Months before we bought the bus, we had begun planning, sketching, and imagining what Brie might look like. Some things were hard to plan for because we didn't have the exact measurements, but we took some educated guesses. The vast majority of buses are 7'5" wide and we knew we wanted a short bus that was a maximum 24' long. When you subtract the engine bay and the driver's area, you're left with about 12-14' of living space. However, we still didn't know the exact length of the living space behind the driver's seat, the dimensions and locations of the windows, internal height, and a few other important things.

Even though we were missing a lot of important information, we made a list of key features we knew we might want:

• sleeping area with storage underneath for water tanks, hiking/backpacking gear, tools, etc.

• a toilet "room" for a composting toilet and medicine/toiletries cabinet

• kitchen area with a sink and enough counter space to cook, perhaps a small stove top/oven combo, and plenty of storage for dry goods and spices

• sofa large enough to sleep on when we have guests, storage under the sofa, and perhaps a modular design of the sofa so the middle cushion could pull out to make room for a table

• shelves above the kitchen counter and above the sofa

• a rooftop deck for hammocks, dancing, and sunset watching

• solar panels mounted onto the roof for off-grid capabilities

With these features in mind, Ana grabbed some graph paper and began sketching out some ideas. She watched a few dozen skoolie tour videos, scoured Instagram and skoolie websites, sketched out some more plans, and then watched more videos (this project would not be possible without YouTube or skoolie forums). Ana also used Sketchup to try to visualize what the bus might look like in 3D, but we decided not to get too far ahead of ourselves before we even bought a bus.