When I first met my husband I was only seventeen, he was twenty-two and his parents had just bought a new home a few years before. The single wide mobile home they used to live in was offered to him. Of course as a young bachelor he took the opportunity to be on his own with little rent. So they split the piece of land they owned and signed over half to him. He spent about a year making the inside of the mobile home look new, and it did. New carpet, new paint, new kitchen and bath flooring. The outside, however, still looked pretty rough. For a bachelor pad, though, it was just what he needed.
Then along I came, haha. We moved pretty fast in our relationship. Within a month of dating, I had moved in. Within three months, we found out we were pregnant with our first son. A year later we were married, and then along came number two. Here we are happy as ever, but still living in the same mobile home! There is some reasoning behind it, however.
My husband is the cheapest man alive. Sometimes it's a good thing, he can make something wonderful out of nothing. Sometimes it's just frustrating, like when trying to buy a house! After our first son started crawling, we realized quickly how small our home was. We started looking at houses and were just flabbergasted at how much we would have to pay a month! After all, once our son came along, his parents stopped charging us rent, so all we were paying was utilities, cable and internet. It just seemed outrageous to spend over one thousand dollars a month for a house, when we have one free! So then we started looking at double wide mobile homes. Not exactly what we were hoping for, but it could just be a starter home. What a rip off! We could buy a small older home for what they were charging for these double wides, and on top of that, they were built HORRIBLY!
So we gave up for a while, thinking we were just doomed to stay in our old beat up single wide forever. We looked into building our own home for a while, since my husband is kind of a "jack of all trades." We could afford it, but my husband worked full time, and wouldn't have enough time off to get it done. One day were talking about how much better our 1982 single was built than the doublewides, and an idea hit us! Why don't we just build on to our single wide! See, our mobile home has plywood floors. So even though it's almost thirty years old, there isn't one spot that is weak or squeaky. The new double wides and even the new houses put OSB, which bubbles and deforms when it gets wet. Why in the world would you use it on ANYTHING that could possibly be exposed to water, much less a floor! Think about how much water your kids spash onto the bathroom floor everytime they take a bath, all the drinks that are spilled. Unless you spend the extra money to have some kind of water tight flooring like tile, it's going to seep into the OSB and bubble up. There were many other things, that I'm not going into right now that were better on our single wide than in the new double wides.
So, on we went to find out if we could even do this, and if so, what permits were needed. We got all of that squared away and started with a renovation permit for the mobile home itself and got started! We've been working on it since December of 2009, so I'll give you a quick catchup. So here is the official before picture...
Pretty trashy, hugh? hehe. So we started by ripping off the roof. reinforcing it and putting some shingles on. Then we took off the horrible metal siding, replaced insulation, put up the OSB and then housewrapped everything. We moved the front door, replaced windows where we will need them. (rooms will later be moved around inside) and built a porch. The windows, by the way, are the awesome windows that fold in for easy cleaning! I loooove them sooo much hehe. The hubby got an awesome deal on them, and the beautiful front door on craigslist. He got all four windows for $220.00. The front door has the small windows on the side, we got that door plus another one just like it we will use as the back door for $250.00. We then painted the porch white and stained the deck and steps....
Then we put up some beautiful siding! ( I was very excited for this hehe)
And that's where we are now! I couldn't believe the difference! Our plans are to replace the insulation underneath, stucco around the bottom. (instead of skirting) Then we will start building the addition. The plans at the moment (they change so much) are to build an addition that will be our kitchen, dining room, laundry room/ pantry/ back entry, livingroom, and office. Once that is complete we will be pow wowing in the addition while we rearrange rooms in the mobile home hehe. The mobile home will be two bedrooms, and bathroom, a foyer leading to the addition and a master bedroom and a big ole master bathroom!
So keep checking back and I'll show you the fun progress as it happens! Thanks for reading!
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