EP. 5 - THE LIVING ROOM _ DIY SCHOOL BUS TINY HOUSE CONVERSION _ MODERN BUILDS

How's it going everybody ?

My name is Mike Montgomery and I'm in the middle of turning this school bus into a tiny house .

And in today's episode , I'm going to be building out the living room on modern builds video is sponsored by bright sellers .

Now , I know I can't be the only person that's thinking this video has been a long time coming .

Not only have we built a bedroom , a bathroom and a kitchen in this school bus tiny house .

Today we are building out the final interior space and that is the living room here in the front .

So the space isn't huge .

It's only six ft long and about five ft wide , three window lengths .

Of course , the living room wouldn't be complete without a sofa and this one even converts out to a sleeper and along the driver's side wall , I built out this really convenient office station with an expanding leaf to add more versatility to the space .

And that's where we're gonna start building .

I'm happy to report that I'm gonna be building something that is not out of three quarter inch radiat of pine , the table top for this office station and the leaf are gonna be made out of three layers of half inch construction plywood .

This is AC X plywood , which basically means it has one clean side with the a side you're looking at here and then one ugly side , which is the sea side .

I just got done cutting the top and the bottom of this sandwich .

And now I'm cutting a third piece to 16 inches wide so that I can make all of my pieces for the middle .

I'm using wood glue and spring clamps to hold all of my pieces together .

And by building up layers , I'm gonna create a slot or a groove that the leaf will be able to slide in and out of .

As you can see , it's important that I don't put any wood glue down where I'm planning on creating that negative space .

And I just use the actual piece that I'll be making my arms for the leaf out of for that , the slots of wood that I used for the extension arms in the leaf were supposed to be two inches wide .

But I accidentally grabbed this 3.5 inch wide board whenever I was doing my glue ups without realizing it , otherwise , the ends of all of my boards would have met up .

Now , this isn't the biggest deal .

It did offset the slots for the arms in the extension , but I was able to trim the slab to the same length .

It would have been anyways .

So now that we've made our slightly oversized blank for our 16 inch wide countertop , we could do the same to create our eight inch wide extension .

I'll be sure to leave an Amazon affiliate link down in the description for a six inch and a 12 inch speed square .

These are just so great to have around on any diy projects at this point in the build .

I realized that I hadn't used that two inch wide spacer that I meant to .

But because I had already used the 3.5 inch wide one on the countertop blank , I did the same thing for my leaf extension .

The one thing that's important to note here is we do not want those arms to come out .

So we are gluing them in place out here in the Joshua tree , desert wood glue dries in about 10 or 15 minutes .

So I was able to test the fit of these really quick .

Here we go .

And unfortunately , I found that everything was just a little too snug .

So that didn't work on the first try .

But as always , I've got a plan , simple problems , usually have simple solutions .

So I started by adding a taper onto the arms of the extension leaf .

After I trimmed those pieces , I also hit them with some 80 grit sandpaper on the random orbit sander to round over the edges .

And I could test the fit again super pro before moving on .

I'd like to give a big thanks to the sponsor of today's episode .

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Now back to the build .

In the last episode of this bus series , I used orange laminate to create monochromatic countertops and kitchen cabinets .

That video will be linked down in the description during that whole process .

I completely fell in love with it .

I think it's an awesome material .

So for the office desk , I'm gonna be using this blue laminate to face the table top .

What's so cool about laminate is it's so easy to apply and it gives you such a durable finish .

All you need to do is apply a couple of coats of rubber cement or contact cement to both the laminate and whatever your substrate is .

Then you need to give it time to dry completely to the touch .

You don't want it to be tacky whatsoever .

For me that took about 10 minutes .

But on the can , it says it can take up to an hour , especially on large laminate sheets .

You wanna use riser blocks between your substrate and the laminate .

That way you can line everything up and slowly lower it onto the material .

If possible , you want to work from the center out , making sure to remove any air as you go .

Then you'll use what's called a seam roller or AJ roller also linked down below to get rid of any imperfections or air bubbles .

Thankfully , I only needed to use the router with a flush triet on one edge and that was on the same side that the arms are on for the extension on all of the other edges and ends .

I was able to use the circular saw to make two passes to trim everything flush at once .

And now we just need to make sure everything still lines up and fits perfect .

Ok .

So this is certified Super Pro .

It looks good , it feels good and it fits great .

Now , we just need to build a base for this top and it needs to be able to store this extension or the leaf .

Since the arms that I needed to make the base for are offset .

I figured it would be easier just to mark and cut all of my pieces in place .

And I made sure to be generous and take the line with my cuts .

That way , there would be plenty of wiggle room for that extension to be able to slide out and be able to put back in easily .

I use scrap wood as riser blocks so that the base would be flush with the extension .

This whole process was pretty fun and something new for me to try throughout this bus series .

I've been stacking plywood to make furniture and built ins way more than I typically do .

It really opens up some doors to make some creative pieces without a lot of tools .

I'm pretty much always on a quest to make use of any scrap materials I can , especially since I've got all of this radiat of pine plywood laying around .

And I was fortunate enough to have these two pieces that made the perfect leg blank .

