Some believe a home has four walls and a picket fence, but not Priscilla and Robbie. This couple knew their home was out on the open road, and they made it their mission to tour the U.S. in a rather unique home they would renovate for themselves and their pets. The big twist? This home had four wheels rather than four walls, and it needed some serious TLC. As you can imagine, these DIY novices had a tough battle ahead of them. Read on for their incredible story!

Living a Life of Adventure

Like many others around the world, Priscilla and Robbie have a taste for adventure. They lived in Florida, but they craved a different life for themselves. They wanted to travel the country and create memories to last a lifetime, and so they began to toy with the idea of life on the road. There was just one problem, though. Priscilla and Robbie didn't want to leave their beloved pets behind.

They confessed that "We hated leaving our pets at home and missed them when we were away... we needed a way to continue to travel and have them with us." So, they put their heads together.

Choosing Their New Home

Priscilla and Robbie knew one thing for certain; their pets needed to be able to travel with them. They wanted to embark on a cross-continental trip across the U.S. and Canada, and they believed this would take them at least two years to complete. So, they began to play around with the idea of living in a tiny home, a van, a motorhome, or a car. But could they do that for two years?

They needed something much bigger than a car, and soon they stumbled across an old school bus in Miami that seemed perfect. But the couple expressed that "we had no idea what we were about to get ourselves into."

Time to Rip It Apart

Although Priscilla and Robbie were excited about their new renovation project, they soon realized that they had a huge job on their hands. After all, the school bus wasn't designed to be lived in at all - let alone for two years! So, they decided to take it one step at a time and started by ripping out the seats to create a clean slate for them to design and remodel their new home on wheels.

All in all, the couple had 210 square feet of space to work with when constructing their new home. But the Thomas School Bus was built way in 1998, which meant that it wasn't long before they were met with a problem.

The First Big Challenge

Although the couple managed to strip the seats from the inside of the school bus, Robbie and Priscilla found themselves at a standstill when they tried to remove the floor rails that were once attached to the seats. The couple explained that this task was "the most difficult part of the floor gutting phase." Even with heavy-duty tools at their disposal, the couple struggled to make any progress.

Priscilla stated that "Robbie used an angle grinder to cut a slit about every six inches while I used a hammer." But this process was time-consuming and back-breaking, so the couple decided to move on to the next big task.

Starting on the Walls

Robbie and Priscilla needed to focus on something else before they finished the floor, so they decided to start on the walls. To make the bus habitable for themselves and their fur babies, they needed to saw off the original metal walls in preparation for the next stage of the process. But doing this was a messy job, and without a contractor, they were left with huge piles of trash to deal with themselves.

The couple stated that "We lost count of the number of trailers full of scrap metal that we removed from our empty bus. If we had to guess, it would probably be somewhere around... 20!"

An Unwelcome Surprise

Thankfully, it didn't take long for Priscilla and Robbie to finish stripping the walls. And when they were done, they went back to the floor and finished pulling up the railings. Their next step was to pull up the original flooring and remove the insulation - but once again they were hit with a roadblock. As they inspected the floor, they realized the whole thing was covered in thousands of holes!

They complained that "You can imagine how tedious it was to fill every single one of them. We used construction adhesive to fill and masking tape over it." It was during this time that they realized how old their bus really was.

A Saving Grace

The couple had seriously started to rethink their decision to renovate the 1998 school bus, but there was one saving grace. Although they were expecting to come across a huge amount of rust, they found very little during the first stage of the construction project. This was because the school bus had been in service throughout its entire lifetime in Miami, a city where vehicles are less likely to rust due to the warm weather.

Although they added some Rust-Oleum paint to a few spots of rust here and there, they were able to quickly move on to the next task; adding the foam board floor insulation. But sadly, their excitement didn't last long.