no plumbing, still considered a bathroom? We definitely can't call it the WC, I know that much, so bathroom is really the only word I have for this room. As I've mentioned previously, we will have a composting toilet BUT with budgetary constraints we currently cannot afford the toilet of our dreams (fingers crossed, in a  few months time we will have it) and so this room will be remaining empty for a little -- that doesn't mean it can't look phenomenal though!

This was the first time I tiled anything and I am happy to have started with such a small area. All of these tiles are recycled in a way because they were all leftovers from tiling jobs from my parents' past. I learnt I'm not too good with a tile cutter and so luckily these all fit together pretty nicely. 

The pipe shelf and the toilet paper holder are care of Pinterest and really fun projects though I'll let you know, its cheaper to just buy a toilet paper holder and shelf then all this 1/2" piping, haha. 

Even the bathroom door needed to be a custom work of art with such strange dimensions. We wanted the barn door look, but couldn't afford the expensive hardware involved ($150 for just the track) so we stained some beautiful pine and pieced together this door. With a little creativity and a garage raid, we came up with a clothes line inspired mechanism we are hoping will provide the same effect. 

From the front you should only be able to see the top wheels and it will run a thin piece of metal track just like the expensive store bought version.

The dressers haven't been completed yet, but they will be matching and on either side of the bookcase in the bedroom. They are built to fit on either side and be only a foot deep. This was a piece of furniture I was hoping to be able to purchase, but our of necessity, I had to make it and I'm thinking so far, so good. I'm planning on having the front of the drawers brown as well and the top a light, more natural stain, on pine to match our countertops (coming soon). 

I'm really proud of the work we've been doing and so happy to see this project coming along. I'm also incredibly grateful for all the support we've been getting and the general enthusiasm for this project. 

A fresh coat of paint can make a world of difference, and for our little bus, I really believe it did. It made the whole place transform into a house, but also meant we really had finally made it through the big stuff.

We really wanted to keep the bus light and bright to help it feel more open and so decided the majority of the interior would be white. We allowed ourselves a bit more fun with the kitchen cabinets, letting them act like an accent wall would in a larger space. We had originally planned on painting them a very pale blue which would have given the whole space a beachy feel, but changed our mind last minute to this country green, which I think will go nicer with our other aesthetic choices. 

My parents and their garage of treasures has really become an inspiration to our project. One tool we were introduced to in there was the rotary saw which allowed us to take bland cabinets and make them look a little more professional. Not so bad for our first attempts I think. Maybe in the future we may get a little more fancy, but for now, a fun edging is a huge accomplishment. 

For the upper cabinets, we were able to utilize some cupboard doors we took from an old trailer earlier in the winter. We'd hoped to use more for the lower cupboards but we made ours larger then a standard cupboard would be and there for needed to build them ourselves. You can do a lot with plywood and side by side, you'd hardly guess one was professional and the other was us… hopefully… haha

The bedroom is really white right now, but with the dressers in and the bed made up it'll be a little more lively I think.

All in all I think things are looking pretty good. In one way we're on the home stretch, in others we have a long way to go to certification and licensing!

Dads been working hard and learning a lot with us about the electrical system of an RV. He's done electrical work in houses before, and has owned a couple different trailers and RVs, so, with all of that experience and knowledge, he's installed for us our electrical system. We've decided to model the bus after an RV because it gives us a couple different options for power; we can plug into a 120V receptical or run off our deep cycle 12V batteries when adventuring. 

I started talking about electrical in post Eighteen if you're interested in seeing how we ran the wires behind the wall and ceiling.

The way this system works is a little complicated, but I'll do my best to simplify the whole thing! 

We have two deep cycle 'Big Red' Marine batteries connected in parallel. This means that the voltage is still 12; positive is connected to positive and negative is connected to negative. We we crossed them it would double the voltage from 12V to 24V. If you are using smaller 6V batteries you would want to cross them. In the above picture you can see the batteries in their custom tightly sealed box. The box is air tight and vented out through the wall because when the batteries are being used they release a gas that we did not want building up under our bed while we slept. Theres also space for a third battery if we find we are spending less time close to a charging source (120V electrical plug-in).

Just above the box, not covered when the lid is on the box, is a fuse to prevent the batteries from overheating and setting fire. If ever we overload them, this fuse will cut power the same way a fuse will do in your house.

This mess of wires is what lines the back wall of our utility closet. The red and black battery cables run to both our inverter (12V to 120V) and our converter/battery charger (120V to 12V). Having both of these gives us the option to plug the bus into a 110V outlet (RV park or parents house for example) or to run all of our 120V electrical outlets off the 12V battery power. 

The other two boxes you see in the photos are the fuse panels, the top one for 12V fuses (salvaged from an old RV), and the bottom a standard 120V fuse box you'd find in a house with two 15W fuse switches.

To use an external source of power we plug our thick black RV electrical cord rated for 30W into a power source and connect the other end to the yellow plug you see in the picture above connected to the outlet. Then, we plug the 120V fuse box and the converted (silver box) into the two outlets being now powered by the external source of power.

To run everything off of our battery supply we simply plug the 120V fuse box directly into the inverter.

I apologize again, because this post is the huge jump from missed blogging time. There is about 10 days of work in this one photo so look closely, as the we really made a big jump. What felt more like the shell of a house, is now finally feeling almost livable. 

By the sink, we split the storage space in two, with one section of drawers and one of selves. Everything was made with 3/8" plywood and sanded smooth, currently I'm called the bus the plywood palace, but once its all painted I think it will look a little more professional and a little less DIY/make it up as we go. 

I'd never built or installed a drawer before, but seeing how deep the cabinets were and the pantry I knew we needed them for function. I studied the drawers in my parents kitchen and with pride ran to Phil to show him my first functioning drawer which I was calling my prototype for my proposal of a tiny house filled with drawers. Admittedly, I needed to make some measurement adjustments, but soon each drawer fit in place and now we have a pantry full of deep drawers to store all of our food.

The strength of the drawers are being put to the test currently and I'm happy to report they are doing the job, holding up all of our heavy tools and supplies.

On either side of the stove will be a single drawer with a shelf below. To raise the stove up, I've built a platform with some space underneath for a drawer for storing baking tray and baking tins. Phil laughs now, every time I mention adding another drawer somewhere. 

The oven/stove we picked got by picking apart another trailer. We gave the owners some cash and took cupboard doors (for the hardware), a double sink, and this four burner propane stove/oven. Looks good as new, just needs a little cleaning up. 

This fridge was a great find! We got it from the Salvation Army in town, from their warm-up trailer. We still need to test if the propane on it works but so far the 12V and 120V work so it should be good.

The last storage area we've been working on is in the bedroom, alongside the bed.  So far we've built a book shelf, and three overhead cupboards, but haven't figured out fully the plan for the rest of the space. There will be a clothing rod to the left of the overhead cupboards and hopefully the whole area under the windows will be filled with 2 dressers.