This is a long story to start... but I will tell it all for posterity.
Alot of you already know with my losing my garage post, that I decided that I didn't want my life to be 27 more years of struggling with a mortgage I could barely afford, so I started to plan out a new life. The idea is to buy 2-5 acres of heavily wooded land that is close enough to work to drive there every day and far enough out where I can afford it. I found the land, but I need somewhere to live and can't afford to build a house while I am still living in my current house so I love my Teardrop and have always loved RVs so I thought I could live in a 5th wheel while I build an A-frame. This idea lasted a couple months until the logistics or storing my entire life away proved not to my liking and very expensive.
So on a whim I started looking at mobile homes just to see what was out there, and when I did a search in my area and when I sorted by price the very cheapest one on the site had been listed just a couple days before and was only $7500. I was thinking man what could this plastic and cardboard piece of crap look like!!! So I opened it up and was blown away. It was for sale for double the month before but he cut the price in half because he was getting transferred to CA and the house was sitting unoccupied for a year and he just wanted to get out from under all his debt since the park rental was $400/month. The photos showed the totally remodeled kitchen and bath, along with a woodgrain exterior and a nice covered deck:
Well this certainly peaked my interest. I went to look at it that night and the rest of the place was just your usual old trailer stuff, white panel walls and nasty carpet and unfinished floors. After looking at it, I knew that what did it take to fix up an empty room? Paint and flooring, that's it. All the hard and expensive stuff was already done. So I called him the next day to look at it again in the day and even though the kitchen was painted porno star colors, I thought hey I'm a porno star!!! (Just kidding)... Actually I just liked that it was fresh and clean looking and I could repaint later, so I told him I wanted it for sure, and he promised it to me, two hours later an investor offered him $11k on the spot and he said no, it was already sold, I thought that was pretty cool.
My sister fronted me the cash to buy it cash outright and I will have it PAID OFF in two years. It is a major step down from my $100k beautiful house but "Paid off" sounds pretty dang good, not to mention my current house was too family style for me anyway, I want to live somewhere cool and with my personality. The fact that I HAD to paint and replace the flooring anyway, gave me an empty pallet to paint on!
So that was my birthday Jan 21st of this year, Happy Birthday to me! I have been working on it and painting ever since. I am almost to the end and ready to move in a couple weeks.
Here is the beginning of my "Build"... You must start with an inspiration and since this will be sitting in the woods as soon as possible, I wanted it to be very similar to my teardrop which is earth tones and lots of wood grain. I found this paint sample card at the blue box store:
That was IT. I timed this event to coincide with my yearly bonus so I had some extra $$$ to fix up the place. I bought the paint I wanted, didn't even look at the price. I had always wanted to do two colors with a chair rail, so this was my chance. I took this living room, I am SOO glad they left the cool wood cieling:
And turned it to this with the carpet just laid in place, it will be installed in a few days:
Here is a closeup of the walls with the stained chair rail:
I wanted to frame out the vents to give them extra stability, Just like with a teardrop, it is still scary cutting through your floor!
Next, I put a new subfloor over the old one to match the kitchen:
Then this past weekend, me and a friend have been installing the Laminate wood flooring in the entryway, kitchen and hallway:
I just received my seven 2" slat wood blinds for all the windows today! So they will be going in tomorrow and the carpet will be whenever I can find the time, and then I am moving in!!!
