Rolling Homes | 4 Reasons We Hired a Skoolie Builder

We already talked about why our skooly was our top choice out of all the rolling homes.  In the skoolie world, most people seem to opt for the DIY option.  We considered it, but for several reasons we decided to hire a skoolie builder to make our dreams a reality.  The other option was to buy an already converted skoolie, but after a few weeks of searching this option seemed like the more expensive choice.  Here are some of the factors that led us to this decision.

We Thought it Would be Faster

As I wrote that section title, I laughed out loud.  The key word is ‘thought’.  I’m not sure that is true at this point.  Check out our Skoolie Build Timeline post to see everything that delayed the process.  We had just finished Cecilia the Shasta and we never imagined that little 10 foot trailer would take as much time as it did.  Even things like figuring out how to hide the portable air conditioner (read about that here) were time consuming because it had to be customized for the space.  We knew the skoolie would be the same way.

We Didn’t Have Space to Build the Skoolie

When we begin this journey, we lived in this house and that house was in an HOA.  A couple of years ago, they threatened to turn us into the city because of a 8 foot trailer hiding beside our house.  They wanted us to get it out of the grass and park that little trailer in our driveway for all to see because that made the neighborhood look nicer.  It didn’t.  Can you imagine what they would have thought if we pulled a school bus in front of the house?

We did find a place to do the demo work, but it was an hour out of town.  Spending weekends driving back and forth would have been a pain for the entire build.

Cheapest of the Rolling Homes

I’m not giving out totals until everything is done.  I will say, he came in cheaper than some of the more well known skoolie builders.  There are some things we are going to finish ourselves and he had some limitations in what he was either willing or able to do.  More on that later.  This was an affordable option for us.  We could hire someone to do the work and still own our home outright when it was finished.  As mentioned here, affordability was key to us.

Focus on Learning to Build Income Instead

When we first decided to live the skoolie life, we realized very fast we either needed to hire a skoolie builder or we needed to spend a lot of time on YouTube learning how to build our skoolie.  We also needed to learn how to build income on the road since neither of us were in professions where that was really a possibility.  We opted to turn our focus toward building income online.  I published a travel journal, built two web sites, and learned how to make money through our Instagram account.  We knew we couldn’t divide our time between building business and learning the ins and outs of how these rolling homes are put together.

Have you looking into different rolling homes?  Would you build one yourself or hire it out to a pro?  Comment below!