I am posting vintage Homestead Guru videos and this one holds a special place in my heart. My friend Jamie passed away several years ago, not too long after we shot this video. She was an absolutely magical soul and I am so grateful I got to see her dream coming to life, even if she never was able to complete it.
In this tour, I’m walking through a gutted school bus that’s a blank slate, and she talks us through her vision. You’re not seeing a polished end result…. You’re seeing the bones, the decisions, the creativity, and the problem-solving that go into building a tiny mobile home on wheels from scratch.
There’s something really compelling about a school bus conversion for me…. It takes something institutional and rigid and turns it into something creative, personal, and uniquely alive (my bus was ALWAYS evolving!). Every single square inch matters. I lived in my skoolie for 7.5 years. I raised my two older children through their formative years in that hOMe on wheels, and my Moon Child spent her first year in the bus – she learned to walk, eat, and became part of our family and community during our bus life adventure.
As we walk through Jamie’s bus, you can start to see how the space is being shaped. Where the living areas will be, how storage is being thought through, how light comes in, how movement flows. This is a real life build out in progress, not a staged tiny home reveal!!!!!!
We built out our bus with our children at our feet, and sometimes they helped! (they were 2 and 3 when we moved into our Skoolie). I feel strongly that building a home in front of and with your children / family provides them with a foundational education that cannot be learned in schools. They watch you dream, manifest, and build. They watch you problem solve, fail, and try again. They get to see the most magical fruit of your labor come to fruition – and that’s all before the adventure “on the road” begins!!!!!!!!!! This hands-on learning shows them design, engineering, trade-offs, communication, perserverance, and resourcefulness in real time.
It’s one thing to talk about freedom and flexibility. It’s another thing to build it yourself, piece by piece. Its EXHAUSTING, and Jamie brings up a really important point – she’d had the bus for only a few months when we made this video, and she felt like she should have accomplished more. Its a LONG HAUL project, and if you are doing it yourself, you are likely learning how to do each step as you do it. Which adds even more time!
This (the in progress tour) is the part of my skoolie journey that I felt hesitant to share online for some reason. I wanted my bus to be one of the beautiful polished buses before I posted photos of it, and I think I missed the opportunity to show you the HARD WORK it took to get it where it ended up. Would you like me to go through my archives, find photos and show that process?
If you enjoyed this video – check out this tour of my friend Amy’s Beach Bungalow!
