Jesus, give back the wheel.

Reddit user TheChristopherStoll and his girlfriend Tori devoted over three months to transforming a 1988 bus they found on Craigslist—labeled “Christ’s Corral”—into a cozy couple’s retreat on wheels.

“When we found it,” TheChristopherStoll shares in his original post, “the bus was full of rust, rat crap, and bird nests… The engine hadn’t been started in months. And the electrical systems weren’t working.”

Undeterred, Christopher and Tori saw potential in the clerical camper.

“So naturally,” he continues in his post, “we bought it outright for a little over $1,000 and took it straight home (despite never having driven a bus before).”

Christopher and Tori are both artists working on developing a “fantasy-art” bestiary of “female myths and monsters.”

So they had no trouble picturing what their new dream vehicle would look like with a little imagination:

Unfortunately, the nearly 30-year-old bus required a lot of help, and the major repairs it required ballooned the initial sticker price several times over.

The biggest upfront cost? $3500 to replace the transmission, which didn’t even touch Stoll’s long list of other much-needed fixes.

But over the course of the next few months, Christopher and Tori gave the bus—which had leaky hoses, corroded wires, and unchanged filters from the late ’90s—a complete makeover.

From this:

To this:

After stripping the interior of its uncomfortable, pew-like seats—and installing wiring, plumbing, flooring, paint, and furniture—the church bus looked pretty homey.

But before taking it on the road, Stoll had to build an entire solar power system—with (correctly configured) batteries charged by panels on the roof:

“The bus still runs on diesel and has its own automotive batteries and alternator,” Stoll explains in a comment, “but the panels run all of our appliances, fridge, laptops, toilet fan, and other miscellaneous chargeable items.”

And if you’re curious how the couple expels their holy ghosts while on the road, well, they’ve got special equipment:

“It’s actually a Nature’s Head compost toilet, so no black-water tanks or poop pipes necessary,” Stoll writes of his mobile throne—which sits behind the driver’s seat, prompting some users to criticize his description of the bus as a “luxury” vehicle.

“We didn’t have a curtain when we first finished the bus,” Stoll comments in defense of his toilet, “but we’ve since added one for privacy’s sake. The area is very well ventilated, so no odor problems so far after a few weeks of use.”

Many redditors also questioned the shift towards van-dwelling as a cost-effective measure for the couple, noting the mounting expenses they incurred during the repairs.

In response, Stoll offered this comparison:

“The cheapest RV’s we found were in the 20 to 30 thousand dollar range,” he writes, “and some of those weren’t even in working order. This bus cost us less than 10K in total, and we were able to really personalize it.”

Plus, Stoll’s estimate doesn’t account for the unparalleled satisfaction of reviving a junkyard-bound vehicle:

“With a little love,” he shares in his post, “the bus stopped smoking, spurting fluids, and screaming when we started it. These old school buses are built like tanks, they’ll run forever if you keep them happy.”

Check out the full gallery of photos Stoll shared with Reddit’s DIY community. You can learn more about the brave, van-dwelling couple’s latest book, The Feminonicon, on their Kickstarter page. (And if you have lingering questions about self-contained composting toilets, you can explore the official RV section of the Nature’s Head website.)