Veteran spends 6 months turning an old school bus into a modern studio apartment on wheels, complete with a fireplace and rainfall shower

Gordnier was living with his brother and applying to jobs when the coronavirus pandemic hit. Before that, Gordnier had spent eight years serving in the US Coast Guard.

"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 told Insider.

"So now it was like, 'okay, we're rebuilding from absolute zero,'" he added.

Despite the setback, Gordnier set a goal for himself to still try to find a job and save money so that one day he could retire with enough to be able to travel the US in an RV. But during that job hunt, he decided to speed up the process just a little.

"I realized, in that moment, that I could cut 40 years out of that plan and just get the RV now," Gordnier told Insider.

He said that his time in the Coast Guard inspired him to take the plunge.

"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."

Gordnier said that he bought the bus partially-renovated from a man in South Dakota who had worked on the roof raise (which involves adding height to a home, sometimes by making the walls taller or altering the ceiling) and installed the spray foam insulation before being unable to finish the conversion.

Gordnier took over from that point and turned it into his home with help from his father, grandfather, and a few family friends "who have experience in welding."

The process took "long, brutal" hours in the summer heat. Gordnier advises that people looking to take the plunge into van life should be as excited about the process of building the mobile home as they are about living in it because manual labor comes first (unless you're buying a mobile home that's already renovated).

He said that he found it "liberating" to free himself of clutter.

Gordnier fully embraced the minimalist lifestyle — he doesn't have a storage locker and everything he owns is kept in the bus with him.

"Just because houses have rooms does not mean that a bus needs to have rooms," Gordnier told Insider.

As soon as you step inside, you can see all the way to the back of the bus. He believes that this design choice adds space to the bus and makes it seem a lot bigger.

"It feels like a mansion on wheels," he added.

He told Insider that he loves how the original driver's seat, steering wheel, and floor from 1999 contrast with the rest of the modern decor of the home.

The countertop was a DIY project that cost Gordnier about $120 to put together. He used two pieces of 3/4-inch plywood that he glued and screwed together before sanding down and rounding the edges.

He then used epoxy to give it a marble countertop finish. A TikTok user went viral on social media in December for creating a similar DIY marble countertop in their kitchen.

The kitchen also has a propane stove, a stainless-steel fridge, and an espresso machine.

The fireplace has a plywood hearth and is located about a foot-and-a-half off the ground. Gordnier uses this extra space below the fireplace as storage. This multi-color fireplace is also the home's main source of heat in cold months.

Attached to the fireplace is a coffee table on hinges that you can either stow away or expand into a table, depending on what you need.

One of the home's most modern touches is a white "brick" wall that's actually made out of foam behind the fireplace. Gordnier wanted this wall to "pop" and have an "upscale New York City penthouse vibe." However, he couldn't use real bricks because he had to be mindful of the weight they would add to the bus.

So, he came up with a workaround and used 1-inch thick foam that is textured and painted to make it look like bricks.

The couch can slide out and transform into a queen-sized bed for guests. The bus batteries and electrical systems are hidden behind the couch.

The solitary wall in the bus separates the bathroom area from the bedroom.

The bed sitting on a slightly-raised platform offers two advantages, according to Gordnier: extra storage space and an "unbelievable, full view" of stars at night through the skylight.

The home's water tanks are stored under this bed, where there's also a dresser with Gordnier's clothes. When you access the room from the back of the bus, there's a "little garage area" with additional storage.

The bathroom also has a sink with a vanity mirror and a three-drawer medicine cabinet that stores all of Gordnier's toiletries.

So far, he has snowboarding in Idaho and road-tripping through Tennessee, Texas, and Arizona on his list of things to do and places he'd like to visit in his new home.

While he has a long to-do list, his life in a mobile home is off to a great start.

"The craziest thing you'll realize is that by living in a small space and having way less stuff, [you have less of] all of the little monotonous things that rob your day one penny at a time, like cleaning or laundry or dishes," Gordnier told Insider. "You have so much more time to just be doing what you want."