At Just 18, She Bought an Empty Bus – Two Years Later, It’s Her Dream Home

At an age when many people are preparing for university, Emma Maertens chose a very different path. On November 22, 2022, the then-18-year-old bought an empty 2006 Toyota Coaster with plans to turn it into her dream home on wheels and travel around Australia.

Named Bliss, the bus took more than two years to complete. The project consumed Emma’s savings, required her to work several jobs, and demanded an extraordinary amount of patience. Today, however, it is a warm, practical, and impressively self-sufficient tiny home in which she travels solo, with her dog, Miley, as co-pilot.

For Emma, bus life was never simply about owning an unusual home. It offered the freedom to see Australia while creating a space designed entirely around her lifestyle.

“I did not begin with enough money to buy and fully convert a bus,” she explains. “I began with a dream and worked towards making it happen.”

Choosing a Bus Over a Van

Emma spent eight months searching for the right vehicle. She could have bought a Mercedes Sprinter or Toyota HiAce much sooner, but knew a van would feel too small for full-time living. The Coaster gave her room for a proper kitchen, permanent double bed, dining area, wardrobe, abundant storage, and everything needed for extended off-grid travel.

Buying the bus emptied her savings account, but Emma preferred that to going into debt. She had worked since she was 15, babysitting, teaching sailing, and managing social-media accounts. During the conversion, she sometimes worked four jobs, alternating between earning money and buying the next round of materials.

The workload eventually left her burnt out, and she would not recommend pushing quite so hard. Still, she paid for the entire project herself, proving that being young did not mean she was unwilling to work for what she wanted.

A Two-Year Family Conversion

Work began almost immediately. Emma and her younger sister stripped the bus, saving old pieces to use as templates. Demolition proved more difficult than expected: stubborn glue covered the ceiling, and the floor was so firmly attached that they needed a car jack to remove parts of it. The roof also concealed extensive rust, which Emma cleaned, treated, and repainted before solar panels covered the area.

The original floor was replaced with plywood, while sound deadening and insulation were added overhead. Weight was a constant concern, so every material and fitting had to be considered carefully. Water tanks were mounted beneath the vehicle, and Emma’s father removed the old coolant system to save precious kilograms.

Although Emma financed the build, Bliss became a family undertaking. Her sisters helped with demolition, painting, and IKEA assembly; her brother worked on the bed and skylight; and her mother filmed parts of the process and assembled cabinets. At the centre of the project was Emma’s father, an automotive engineer and keen woodworker who had never converted a bus before.

Using YouTube, research, and ingenuity, he designed and built much of the interior and completed the water plumbing. Emma describes herself as the person who paid for everything and her father as “the brains and the builder behind it.”

Progress was painfully slow. It took around five months just to arrange the professional gas and hot-water installation. After roughly a year and a half, Emma was still paying registration and insurance on what appeared to be an unusable metal shell. The lack of visible progress became one of the most mentally difficult parts of the project.

Eventually, her father returned to the build full-time after losing his job. Having worked for 20 years, he could have taken a holiday. Instead, he spent months helping Emma complete her home.

As for the most anticipated question: how much did the conversion cost? Emma prefers not to reveal the exact figure, mainly for security reasons. She doesn’t want to travel around Australia with strangers knowing the value of everything inside her bus. However, she explains that a beautiful Toyota Coaster conversion can cost as little as AU$15,000, excluding the vehicle, while some builds reach AU$150,000. Her own conversion falls somewhere between those two figures, made possible by working several jobs throughout the build.

A Warm, Timber-Lined Interior

One of Bliss’s defining features is its ceiling, clad in more than $2,000 worth of prefinished Australian native timber. Because almost nothing inside a bus is straight, the family repeatedly made cardboard templates to match its curves.

Seven 12-volt LED lights are set into the timber ceiling. At night, Emma prefers fairy lights and a small amber lamp because she finds bright overhead lighting ruins the atmosphere. During the day, the Coaster’s many windows fill the home with natural light.

A large skylight above the rear sleeping area adds even more daylight, improves ventilation, and allows Emma to look at the stars from bed. Installing it was one of the hardest jobs because her father had to construct a custom frame for the curved roof and carefully seal the opening. Complete with a blackout blind and fly screen, it remains one of Emma’s favourite features.

A Kitchen Made for Real Cooking

The kitchen was Emma’s greatest priority. She works in recipe development and loves cooking, so she wanted something closer to a small apartment kitchen than a minimal campervan galley.

There is enough laminate worktop for two people to prepare food comfortably, along with power points and USB sockets. A two-burner Thetford gas stove fits two large pots, while the sink has running hot water supplied by a 12-volt pump. An instantaneous gas system produces hot water in about ten seconds.

