Our New Home - 1995 Thomas Built
Hello World!
About 8 months ago my girlfriend asked me if I would like to live in a bus. "Yes, I would love to". Now we are engaged and nearly finished with the demo'ing of our 1995 30' Thomas Built diesel school bus. We are very excited.
In a nutshell, our plan is to convert the bus into our only home and park it on some property in the Berkeley hills, about 7 miles from our workspace. We have a very long way to go but along with skoolie.net we have a lot of amazing resources and friends to help us along the way.
US:
Colin is a West coast lover and have been roaming these parts for the past 5 years. I love being active, communal dinners, live music, filmmaking and figuring things out I never thought possible. I work in filmmaking and run a production company and studio in the Bay Area.
Ashley is from Montreal by way of Nova Scotia and has been a long time admirer of California and it's infinite romance. Ashley has bicycled the entire US West coast and all of Central America. She also loves being active, collecting vintage fashion pieces and staying organized.
We are definitely a great team!
OUR BUS:
Our 30 foot Thomas Built is a '95 and has just under 40k on the odometer. It was purchased from an auction in Vallejo after it was decommissioned from the Santa Clara probations department. It was decommissioned because of the California law requiring it to receive a new "Fuel Particulate Filter". This requires us to apply for a permit that allows us to drive under 1k annually. Fine for us.
The bus is in impeccable condition with close to zero rust and a diesel engine that starts right up (outside of our kill switch issue).
We have already stripped out all of the seats, wall panels, ceiling panels, insulation, flooring and unnecessary wiring.
OUR PLAN:
We will build the bus to be a home that lives on a permanent piece of property. We will keep it mobile capable but we will not install a full bathroom as that will be built on the property. So, we will have the kitchen in the front, living in the middle and bedroom in the back.
We are going to have open shelving, exposed copper plumbing, wood stove, gravity fed water, solar power w/ battery bank. Also, we will remove some of the windows and sheet and add marine windows (or something similar). A main priority is to have the bus very comfortable and functional but not gimicky. We love to host and cook meals for friends so having a very functional kitchen and dining space is essential.
We know our bus is not HUGE and we have a long ways to go but we are very excited for this project and can't thank this community enough for existing!
Any info, recommendations, concerns, requests, ETC are greatly appreciated.
All the best
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