Bus Stop 2.0: New Wheels, New Home

[Chaesop]

Turns out losing a job can be a catalyst for the best adventures.

In 2018, the unceremonious loss of my job propelled my (now) wife and I to make the absolute best decision we ever could have. With a dangerous mix of pragmatic optimism and a healthy dose of insanity, we found ourselves the proud new owners of a Nashville Metro 40' Thomas MVP Saf-T-Liner. We spent four months outside building in the elements and dumped most of our sanity into its conversion, sold our home and belongings, and took to the road. Tío Aventura, as our skoolie was christened, carried us through two years of unforgettable adventures.

At the beginning of global lockdowns, we took on a new challenge: a Sprinter van. Picture us wrangling a living room, workspace, full wet bath, kitchen, and bed into 14 linear feet, akin to stuffing a symphony into a music box, but not too big of a task considering we made the 2000+sqft to 280sqft adjustment already once before.

Recently, we've settled back home in middle Tennessee, on five acres of open space. We've built a dedicated workshop for conversions and I happened on a new obsession: Volkswagen Vanagons. I'm currently the owner of three, one being an '87 Syncro that I'm enthusiastically converting into a Westfalia.

Bringing you to the present, we sold our Sprinter last month and just brought home a 2005 40' IC RE300 DT466 / Allison MD3060 with only 101,000 original miles. (Photos soon of it, just haven't gotten any hosted yet.) Yesterday, we made a hefty investment in solar equipment and appliances, preparing ourselves for the conversion. With layout plans and materials set to be finalized by August 1, we're truly itching to get started.

Here's where our head's at:

A fresh coat of paint
A robust 48V solar system and 2000W of solar to start
We're thinking of installing a fold-down deck at the handicap access point.
Prioritizing family needs, we're carving out a special nook for our infant daughter.
Weather-ready with diesel heaters and a mini-split for climate control.

Still, some decisions hang in the balance.

We're contemplating a roof raise, considering our IC has more headroom than our previous Thomas. Also, we're toying with the idea of a roof deck or a hybrid deck/roof rack. Though we enjoyed the deck on Tío, we're weighing up if we'll use it enough to justify another, let alone where to source material for reskinning the bus with a raise, or building the rack with steel or aluminum.

As we turn this new page, I look forward to sharing the inevitable challenges, victories, and quiet reflections that come with it.

 

[Tin Roadtube Vagrant]

Fabulous job, sir (and the Mrs.)! What did you do in your previous life? If it was carpentry, they wouldn't have let you go.....

 

[Chaesop]

Thanks friend. Truly, I wasn't handy at all. My largest "renovation" feat before buying the bus was swapping our receptacles in the house to ones with 5v USB chargers built in, without burning the house down or getting electrocuted in the process.

In my former life, I was a General Manager for an entire channel of Best Buy that ended up getting severed from the top down. I actually fixed a few stores in Wisconsin (Madison east and west, Milwaukee, Janesville, Wauwatosa, and Rockford IL) saving them from closing a few years before the inevitable, before making my way back down to Tennessee.

 

[Booyah45828]

Good looking conversions.

I might have missed it, but why the downsize from the bus to the van? Did you sell the original bus? Selling/sold the van too?

 

[Chaesop]

Gracias. We enjoyed traveling in the bus, but felt (at the time) limited by its size. A lot of our friends on the road were in smaller buses and vans and we found keeping up with them or getting to the areas they were inviting us to was challenging. We traded our bus for a friends van for a day in San Diego and really got the itch to downsize at that point for a few reasons, air conditioning, speed of travel, fuel economy, parking in a single space pretty much anywhere. After three years in our van, we had a baby and we've realized we don't need to travel at the speed of light anymore while also needing a ton more space.

We sold our bus to a lady who wanted to incorporate it into a tiny home community near Austin Texas. We delivered it to her at the end of April 2020. Our van we also just sold to a young lady who will be using it solo at times and with her mother and father when they visit her in Los Angeles. Both buyers had followed my wife and I on socials for a while and had been interested in buying the rigs before we were ever ready to sell them.

The IC we just purchased will be more part time travel and maybe a destination location for us to park on property and stay every so often.

 

[Chopperpilot-SKO]

Love your builds and your socials! Look forward to the new build!