The Yellow School Bus is a 76 passenger, 1989 GMC chassis with a Ward body, 13 Windows, Cummins Diesel with a Allison Automatic Transmission. We bought it off of Craig's List from a man in Athens, Texas for $2500 in March of 2010. It is approximately 7. 5 feet wide by 33 feet long inside the bus. That is 247.5 square feet of living space - yes, I said 247.5 square feet (we plan on selling pretty much everything we own). The bus has a 6.5 feet high ceiling which makes the space feel much bigger than the oh-so-small square footage. And talk about the breeze! With 26 windows (13 on each side), we have the best breeze in Brewster County!
We plan on turning the bus into a fully equipped house on wheels (minus the dryer.) It will have a living space, kitchen, bathroom, washer and bedroom area for us and our baby girl, Lena Marie and our baby boy, Zeb. We have been sketching some ideas for the layout for a while now. I drew the bus walls on a piece of paper and then cut out pieces of construction paper to represent each piece of furniture and major appliance in the correct ratio. This way we could move the pieces of paper around the paper bus without having to draw and erase, draw and erase, you get the picture. This worked quite well for us except now we have to take into consideration the wheel wells inside the bus. I didn't know where those were when I drew the bus out on paper. Now that we are aware, we are going to have to get creative because those wheel wells are right in the middle of our bathroom space. We'll see how it turns out...
We are doing all the work ourselves. Mostly Jim Bob will be doing the work because I have the full time job of keeping Lena Marie's mouth free of pebbles, chicken poo and tiny pieces of paper or whatever else she can find that looks tasty. I do get to paint the bus which I am super excited about! I have the paint colors picked out and I am raring to go! I think we are going to buy our cabinets from Ikea but not 100% on that one yet. Jim Bob will build our bed, Lena's room and closet. We are going to use galvanized metal for the counter tops, bamboo for the floors, and a water troff for the bathtub. Sounds like fun, eh?
We are doing all the work ourselves. Mostly Jim Bob will be doing the work because I have the full time job of keeping Lena Marie's mouth free of pebbles, chicken poo and tiny pieces of paper or whatever else she can find that looks tasty. I do get to paint the bus which I am super excited about! I have the paint colors picked out and I am raring to go! I think we are going to buy our cabinets from Ikea but not 100% on that one yet. Jim Bob will build our bed, Lena's room and closet. We are going to use galvanized metal for the counter tops, bamboo for the floors, and a water troff for the bathtub. Sounds like fun, eh?
It will be interesting to see how the bus unfolds. I hope it ends up somewhere close to what we have in mind! I guess we all need to stay tuned to find out!
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Well, this is an update/edit to The Bus page on October 15, 2012. The bus is everything and a little more than we could have imagined! LOVING IT! If you would like to jump to the finished photos, here is the link: http://adventuresoftheyellowschoolbus.blogspot.com/2012/08/we-are-in.html Although we moved in June, little has changed from those photos. The kids are bigger, we did get a medicine cabinet and the little classroom area hasn't been that tidy since that picture was taken!
Now that we are all moved in and living the good life I feel like this big move/transformation is just a tiny step in the big adventure! I thought I would breathe a big sigh of relief because we are done! But that still hasn't happened. One of my Jr. High basketball coaches once said, "If you are satisfied, you are finished." I guess I don't want to be done just yet - big things are on the horizon!
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Well, this is an update/edit to The Bus page on October 15, 2012. The bus is everything and a little more than we could have imagined! LOVING IT! If you would like to jump to the finished photos, here is the link: http://adventuresoftheyellowschoolbus.blogspot.com/2012/08/we-are-in.html Although we moved in June, little has changed from those photos. The kids are bigger, we did get a medicine cabinet and the little classroom area hasn't been that tidy since that picture was taken!
Now that we are all moved in and living the good life I feel like this big move/transformation is just a tiny step in the big adventure! I thought I would breathe a big sigh of relief because we are done! But that still hasn't happened. One of my Jr. High basketball coaches once said, "If you are satisfied, you are finished." I guess I don't want to be done just yet - big things are on the horizon!
