Tour This Traveling Couple's Colorful, Retrofitted School Bus Home

In 2019, travel couple Kels and Jay set out to find and design a home on wheels, one that would house plenty of interior creature comforts and stand out in a sea of neutral motor homes. Their search ended when they discovered the perfect ride: a 2001 retired school bus. After eight months of determined DIY weekends, the couple's self-converted school bus home — or skoolie, as it's often referred to by fellow enthusiasts — went from a daydream to road trip reality.

Their first bit of bus business had nothing to do with the renovation. “We kind of went back and forth for a while and weren’t really sure what to name it," Kels says with a laugh. "The story behind it: the woman [we bought the bus from] said she had a chicken named Bessy, and it had just died. So I said, 'Oh that’s so sad! But now the name can live on.'"

Like any good demo, a little dust is to be expected. "One of the first things we did was get proper dirty and just ripped the whole thing apart," Jay says. "We took out the seats. We took out the ceiling and all the sheet metal inside the bus. We ripped up the floors and basically took it down to the bare bones so we could start fresh."

"The paint job on this bus [definitely] stands out, and it's one of the first things people notice," says Jay, adding that the color palette inspiration came from a beloved pair of shoes. "We kind of just held the shoe up to the bus and were like, ‘How about we do that?' We did a base coat in white, taped off the geometric design, and went to Home Depot and bought a bunch of colors — we just had fun with it."