Before and After: A Bus Turned Incredible Tiny House

Written by

Adrienne BreauxHouse Tour Director at AT Media
Adrienne BreauxHouse Tour Director at AT Media
For more than 10 years, I've led Apartment Therapy's real home content, producing thousands of house tours from around the world. Currently, I live in my maximalist dream home in New Orleans, Louisiana, with my partner, a perfect dog, and a cute cat.
published Aug 1, 2018
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(Image credit: Kai Branss )

Kai and Julie are the kind of adventurous couple to take a risk. While walking to get coffee in their Berlin neighborhood, they came across this bus for sale—and bought it the next day. According to Kai, these sorts of buses aren’t commonly found in their area. Not to mention the couple didn’t know anything about converting a bus when they made the purchase. But now, some months later, all their hard work and research has resulted in a beautiful, cozy, custom home—on wheels!

(Image credit: Kai Branss )
(Image credit: Kai Branss )

“We had the Tiny House idea in our heads for quite some time, but there was always the problem of where to put it; we didn’t want to be stationary. The bus gives us the best of both worlds,” Kai wrote in their house tour.

(Image credit: Kai Branss )
(Image credit: Kai Branss )

“We stripped the bus down to the bare metal and started the conversion from ground up,” Kay says. “Having a blank canvas is a great way to start a conversion like that, and it’s the toughest.” Kai confesses that they didn’t have an overall plan for what they were going to do to the blank bus canvas, but they did know the two elements that were most important to them: “Since sleeping comfortably is key and cooking is just as important to us, we made the whole layout favoring these two key elements.”

(Image credit: Kai Branss )
(Image credit: Kai Branss )

A lot of the aesthetic coziness of the small bus comes from all the warm wood that Kai and Julie installed—almost all of it reclaimed. Some of the wood is from loft floors in Berlin, while some came from broken-down vegetable boxes.

(Image credit: Kai Branss )
(Image credit: Kai Branss )

“We are totally proud of what we have achieved together and spending time in our bus is priceless.”

Thank you Kai and Julie!