I use my circular saw and a straight edge to trim all of my edges square using the first edge as my reference for all the others attaching this leg was easy because I had those stacked layers of plywood square on the ends .

I used more of those long trim head screws that you see me using all the time .

And I came back with some dap wood filler to fill in any of those screw head recesses or anywhere that I had nail heads that I needed to cover up .

This natural color is the best that I've ever used .

Links are down in the description along with all the other tools , materials and supplies for this project .

My favorite thing about using the circular saw to trim the laminate in the plywood is that I have an almost finished ready edge right from the saw .

I just use a little bit of 220 grit sandpaper to smooth everything out .

I almost feel like I shouldn't say it , but that's super pro come on just like on the rest of these bus episodes .

I added some one by three trim to the top of the plywood half walls before I installed the countertops for this office set up at this point .

I was grateful that everything installed smoothly and the extension leaf worked great perfect on the opposite side of this living room .

I'm gonna be creating a diy sleeper sofa .

I did a little bit of digging online and I found this futon for just about $200 .

I figured this would be a great solution to build a sofa around because it's already got the futon mechanisms and the upholstery done .

Not to mention you can buy one of these for way cheaper than you can get custom upholstery done .

So this is gonna be a fun diy .

The main reason I'm doing this is because I want to hide the wheel well underneath the sofa .

I just don't think it would look good and I also need to raise this entire platform up .

Now , the easiest route would just be to build a really simple platform for this sofa , but I'm gonna go the extra mile , do it .

The modern builds way and build the best sofa I can out of this futon , let's do it .

The wheel wells are right about nine inches tall at their highest point .

So I made sure I had about 9.5 inch clearance between my platform and the floor on the sofa I built otherwise I would have cut my legs to be about eight inches tall .

The back leg for this sofa is glued up out of two layers of three quarter inch plywood .

The front layer is also two layers of the same plywood , but they won't be glued together .

This is gonna allow everything to slide .

The platform that I'm making is going to be the exact same size as the base for the futon that I built .

It's going to be made up of two sections that slide together using these slats as guides .

It was really important that I kept my 12 inch speed square with me .

That way I installed all of my slats and pieces square and straight .

It was also really important that I kept track of what I was gluing and screwing together .

These eight inch spacers that I used between my boards allowed enough wiggle room for everything to slide .

But if I built this project again , I would have used half inch spacers instead , regardless .

Now you can see how everything works together .

The legs were cut to the exact same length as the rest of the platform .

So installing these was a matter of just lining everything up and screwing it together .

I effectively made data grooves in my plywood base by stacking up layers of plywood sandwiching the back leg in place .

I basically did the same steps for the front leg , but I just made sure not to attach my two legs together , as I mentioned earlier , just be really careful where you're applying glue so that you don't accidentally make it to where your frame can't slide in this leg assembly .

The front piece attaches to the sliding portion of the base while the back piece of the front leg attaches to the stationary part .

This allows them to slide apart and nest back together and no one is the wiser .

I would have used the original arms of the sofa .

I really liked that they were upholstered , but unfortunately , they didn't extend all the way to the back of the platform which created a weird negative space between the back of the sofa and the wall .

To be honest , though , I was not bummed at all .

I've been wanting to make a plywood side sofa for a long time with this little detail that follows the back profile of the cushions .

And I know this little 30 degree cut isn't anything crazy , but it's a small , simple detail that does enough to make this piece more unique .

And once I had my two sides attached with a lot of wood glue and a few more screws , I could test the futon and make sure that it actually fits into the frame .

Then once I had it in place , I attached the sliding portion of the frame onto that futon base .

And now you can see how our front legs are able to separate with the sofa , allowing the back to lay down into a sleeper .

Overall , this went great and I was excited to see it work as well as it did .

And now it was time to do a little bit of alterations to the frames that I could fit around the wheel .

Well , if I realized how difficult .

It would have been to make this jigsaw cut before I made the frame , I would have cut these legs to fit .

Unfortunately , I just didn't think of it but I was able to make everything work out in the end .

Perfect fit and it hides the wheel .

Well , I didn't have very much room to work inside the bus , but I was able to scoot the front of the sofa in place .

Oh .

oh man , we right on the head .

And after dropping my camera , I was able to get the futon where it was supposed to be .

And with that , this living room is complete .

So nothing too crazy in this space functionality really is the name of the game .

I wanted to be sure that I had plenty of flex space for hanging out and working .

The sofa is great for this .

It looks good and is comfortable .

Plus it's great to have room for an extra person to sleep .

There is a cool theme running through this living room though and that's that everything moves or is multi purpose for the majority of the time .

I think the 16 inch table on the opposite wall will be fine , but it will be really nice to get that extending leaf so that the table can extend past the wheel well , when it needs to .

So this is going to be the final interior build out episode of this series .

We've still got to paint the outside and install all the septic and holding tanks underneath .

But aside from that , I'm going to be repainting these floors just to make everything look nice and adding a few personal touches throughout the space .

Eventually I'll be doing a full school bus , tiny house tour video live on this channel .

So make sure and click the subscribe button down below .

Aside from that , make sure and follow me on Instagram at modern builds so you can keep up with me between videos and until next time this has been modern builds .

Bye everybody .

Easy to drive .