After 3 plus years in our (awesome) van, Stevan, we were ready for a little more…. space. Enter Babe, the Blue Bus.She isn’t much longer than Stevan: just half a foot! But she is a foot wider and a few feet taller, which has been kinda sweet.
We found Babe the old fashioned way: on Facebook Marketplace! She had been a church bus in her early years. (We found a bible in the dashboard that had “Do not remove from Bus C!” written on the cover in sharpie.) But then she had a midlife adventure of sorts as a party bus, complete with stripper pole! Now she is taking it easy on the highways, a home for a couple of crazy brave adventurers.
Babe is a 2009 Ford e350 Cutaway with a 5.4 L engine and dually wheels in back. She had only 48 thousand miles when we bought her.
We added 800 watts of solar up top. The panels are made for houses but they work great on her big old roof. And we have a chest-style fridge with a small freezer, 30 gallons of water and a 3 gallon gray water tank that we have to take out and dump by hand. We also added a 3 gallon electric water heater.
We did not, as yet, add a vinyl plank or wood floor. She still has her original rubber mat bus floor– for now. We’ve covered it with a couple of small carpets.And we did not add a bathroom, shower, AC or heat. Call us crazy, but we like to keep things simple.
We built Babe on a time crunch: less than 2 months! Because we are nomads, we didn’t have a spot of our own to build in. Luckily, we were able to build our bus in a RV storage lot while we bunked with my brother a half hour away. Though we were up front about our plans to build out our bus, the storage lot had an issue with their insurance and asked us to leave after the two months we paid for were up. So we really HAD to get that bus done.
We made daily short videos of our bus build. So if you want to see what it’s like to build out a shuttlebus in the Florida heat, with a time crunch….or if you just want to check out the process it’s all HERE.
Though we still have a little work to do, we are so happy with the way our bus turned out– so cozy!
