Hi, we are Joel and Rachel Binkerd and we travel with our cat Montego or Monte for short.
Just a little back story about us and the journey with our bus. We bought it in Florida from a couple who originally converted in on HGTV (Tiny House, Big Living season 8 episode 11). At this point we have lived in the bus 6 months while we've worked on it. It has definitely been a bigger undertaking than we expected but we are so pleased with how it is turning out.
The kitchen has taken two months to redo and just about everything that could go wrong did. The finished product was worth not having a kitchen to cook in for about 8 weeks!
We added shiplap on the walls because the plywood on the walls cracked while driving down the road. We also trimmed out the windows to give it more of a home like feel and to keep the insulation from sticking out.
When we got the bus the counter tops were a marble looking contact paper. We didn't think that it would need to be redone but after a few months the spots near the sink and the oven started peeling. Now it's laminate countertop from Home Depot that looks like marble. Also, there was a lot of unused space in the top of the cabinets so we added drawers and replaced the doors. We added a fresh coat of paint and replaced the knobs.
Something else that we didn't expect to do was take down a wall. The old fridge was a Dometic gas/electric and we were warned about them catching fire sometimes. The walls were finished after the fridge was installed so we had to take down the wall that used to be next to the stove. It did give us room for a spice rack and a larger fridge. We can now hold 7 days of food no problem.
This coffee bar is the most used space in our skoolie. All the upper cabinets in the whole conversion we made, the lower ones have been redone, new countertop, and a fresh coat of paint.
Our goal is to make our converted school bus feel as much like a home as we possibly can.
If you wish to keep up with us as we travel and live in our converted school bus with our cat, here is how. We are very active on Instagram as Binks_Tube, we post travel content on YouTube also as Binks Tube, and the same for TikTok.