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Luke Dufty was caught off-guard by the fast sale of his refurbished schoolhouse home. So he and partner Madi Glass moved into a school bus.

The Peterborough-area couple began retrofitting their “skoolie,” a bus-turned-home, in 2020.

“We were looking for a project to keep us busy during COVID (lockdowns),” says Glass.

They first considered re-doing a vintage trailer for a road trip to Western Canada. Then they opted to go bigger. When the local school board downsized its fleet, the couple bought a 72-passenger, 2005 bus that had put in 352,000 kilometres. They had it towed to their rural property, just east of Peterborough, and got to work with the renovations. The couple paid $5,000 for the school bus and so far have put another $10,000 in renovations into it.

And although the skoolie is intended to be their future RV, it was called into duty as a temporary tiny home for the couple when Dufty’s house sold so soon after going on the market this past May. It was an 1863 schoolhouse that had been transformed into a private residence when Dufty, 30, bought it. Then he and Glass, 26, updated and customized the home. The pair plan to build a new house on a rural property they own in Peterborough County, but they won’t begin construction until next year.

In the meantime, and before they move into a nearby rental house, Dufty and Glass have made their summer home in the skoolie. A generator supplies their electricity and the stove in the little bus’s kitchen runs on propane.

“The biggest adjustment for us has been going from having all the room in the house to very little in the skoolie,” says Glass. “It's also been an adjustment in preparing and cooking meals and making lunches for the next day since there isn’t as much room to do that or fridge space.

“But Luke and I have adjusted well, and it's kind of nice to have fewer responsibilities and payments,” she adds.

When they decided on a school bus over a trailer, the couple went to work researching the models that would work best as a home conversion. Some models have ceilings too low for adult-height headroom. Theirs is a conventional “dog-nose” — as opposed to “flat nose” — with the classic school bus profile. According to skooliecanada.ca, dog-nose models are better for backroads since they have good clearance, easily accessible engines for repair and maintenance, and a rear door for additional access.

They pored over Pinterest looking for inspiration and followed Facebook groups devoted to skoolies as they planned the design and sought advice for their own home on wheels.

“The most useful piece of advice we have is to make it your own,” says Glass. “There is no right or wrong way to do this. There was so much advice we learned from and we took, and together we made it our own.”

The pair created their own plans and drawings, and the resulting design has an open-concept space including the living and dining areas, and kitchen, with the private bedroom and bathroom at the rear of the vehicle.

Dufty is an iron worker/welder who works in the GTA and he put his trade skills to good use on the skoolie. As well, he gained experience in electrical, plumbing and carpentry skills as the project proceeded. Glass is a pharmacy technician and the couple worked on the bus during their free time, with no set timeline in mind. Now, the interior is mostly complete with a few finishing touches to come, such as a cubic mini wood stove that will sit in an angled corner of the living area.

“We made a lot of Home Depot runs and sourced most of the materials there,” says Dufty. “We couldn’t use drywall for the walls as the movement would cause it to crack, so we used MDF (medium-density fibreboard).” The linear kitchen has MDF cabinets with pine doors, a butcher block-style countertop, a black sink and faucet. Pine boards were used as trim around windows and the door, and around the built-in sofa and dining benches. Their built-in table was made from a live-edge board.

The easiest part was the demo that included removing the rows of seats, says Glass. “The biggest challenge was building with the angle of the roof and dealing with the wheel wells and electrical.”

The bathroom is built over one wheel well, requiring a couple of steps up. The other well will house the little wood stove that will sit on a platform above it. The toilet had to be sourced from an outlet selling seen-on-TV products; the couple say they’ll have to look to similar sources for the mini wood stove.

The skoolie windows are original but have now been painted black. The couple also expanded the back door into a double door and plan to add a deck in future. The vehicle is still the original school-bus orange, but their goal is paint it grey-green and add a graphic tree silhouette.

Glass says they hope to add solar panels to the roof to power to the skoolie in future, but those systems (including the batteries required) are costly compared to using a generator.

Until their skoolie’s transformation is complete — as well as meeting provincial requirements from its conversion to bus class to RV and is registered as a road vehicle — Dufty and Glass won’t take it on the road.

Dufty has experience driving large vehicles, so navigating the former bus won’t be an issue for him. Although they haven’t put a deadline on when they hope to finish the skoolie, they hope to have it ready in time to take it on their bucket list trip to Western Canada next year.

Glass and Dufty found used school buses for purchase starting from $3,000 up, depending on age and mileage. Mini buses or shorter school buses can be an option for those who don’t need or want the space of a full-size bus or don’t have experience driving large vehicles.

Used buses can be sourced from places such as Kijiji or Craigslist, junk yards, from bus companies or dealers such as National Bus Sales, at nationalbus.com

To get a skoolie registered in Ontario as a passenger class vehicle (eg. motorized mobile home), you’ll need to provide Service Ontario with information and documents including a vehicle permit, bill of sale, proof of insurance, a Safety Standards Certificate and a written declaration of make, model, year, VIN and a description of changes made and equipment installed or removed so the vehicle meets the new class criteria. It will have to have things such as a contained toilet, refrigeration system, heat or air conditioning source, independent electrical source, sink, faucet and running water and cooking facility such as a hot plate. (Source: skooliecanada.ca)

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