School Bus Turned Tiny Home

By Ashley and Colin Warren

WE WERE IN a much different place a few years ago. We had a beautiful house in the mountains of North Carolina that was way too big for the two of us. We had steady jobs as a kindergarten teacher and a welder/ironworker. We adopted a sweet pup to love. We had everything we needed, but it felt like we were missing something, and we realized what we were missing was happiness. We were drowning in the “American Dream” and had lost ourselves along the way. We missed our time. We missed each other. We missed doing the things we loved and what brought us together in the first place.

All of this led us to the crazy idea of turning a retired school bus into our home on wheels. Colin had always dreamed of building a home, so we went for it. We bought a 1999 Bluebird school bus in 2019. Soon after, we sold our house and most of our belongings, packed up the bus with all we had left, and moved to Florida to be with family and start this project. We have spent two and a half years converting this bus into our home. We completely tore it down to the bare metal and rebuilt it to what it is now. Many people ask us why our conversion took so long, and the simple answer is balance. During those two and a half years, we had a baby boy. Colin worked 50-plus hours a week, leaving only the weekends to devote to the bus, and not much free time for anything else. Plus, we did this all while still trying to be a new mother and father, son and daughter, and wife and husband. The balance was, without a doubt, the most challenging part of the process.

After spending years building out our bus, we were so ready to take the leap, move in, and hit the road. So we did, with our son, Zephyr, our pup, Banjo, and our cat, Kitty. We were bright eyed with this dream and very much caught up in the idea of “bus life.” You see these gorgeous homes on wheels online, with peaceful music playing over the walkthrough video and the doors opening to epic views. It seems silly to us now that we thought that’s how it would be. While it definitely can be a reality, it’s certainly not the reality 24/7. Bus life for us meant constant work, from getting water, to keeping such a small space clean, and getting from one place to the next.

Within our first week of moving into the bus, we had damage from two severe storms, got stuck in soft mud, spent a night on the edge of a cliff terrified of rolling down and losing all we had built, and ran out of water way too fast. The job we had lined up to keep us going fell through. We were stressed beyond measure to make the lifestyle, which we’d expected to be a chance to get away from the stress, work for us. That is the honesty of our reality. Beyond all the hard work, we’ve had many irreplaceable moments as well. Those moments we dreamed about while building the bus did become a reality—our son taking baths in our kitchen sink, the slow mornings of sipping coffee on the couch with the wood stove burning, and the time spent outside exploring and watching our son take in the world around him. This lifestyle is hard. Tiny living is hard. The adjustment was hard, especially with a wild toddler and a large, clumsy pup. Then again, doesn’t any change or move have its difficulties?

This bus has taught us many lessons we needed to work through. Reading this may make you think this lifestyle isn’t worth all the hard work. We are here to tell you that it is absolutely worth it. No matter where you are in life, personal growth is a necessity, and turning this bus into our home has been nothing but personal growth. It has led us to learn what we value, what we cherish, and what we want out of life. And even more importantly, what we want for our son.

It is truly amazing to look back and see that there are many rivers, but they all lead to the sea. We all take our own routes and flow our own ways, but the destination is always the same—happiness, love, and a life spent living. We don’t know how long we will be in this chapter, but we know we wouldn’t trade this bus or all we have been through for the world. It’s given us some of our best lessons and most unforgettable memories, and has made us realize the value in “there’s no place like home.”

Follow Ashley and Colin on Instagram @strayleif