It’s been just over a month since our family purchased a “midsize” 27 foot school bus! We are converting it into a simple “recreational vehicle” that we can use in Oregon and beyond for family camping adventures, road trips, etc. We’ve already made quite a transformation from a school bus filled with seats to a blank slate for building on.
BEFORE we started the conversion:
AFTER 1 month of demolition and building:
Over the past few years since we moved out of our tiny house, our family has grown to include our wonderful son Jace! Jace is 11 years old and in 6th grade. We now live in a “big” 1,000 square foot house in Eugene with a back yard that’s big enough to park our skoolie in while we work on converting it. Jace is great at many things, including building! Recently Jace has been honing his skills using a screw gun, nail gun, and more. While sometimes he just wants to stay in the house and play video games, at other times he is very helpful and into our new family project!
So far, our main tasks on the bus have been to remove all the bus seats, heaters and coolant lines, wheelchair lift, etc. Then we put rigid foam insulation down over the existing bus floor, and then plywood subfloor over that. We removed the old insulation in the walls under the windows, along with many rivets and the metal wall panels. We installed new insulation (sheep’s wool!) under the windows and then finished off those walls.
We couldn’t do this build without the many tools that we’ve borrowed from Eugene’s fabulous, nonprofit tool-lending library – the ToolBox Project. Check them out and donate to support this great community resource! From the angle grinder to an electric impact wrench and more, their tools have helped us out a whole lot with our skoolie.
Here are some photos of demolition and building over the past month:
Some of our next steps in the conversion process will be to re-seal and caulk the many windows, start building our heating system, do an oil change, and build a couple of interior walls. Stay tuned to see more skoolie progress!
~The Ray Family
Go Tiny 
Wow you guys! This is so cool! Thanks for sharing your story! We just bought a truck and trailer and plan to travel for a year starting sometime in 2023. We will have to plan a camping adventure together when we make it out west. Looks like you are making amazing progress. So impressive! Wish we were closer so I could come help. Love,
Liz
Great progress! Can’t wait for updates and to see how it turns out.
Best of luck!
Bob
Congratulations and good luck! Looks great!