Twenty-eight-year-old Craig Gordinier had a choice.

He could either continue living on his parent’s couch or live on a school bus. Naturally, he chose the school bus and is now living out his dreams in a gorgeous home on wheels.

Gordinier served in US Coast Guard for 8 years but upon leaving the service, things weren’t easy.

“After a failed business deal at the very beginning of COVID last year, I ended up, at 27 years old, home on my parent’s couch starting fresh again,” he tells Rachel Ray, according to Yahoo! News.

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Craig has trouble finding employment due to the pandemic.

Craig knew finding employment was going to be difficult due to the pandemic. He was running out of options.

“March, April, and May was just so difficult. Because of COVID, I knew I wasn’t going to find a job. The way that life was looking, I had everything taken from me,” he said to Insider.

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Craig had always wanted to travel across the country in an RV when he retired.

Living on his parent’s couch caused him to consider moving his retirement up a little to his 20s, however. He was influenced by someone he knew in the Coast Guard who saved money by living in a van.

“There was always that one guy who either lived in a van or in an RV who was saving a bunch of money,” he said. “I never really wanted to do it until last year when I started actually planning out my life and I got to the end and I realized how much I actually would like it.”

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Craig looks for a bus, van, or RV.

With no job or employment prospects, Craig set out to find a vehicle to live in.

“I started looking at sprinter vans and trailer and tiny homes and buses, and I finally found the perfect bus that was in South Dakota. I flew out there, and I bought the bus,” he explained.

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Imagine being Craig’s parents. You offer up your couch to your veteran son and he responds with “No thanks, I’m going to live on a bus!” Craig would later talk about his parents’ reaction to him purchasing the vehicle.

“And I had this amazing moment pulling in and seeing the look on my parents’ faces of me driving this big school bus,” he said.

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Turning the bus into a home.

Craig wasn’t just going to live on a bus, however, he was going to fix that thing up so it became a truly remarkable home on wheels. He pushed up the roof about 20 inches in his “living room” and decked out the lower storage area so there was room for his motorcycle.

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Craig has also outfitted the vehicle with skylights, a roof deck, and solar panels. Basically, the only thing that stayed the same was the driver’s seat area.

“I wanted to keep this history alive. And it’s just such a beautiful thing,” Craig explains.

Craig’s kitchen and bathrooms.

Most school buses don’t have kitchens or bathrooms but Craig’s does. He added a stainless steel sink, fridge, and freezer. He’s even got a 100-gallon freshwater tank so that he can have hot water on his bus. For cooking food, Craig uses a 3-burner propane cooktop, which he made himself.

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Craig even built himself a little espresso bar with a fold-out table. His bathroom comes complete with a shower and a rainfall showerhead. There really isn’t anything Craig is missing on this bus.

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“Just because houses have rooms does not mean that a bus needs to have rooms,” Gordnier told Insider. “It feels like a mansion on wheels.”

Craig’s initiative earned him a fun and affordable place to live.

See a tour in the video below!

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Source: The Rachael Ray Show/Insider