A couple bought a $7,200 school bus and turned it into their 'dream home' using cheap items off Facebook Marketplace and recycled materials

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Kelsey Neubauer

2023-04-02T10:15:00Z

A couple bought a $7,200 school bus and turned it into their 'dream home' using cheap items off Facebook Marketplace and recycled materials — see inside (1)

Tanya Nestoruk and Arya Touserkani bought a $7,200 school bus and turned it into their dream home.
They got most of their materials off Facebook Marketplace and only spent $40,000 on the project.
Now they work remotely while traveling in the skoolie along across the US, Canada, and Mexico.

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Environmental educator Tanya Nestoruk and photographer Arya Touserkani converted a school bus into a tiny house on wheels, complete with a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a roof deck. They now live in it while traveling throughout the US, Canada, and Mexico.

"Usually I work nine months on, and I have three months off. I've been addicted to that travel, work-hard, play-hard lifestyle," Nestoruk, the environmental educator, said. "We both lived in a van, but wanted more space, and so this checked that box off for us."

The couple, who are in their mid-30s, bought the school bus for $7,200 in Vancouver when it was being retired to make way for a new fleet.

Once they got the bus, they spent seven months converting it into a home. During the demolition stage, they tried to recycle everything they could.

They donated the seats to a local kid's adventure camp and sold the luggage racks to someone who repurposed them for garage storage.

"Our goal from the beginning was to try to reduce waste and to try to reuse or recycle anything we could, to give it a second life," Nestoruk told Insider. She turned to Facebook Marketplace: "I posted everything I could: old light fixtures, scrap metal, scrap wood — anything that we could take out of there."

They donated metal and other scraps, too. People reused the bus insulation for interior walls in their own homes, and someone who bought the its heater used it on their boat.

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This is the bus at its most bare — after the couple removed the seats, luggage racks, insulation, wood panels, and rubber flooring.

They also took the roof emergency-escape and ventilation hatches off and made holes in the ceiling for skylights.

They intended to complete the skoolie renovation outside, but the weather worsened and they decided to rent a workshop space.

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Next, the couple installed spray foam insulation so that they could stay warm in Canadian winters and cool in Mexican summers when they hit the road.

Before putting the insulation and flooring in, they cut the holes for the skylight.

"It ended up being pretty tricky to build a skylight because of the curve of the roof," Touserkani said. "So instead of getting a prebuilt skylight, we just did something custom and built a box that fit to the curve of the roof."

They also laid the subfloor, made of insulation with plywood on top of it. "We saw inspiration online," Nestoruk said. "Seeing that people were out there doing it — and knowing a bus conversion was possible — really inspired us to do it."

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Next, they framed out the walls for the bathroom and ran plumbing throughout. They started buying appliances — many used and from Facebook Marketplace.

After the plumbing was put in, they built out the home from back to front. The first step was building a platform at the back of the bus for their bed.

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The couple bought a solid wood door off Facebook Marketplace. Nestoruk stripped the wood and sanded it, then Touserkani used a table saw to make adjustments to its height and width to fit on the bus.

About two-thirds of the way through the conversion, they painted the exterior sea-foam green. Nestoruk said the pale color is based off a T-shirt from the couple's "home away from home": Zoe's Coffee and Bakery on Vancouver Island.

The industrial enamel paint was effectively applied in just one coat. "Every time we tell people it's only one coat of paint, they kind of freak out," said Touserkani, adding that bystanders assume it took more coats. "It ended up being a really nice even coating."

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The couple also put solar panels on the roof, which so far has provided all the energy they need.The conversion cost $40,000 total.

When you walk in the front of the bus, there is a gray couch with a small L-shaped kitchen behind it.

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Nestoruk sewed custom curtains for the bus windows and skylight using canvas material.

A seamstress who designs costumes for movies sewed the cushions on the L-Shaped couch.

To make the kitchen countertops look like faux concrete, they put a cement-base mortar on top of a plywood base before covering it with food-safe sealant.

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Past the kitchen is a hallway that leads to a bathroom. A barn door that Touserkani made from wood scraps opens to the bathroom.

The bedroom is at the very back of the bus, just past the washer-dryer.

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A ladder in the bedroom leads up to a roof deck.

A friend of the couple welded the framing of both the roof deck and a rear deck, which holds the couple's bicycles.

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After finishing the bus in November of 2022, Nestoruk and Touserkani drove along the Pacific Coast through Washington, Oregon, and California, then into Mexico and Arizona. They got engaged in February 2023 and are now driving the skoolie through Southern California.

The couple chronicles their adventures on TikTok and Instagram.

"We were like, if we could build our dream house, what would we do?" Nestoruk said. "This is a dream house within a budget."

A couple bought a $7,200 school bus and turned it into their 'dream home' using cheap items off Facebook Marketplace and recycled materials — see inside (2024)

Environmental educator Tanya Nestoruk and photographer Arya Touserkani converted a school bus into a tiny house on wheels, complete with a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a roof deck. They now live in it while traveling throughout the US, Canada, and Mexico.

The couple, who are in their mid-30s, bought the school bus for $7,200 in Vancouver when it was being retired to make way for a new fleet.

They donated the seats to a local kid's adventure camp and sold the luggage racks to someone who repurposed them for garage storage.

They donated metal and other scraps, too. People reused the bus insulation for interior walls in their own homes, and someone who bought the its heater used it on their boat.

This is the bus at its most bare — after the couple removed the seats, luggage racks, insulation, wood panels, and rubber flooring.

They intended to complete the skoolie renovation outside, but the weather worsened and they decided to rent a workshop space.

Next, the couple installed spray foam insulation so that they could stay warm in Canadian winters and cool in Mexican summers when they hit the road.

They also laid the subfloor, made of insulation with plywood on top of it. "We saw inspiration online," Nestoruk said. "Seeing that people were out there doing it — and knowing a bus conversion was possible — really inspired us to do it."

Next, they framed out the walls for the bathroom and ran plumbing throughout. They started buying appliances — many used and from Facebook Marketplace.

After the plumbing was put in, they built out the home from back to front. The first step was building a platform at the back of the bus for their bed.

The couple bought a solid wood door off Facebook Marketplace. Nestoruk stripped the wood and sanded it, then Touserkani used a table saw to make adjustments to its height and width to fit on the bus.

About two-thirds of the way through the conversion, they painted the exterior sea-foam green. Nestoruk said the pale color is based off a T-shirt from the couple's "home away from home": Zoe's Coffee and Bakery on Vancouver Island.

The couple also put solar panels on the roof, which so far has provided all the energy they need.The conversion cost $40,000 total.

When you walk in the front of the bus, there is a gray couch with a small L-shaped kitchen behind it.

Nestoruk sewed custom curtains for the bus windows and skylight using canvas material.

To make the kitchen countertops look like faux concrete, they put a cement-base mortar on top of a plywood base before covering it with food-safe sealant.

Past the kitchen is a hallway that leads to a bathroom. A barn door that Touserkani made from wood scraps opens to the bathroom.

The bedroom is at the very back of the bus, just past the washer-dryer.

A ladder in the bedroom leads up to a roof deck.

A friend of the couple welded the framing of both the roof deck and a rear deck, which holds the couple's bicycles.

After finishing the bus in November of 2022, Nestoruk and Touserkani drove along the Pacific Coast through Washington, Oregon, and California, then into Mexico and Arizona. They got engaged in February 2023 and are now driving the skoolie through Southern California.

References