NewsPositively San Diego

Actions

Local Navy couple goes from Little Italy apartment to living in tiny home created from a former school bus

Posted at 7:02 AM, Sep 29, 2020
and last updated 2020-09-29 13:32:00-04

Born in Arizona but transplanted to the coastal city of San Diego, is Goose. "It was brought to the school bus sales lot so we literally picked it up on it's last day of school." It's a school bus turned tiny home in the making and behind it, is local Navy couple, Sydney and Fabrice Gutierrez.

"People are taking retired school buses and converting them into tiny homes versus standard RV's. It's customized and you could build it into everything you want or need it for," said the couple.

A school bus on wheels, they said, was a better bet than the average home on wheels, "They're a lot safer than regular RVs if you think about it. Their whole purpose was carrying kids back and forth year after year, so it's a lot safer," said Sydney.

The duo planned to spend more time working on their tiny home, but COVID-19 gave them a detour, "A lot of things we had lined up that we thought were going to help us fell through, and weren't possible."

There were on a waiting list to store the bus somewhere to work on it but not as many RV's were leaving their spaces, forcing the couple to work faster and downsize from their Little Italy apartment to their tiny home, sooner.

"There are stories of people who have gone from 2 to 3 thousand square foot homes to 200 square feet." Not only will it be smaller, but much cheaper than your average home in San Diego. They said the project, running them under $20,000, is friendly for their pockets and the environment. "It's really resourceful to use old cars that would probably sit on a lot and rot forever."

The couple said the tiny home "bussie" community is getting more popular with so many people able to work from practically anywhere.