We did it!
We feel absolutely crazy pants, but we bought a bus.
We started searching for our Skoolie at the end of 2019/ beginning of 2020. It was just before the world crashed due to covid, but we were already feeling cooped up in our 9-6 jobs. Tim was the one that first introduced us to the Skoolie community, and I (Hannah) don't think he thought it would go anywhere - but I had something up my ~sleeve~.
You see, Tim's birthday is January 6. I was in the process of planning him a surprise party at a local distillery, but I didn't yet have a present for him. I was feeling spontaneous and thought, what if I drive a bus up to the party.... Again, crazy pants. But my favorite thing in the world is to surprise and delight Tim, so I reached out to one of the bus owners we had looked at to start negotiation.
Unfortunately, I am terrible at keeping secrets, so Tim soon found out (which tbh is probably a good thing when it comes to large purchases!). While my plan was foiled, he was able to help negotiate down to a better price. Plus, we wouldn't be able to drive the bus for a few months until we had registered it in our names. Luckily, the surprise party went off without a hitch.
The bus deets:
BRBB is a 2002 GMC Blue Bird Bus, with a Caterpillar 3126 engine and Allison automatic transmission. 28 feet long, 8 feet wide. We originally considered a short bus, but after looking at a few felt that it wasn't enough space. At the same time, 40 ft buses are intimidating. We thought 28 was a happy medium! We could fit all the amenities we wanted and would feel comfortable driving it on the highway.
We bought BRBB for $5,000. This sounds like a lot, especially compared to what many other buses sell for at auction, but the previous owner had put a lot of work into the engine. Some back story - BRBB was originally a school bus for the Virginia Beach school system. When it was retired, a local couple bought it for a few grand at auction to start converting, but didn't make it very far. At this point, the bus was not running. The next owner was a young lady from central Virginia who bought it to convert into a tiny home to park on her parents property. She is the one who removed the seats and floors, painted the bus gray, and started insulation (which unfortunately we had to rip out). Low and behold, she ended up meeting someone, and decided to move in with him. She listed the bus for $8k on Facebook marketplace, where we found it. She had put roughly $4k of work into it, including engine repairs and new tires, and other costs in materials and towing. The lowest she would go was $5k, which we agreed was fair because tires are a couple grand just themselves. Some of the other buses we had looked at (one that was partially converted but wouldn't start when we visited) sold for much more.
(this is what the inside looked like when we purchased!)
We purchased the bus in January 2020, but ended up paying the seller $100 a month to store our bus while we dealt with the DMV. It would be March before we saw her again, but that's another story :) Thanks for reading!