Kids who bounced around the back of a school bus might shake their heads at this idea: People are converting the yellow transports into tiny houses on wheel.
Parents who lament the lack of space in their home might shudder at this: A family of six has spent the last year happily living in a former school bus - about 260 square feet - in Washington.
And guys who dream of man caves might cheer on the concept of a bus-based rolling leisure pad.
What's happening here?
Skoolies!
Across the country, especially in the nature-surrounded Pacific Northwest, people are breaking out of four painted walls and into long, steel vehicles.
Padded bench seats have been replaced by a kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. Bunk beds now rest in the way back, where the rowdy kids once sat closest to the emergency exit and far away from the driver.
School bus conversions aren't new. In the hippie heyday, Ken Kesey and his Merry Band of Pranksters crossed the country in a 1939 International Harvester bus. The 2012 documentary, "I'm Fine, Thanks," profiled a family living in a school bus.
And over the years, the online forum Skoolie.net has racked up 120,446 posts, offering step-by-step conversion tutorials and information on adding electricity, running water and insulation, and the benefits of alternative fuels.
As simplified living and the tiny house movement continue to capture attention, and people search for inexpensive housing, skoolies are finding a new audience.
Surplus yards, auctions, Craigslist and eBay sell old buses starting at $3,000.
DIY home builders talk about tossing away measuring tapes. They make floor plans for their 32-foot-long homes based on window width: A sofa bed stretches across three widows, the kitchen counter crosses two windows while the toilet is one window wide.
Although the National Transportation Safety Board requires retired school buses to be stripped of stop arms and warning signals, and some are painted a color other than School Bus Yellow, you can't disguise their familiar form.
Still, each one is customized to please its owners, whether the skoolie is intended as a RV or a primary tiny house.
Two guys in the real estate business, Matthew Johansen and his friend Jeff Sarault, have installed cedar over the interior walls and rounded ceiling of a 1995 Ford bus parked in Sherwood.
They have added all the comforts of home: There's a stand-up shower - imagine the water fights schoolkids could have had? - and the kitchen has a commercial propane range with a 24-inch griddle and two burners above the oven. This sits next to the large side-by-side RV fridge that can run off of 110V power or propane. There's an ice maker in the freezer. Nearby are granite countertops.
A sofa bed faces a TV and stereo. Counting the bed and bunk beds, the rolling party bus sleep seven people.
Sarault's relatives, Gary and Dave Sarault, are adding craftsman-style decorative carvings and stain glass in the wood doors. Gary Sarault also made a table of English maple slab with inlaid copper.
Jeff Sarault says there's about $30,000 invested plus sweat equity into making the old bus into an swank RV they can take camping and to festivals like Burning Man in the Nevada desert.
"Sometimes it's not about the destination, it's the journey," says Jeff Sarault, who sells real estate, while Johansen is a mortgage adviser. "This bus is for the journey and the destination."
Fortunately, the "bulletproof" diesel engine, he says, can last past 1 million miles.
Owners of retired school buses install insulation and other weather-sealing improvements to the drafty former kid wagons. Digging deep sometimes leads to left-behind treasures like dull No. 2 pencils and sticky gum.
Art supplies and textbooks are displayed in a converted school bus parked on private property on an island in the Puget Sound, Washington. Here, Sarah Szymczak home schools her four children while her husband, Ed, practices medicine.
They converted a 1997 Bluebird bus themselves. They removed the seats and small toys wedged between them. They added window trim, bookshelves, planters and a loft.
The children sleep in bunk beds at the front of the bus and their parents rest on a mattress stored underneath the back loft.
They added 15 square feet of open space by cutting down two large kitchen drawers and stacking them on the wheel well bench.
Preparing the site for the house bus was simple: They hooked up a hose to an existing spout from a well and changed an outlet on an outdoor power pole to a 30 amp plug.
The benefits of the bus are they could tailor the layout to suit their needs, use mostly reclaimed materials and have a house framed by windows, which provide "lots of light and incredible views," says Sarah Szymczak.
"School buses are appealing because they are very cheap to purchase and they are mobile," she adds. "A luxury RV is rather expensive."
After a year of squeezing into the eight-foot-wide dwelling, the Szymczaks have sold their bus and will move this week to live closer to their families in Minnesota.
"We are so grateful that we have had this experience," says Sarah Szymczak.
She wrote a blog, "Simply Mothering," and dispelled myths about living in a bus:
Four kids in a tiny space must be bouncing off the walls: "They don't," she wrote. "They know that if they need to get any wild energy out that they can do that outside."
Kids sharing a bedroom loft will stay up all night: "They are worn out from all of the outdoor activity and we can hear them if they are talking, so they just go to sleep."
Confined space may cause the kids to have disagreements. "They don't. They have been home schooled for five years, so they are already used to being around each other and they play together so much of their days."
In addition, writes Szymczak, her children can related to people around the world who live in one-room houses. They enjoyed nature in their backyard and they know that "happiness doesn't come with a price tag."
One more perk: She writes that her children will really appreciate separate bedrooms when they get them.
-- Janet Eastman
jeastman@oregonian.com
503-799-8739
@janeteastman