Budget Breakdown: A DIY Couple Turn a Bus Into a Dreamy, Off-Grid Home for $20K

After saving up for several years, Timothy and Meryl Miller outfit a school bus for a cross-country road trip, tackling the work on the streets of Brooklyn.

In 2014, Timothy Miller stumbled across a blog called Hank Bought a Bus, which chronicled an architecture student’s—the titular Hank’s— conversion of a bus, which sparked inspiration for his own project. At the time, however, he and his wife Meryl had just graduated college and were living in West Philadelphia. "We just didn’t have the funds," says Meryl.

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Melissa Dalton
Dwell Contributor
Melissa Dalton is a freelance writer in Portland, Oregon, who has been writing for Dwell since 2017. Read more of her work about design and architecture at melissadalton.net.