Hey all. You can call me BB. I'm a freelance photographer and artist and my partner, Sky, is also an artist and behavioural consultant (for animals and their humans).
We have been talking about converting a bus and/or building a tiny home for about 10 years now. We're at a point now where we're taking realistic steps to buy and start building within the next year or so. Although we've learned life always has it's own sort of plans, it doesn't hurt to have a few different ideas of what you want ;). So my general plan moving forward so far is this :
- Making multiple blueprints/floorplans fitting a few different bus sizes (We haven't narrowed down a particular model yet but based off of the tours I've gone through thus far, we'll probably looking at something with somewhere between 120-160 sq feet of space behind the driver). My partner and I can have seamless ideas or be on totally separate wavelengths so we're going to compare and then make compromises where necessary.
- Securing a location to actually work on the conversion (we are in the city right now and I don't think it'd be feasible here BUT we have a handful of friends/family that live out in the country and have space and/or tools) before we buy
- Using the 3 car garage (ironically down an alley that is inaccessible by car) behind the house we are renting to start storing any found/repurposed building supplies (wood, furniture, etc.) We're both fairly apt dumpster divers at this point (our house is almost exclusively furnished and decorated by things that other people have thrown away...my art desk was actually a discarded butcher block on a pair of a-frames that I'll probably convert to counter space when we move) so I'm hoping to collect quite a bit of usable material.
- On the opposite side of that...actively sizing down and getting rid of a lot of the stuff we don't need, ha ha. Our house is also basically a library so it'll be hard to say goodbye to so many books but we need to get that ball rolling.*
- I'll also be lurking around on here pretty avidly to look at different conversion plans and ideas to add to my growing notebook of ideas/resources/know-how as well as more of the mechanical aspect of bus life as that is an area where I have next to no knowledge.
Once we have the bus and it's mostly converted, we'll most likely be traveling for a few years. We've both been looking forward to the ability to travel but this would also allow us to take the time to find a place to settle and potentially build a stationary tiny house/homestead as well. I guess we'll see what the future has in store.
So, uh, yeah. Hello everyone, I look forward to becoming part of the community here. Thank you all for this incredible resource.
I guess I'll close out with two questions :
a) From what I've seen thus far here, it's not recommended to get a bus in NY because of rust. Is that true of most of the east coast and is it a little more reliable if you move further inland?
b) I'm really short, like just barely over 5 ft, and I'll most likely be doing all of the driving...is it pretty safe to assume that the seat moves forward/is close enough in most busses that it shouldn't be an issue? I've only had issues once or twice in my life with smaller vehicles but it seems the trucks/vans I've driven are more forgiving of the vertically challenged, haha!
Hello Everyone~
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