Hello from the Hudson Valley

[cleff413]

Hello! I began lurking on this forum a few weeks ago after I started to get really excited about a skoolie project of my own. I am still in the initial brainstorming stages and so it will likely be awhile before you see any pictures of my project. I work in agricultural research in the Hudson Valley and currently live in the Catskills. I moved here a little over two years ago from St. Louis, but I'm originally from the Chicago area.
I would like to build a skoolie large enough for my lady and I to live in full time to offer us flexibility and to stop throwing money away on renting. I have also been entertaining the idea of starting a solo consultation service and love the idea of being able to pick up and drive my home to wherever the work is. My girlfriend and I have also had discussions about increasing our ability to save money to put towards buying some farm land of our own one day.
That all being said, I have had my eye on the larger flat-nose Bluebirds in the 85 passenger range. I have talked to some friends that have been involved in skoolie projects back in the day on Dead tour, but nothing like what I want to build. I will likely be posting a ton of questions in the electrical systems section in the very near future because that is currently what I have been going down the rabbit hole researching. You never know how little you know until you start to learn about something. It is a bit overwhelming at the moment but I want to get a full projected cost and timeline planned out before I purchase a bus as I will be paying for storage space while I construct it since I currently live in an apartment. I look forward to learning from the seasoned veterans on this forum as well as learning with the newbies like myself and have thoroughly enjoyed reading about your builds and looking at the pictures.