money Coast Guard Vet Craig Gordnier converted a 1999 school bus to a mobile home in 200 days
COVID-19 hit and Coast Guard veteran Craig Gordnier saw an opportunity to convert a 1999 Blue Bird school bus into a mobile home. The transformation happened in 200 days.
Video Transcript
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CRAIG GORDNIER: COVID hit last year and sent me home, back to my parents' house at 27 years old. I was all in on this business deal that did not go through. So I went home, got on my parents' couch, and I was polishing up my resume, getting ready to apply for jobs. And you know that defeated feeling. And it gave me a chance to reassess.
When looking at my whole life from, like, the zoomed out perspective, I was just going to get a job, save money, get a 401(k). And then eventually, I was going to turn 65 and then get an RV and go see the world. So I was like, I'm-- I'm just going to cut 40 years out of this plan.
I saw on Instagram and TikTok, there were people converting, like, vans and school buses over into, like, really beautiful houses. And I was like, I can do that. I could definitely do that.
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Returning to Massachusetts, the first week of May, I was fully moved in and leaving Massachusetts in the finished bus the day after Thanksgiving. It was 200 days flat.
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This fireplace and the espresso bar together probably cost more than everything in the rest of the entire inside of this bus. The idea was literally born because of the pandemic. And I built it, you know, right in the heart of the whole COVID.
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I had not realized the outpouring of support that I was going to get from, like, the internet when it was done. I just built it, and I did my best, and it was so crazy. So when I left home, I had like 800 followers on Instagram. And then 80 days later, I had, like, 20,600.
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I think that anybody who wants to do this, like, my advice is you just consistently go for it. It's like the stutter stepping that you do before you make a decision is what makes the whole decision difficult. I knew that if I bought the bus and got it home, it would force me to have to build it.
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