Emma originally considered a conventional tiled backsplash but rejected it because of the weight and risk of cracking on dirt roads. Lightweight peel-and-stick tiles offered a far more practical and affordable alternative.

Most of the kitchen came from IKEA, although the cabinets could not simply stand on ordinary legs inside a moving vehicle. Emma’s father built a heavily glued and screwed timber frame to anchor them securely. He also designed deep overhead cabinets with ledges to prevent their contents from falling out.

Drawers hold pots, pantry supplies, spices, chopping boards, tableware, cutlery, bins, and even the dish-drying rack. Non-slip mats keep everything in place, while magnetic baby locks prevent the drawers from opening on the road. Emma learned the importance of proper locks in Tasmania, when earlier fastenings failed and several drawers flew open.

At the end of the kitchen is a 190-litre Bushman fridge-freezer. Some questioned why a solo traveller needed such a large appliance, but food can be limited and expensive between Australia’s cities. The full-size fridge allows Emma to stock up for weeks and remain off-grid for longer.

Beside it, she transformed an IKEA fridge cabinet into a wardrobe, matching the heights of the two units and adding gold handles that continue the kitchen’s design.

A Permanent Bed and Storage Everywhere

At the back of Bliss is a permanent double bed built with lightweight IKEA beams and slats. The system cost less than $200 and created a huge storage area underneath. Emma’s portable toilet is also concealed below the bed behind a timber-clad door. However, she has never needed to use it because public toilets are so readily available throughout Australia, and she admits that she dreads the thought of having to empty it.

Opposite the kitchen, her father built two seats around an adjustable table. The table can be lowered to turn the dining space into a lounge, while storage is hidden inside both benches. Although Emma expected to travel alone, she wanted a second seat and double bed so a friend or family member could join her comfortably.

More custom storage sits at the front, including individual shoe slots and clothing compartments. Maximising storage was a guiding principle throughout the conversion, allowing Emma to carry everything she needs without cluttering the living space.

The only resident without a dedicated area is her dog, Miley. Her crate and bed currently sit in the aisle when Bliss is parked. Emma now wishes she had created a small pet nook beneath the bed, but Miley seems perfectly happy,and will spend much of her travelling life outdoors.

Why Bliss Has No Indoor Bathroom

Despite the bus’s size, Emma deliberately omitted an enclosed bathroom. Bliss still has a portable toilet, hot water, and an outdoor shower, but an indoor cubicle would have divided the interior, added weight, and used precious tank water.

The bus carries 180 litres of fresh water in three 60-litre tanks, plus a 50-litre grey-water tank. Emma usually swims or surfs before showering outdoors in her bathers, occasionally using campground facilities when she wants a long shower. In practice, she has never used the portable toilet because public and drop toilets are widely available at Australian campsites.

Air conditioning was excluded for similar reasons: operating it off-grid would have required a far more expensive electrical system. Instead, tinted windows, blackout curtains, roof and Sirocco fans, and natural ventilation keep the interior comfortable. Emma usually spends the hottest part of the day outside at the beach, which is the point of bus life for her.

Built for Off-Grid Travel

The long construction delays gave Emma time to save for an approximately $10,000 solar system with multiple panels, a substantial battery bank, an inverter, and the full-size fridge. The setup allows her to remain off-grid indefinitely, and her batteries rarely drop below 80 percent.

A shore-power connection means she can use higher-draw appliances at campgrounds. Gas handles cooking and hot water and has proved remarkably economical: after several shorter trips and three months in Tasmania, Emma had barely used one 4.5-kilogram bottle.

Bliss itself consumes around 16 to 18 litres of fuel per 100 kilometres, but Emma never bought it for fuel efficiency. The bus takes her to extraordinary places, while her other ongoing expenses remain relatively low.

More Than a Home

Before starting the conversion, Emma was extremely shy and reluctant even to make phone calls. Building Bliss forced her to contact tradespeople, request quotations, ask for advice, and solve unfamiliar problems. Driving the enormous bus around Australia, despite standing only 5 feet 2 inches tall, strengthened her confidence even further.

People often questioned why she built a bus instead of attending university. Emma believes the project gave her a different kind of education, teaching her about construction, budgeting, persistence, problem-solving, and herself.

The conversion was so demanding that Emma says she would never voluntarily build another bus. Yet if she could start again, she would make the same choice.

Bliss took more than two years, several jobs, and the combined effort of a remarkably supportive family. The result is exactly the home Emma imagined: spacious enough for comfortable daily life, self-sufficient enough for remote adventures, and small enough to carry her around Australia.

“Do not allow other people’s fears to keep your world small,” she says. “Go out, see the world, be sensible and smart, and you can have the time of your life.”

Join Emma and Miley as they take Bliss on the road and explore Australia, one adventure at a time, by following their journey on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.