Thanks for all of your responses. I have attached a photo of the bus when it was in the bus yard, just before we brought it home. We live in the country, have parked it on our property. It was my wife's idea to get a school bus, and she insisted on a short bus because “they're so cute". OOOOOOOK.
We are looking at using it as an extra room, a place where she or I can go to take some time from each other. We think it will also be a great place to stay for those of our family and friends who are so inclined. At this point, we don't plan to do any major conversions to the bus. We have taken out almost all of the seats, plan to put in a wood stove for heat (we live in the country and have plenty of wood) and play around with painting the bus inside and out. That's about all we've thought of so far. I don't have plans to actually drive the bus, though it certainly is drivable. Since the bus has reached what may be its final destination, I put some concrete cap blocks underneath all the tires, to keep them off the dirt. I plan on starting the engine every few months to keep it from seizing up (or whatever engines do when they're not run).
When we were looking for a bus, I came across a website that North Carolina has for its surplus (read “well used”) school buses,
http://www.ncschoolbussales.dpi.state.nc.us/. I imagine other states may have similar sites. We were lucky to be able to find this bus on that site, as most buses seem to be the larger variety and, for our purposes, the prices seemed reasonable.
I've been looking for a SIMPLE solution to locking the front doors. I like the puck lock that TKFT used on his bus. How did you attach it to the bus? From the photo, you didn't use nuts and bolts.
Kamoo, I'm looking forward to seeing a photo of your lock, as I'm very visual, and don't understand exactly what you described.
As for the wood stove: since we don’t plan to live in the bus full time or even sleep in it during cold weather, I’m wondering if a SIMPLE wood stove might fit the bill. Here are 2 on ebay that look interesting. What do y’all think?
http://cgi.ebay.ph/NEW-NORDIC-PORTABLE- ... 53dc62dbdd
http://cgi.ebay.com/portable-military-c ... 20ae4313ac
Thanks again for your thoughts and comments.