Buying a Bus...Then Demolishing It

I, Emily, am an overthinker. I am a prolific maker of pro-con lists, passionate about the “let’s sleep on it”, an expert on considering every possible thing that could go wrong. Our pro-con list eventually led us to a short bus. It offered us a middle ground between the space of a big bus and the maneuverability of a van. The fact that we were able to buy our bus for less than half the price of a van with even more miles was DEFINITELY a pro in our book.

 

So when I became re-interested in tiny houses in January of 2018 and quickly discovered Skoolies, I never thought that I would be the type of gal that had my very own bus parked in my driveway by February 3rd, 2018. I guess you never know exactly what type of person you really are until you become it!

 

And suddenly, I was someone who was going to learn to demolish a bus! And then rebuild it. And then LIVE ON IT. I knew it was the right path for me when those facts filled me with excitement instead of an immediate sensation of “uh oh, what have I gotten myself into”. I have to extend some of the credit there to my husband Craig, who I knew was definitely smart enough to figure all of this out and patient enough to teach me along the way. 

 

Considering our rapid dive into the waters of all things Skoolie, we got pretty lucky in our bus purchase. We had a general understanding of what we should look for, what elements would require the most work, and what we wanted out of our future little rolling home. The search began on eBay, where we encountered someone selling buses, who was more than happy to help us find what we were looking for. And while we were guided to a nice little bus, we had no idea how lucky we had gotten with some of the future Charlotte’s features. 

 

We ended up with a 5 window, wheelchair accessible bus. A key part of why we chose the bus we did was for its completely uninterrupted floor plan (once we filled in the ramp in the front). Most buses have humps for wheel wells that need to be worked around or modified to minimize their impact on the build. We were able to avoid those in our build because the manufacturer had raised the height of the floor. This was an even greater boon for us as it gave us room between the bus frame and the floor to store our water tanks. Beside the good fortune of the raised floor, we later learned that our bus is almost entirely made of aluminum. Aluminum meant that we were able to avoid the troublesome, time-consuming rust treatment that lots of builders have to deal with. We were also lucky in that our ceiling panels were screwed in, as opposed to riveted, which made disassembly much easier! That it was a wheelchair bus also meant that we had another door, one that included a window that can be opened and closed.

 

When she pulled into our driveway, Charlotte was still completely outfitted to be a school bus. And I don’t know about any of you, but it sure was fun to pick any seat I wanted on the bus AND get to use the door opening lever!

 

We couldn’t wait to get to work ripping into our new bus and immediately got to work stripping her down. The seats were the first to go, a task made much easier since half of them were in Q-Straint Tracks. Next came the overhead A/C unit and the conduit. The wheelchair lift was pretty straightforward to remove, but it did involve a hefty bear hug to get it to the ground. The ceiling panels were unscrewed and the insulation was stripped away. Getting the tracks out proved to be more frustrating and time-consuming, but eventually we got through it and down to the aluminum floor. We patched the holes and seams using the manufacturer-approved method: duct tape. From there we moved on to the chair rails below the windows - scoring the bottom with our angle grinder and then breaking them off. Sprinkled throughout the process we dealt with electrical components, the stop sign, the lights and even the door closing mechanism. We took great care to delete as many nonessential items as we could - essentially making the bus back into the van that left Ford’s assembly line.

 

After the bus was demoed, all of the windows were removed and resealed to prevent leaks. We also removed everything we could from the top of the bus. There were various antennae, a passive air vent as well as the emergency hatch. We used automotive seam sealant, recycled ceiling panels and rivets to skin over all of the holes. We also used the ceiling panels to skin over a pair of windows that we deleted. After we decided to place our bed at the back of the bus we determined that it made sense to remove the windows which would be behind our headboard. We did our best to make the patch look factory, even using the rivet pattern that the bus builder had used. Once that was done, we had a blank canvas to design our dream!