Travel Trailer Work

This is one of the photos the seller used when selling our trailer

Here is my photo, after I used 'Forest Floor' color  of paint to change it up. I have an off white to update the walls and I'm going to put up stick on sheets of plastic backsplash for around the sink area.

I have also painted the cupboards above the table but have no photos of it on my PC yet to share.

Have you ever painted inside a trailer? If so, what kind of paint did you use? 

 

Good & Bad News

Good News First:

We had the handyman over the other day to give us info on putting in a new bathroom upstairs; 

he said he can totally do all we want, for $65 per hour. He said what we're asking for will take about three 8 hour days so... about $1720 after tax.

Here is a very rough drawing of what its like now. I've never liked the Jack & Jill bathroom 

but its better than none & better than walking down the hall.

What we've been doing previously to having a room mate was our bed was in this room & our clothes were in the other room & we would go downstairs to shower & get dressed. We did that so the person sleeping wouldn't get woken up by the noise of the person getting ready for work.

The current bedroom measures 13.5 X 14.5 and the bathroom is 12.5 X 5, 

there are about 4 feet on either side of the window and the closets are 2 feet deep.

The future bedroom will measure 13.5 X 9.5 and the new bathroom will be 12.5 X 5, 

we'll need to install a smaller window and remove one closet.

We'll use the door & frame that goes from this room to the current bathroom & put it on the right, into the new opening made when we take out one closet. The remaining closet is still huge.

We're going to put in a new double vanity in the old bath & matching single in the new, both are getting rubber waterproof click in flooring & both get new toilets and fans.

See the green wall in the original bathroom? If its not a supporting wall, I'd like to remove it completely. All it does is hide the toilet from the sink area & it won't be needed. Removing it will make the bathroom bigger and provide a space for a dirty clothes hamper & scales.

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And Now The Bad News:

Our Septic Design guy told us we can't upgrade our gravity system & would HAVE to put in a completely new pump system at a cost of about $24,000.

That's OK, we didn't want to ruin the lawn and now we can concentrate on the bathrooms.

His name is Frank, a friend of a friend. He quoted us $1,400 for the design & permits, ALL the other companies I spoke with wanted $4,000-$6,000 for the same things. One of the companies was rude to me in an email so she's not getting my money. 

Well, neither is Frank, he's not charging us anything at all.

Promises Broken

I promised to write about England after France, then I didn't do it. I've been so busy, with work, holidays, shopping, more work. Seems every time I turn around I get called in for another shift.

We had a bid in early December for our winter season ( January 5th - March 15th) and I got a 36 hour selling shift. Sue & Lisa decided to go to Bainbridge and Joe made a bonehead mistake & faxed his bid upside down so I lucked out. Don't know how lucky I really am, since the first two days of each week will suck:
Sunday 8:05am-2:05pm
Monday 1:00pm-6:00pm
Tuesday & Wednesday OFF
Thursday midnight-9am
Friday midnight-9am
Saturday 8:25am-3:25pm
Beginning my work week with 2 graves sucks because I'll have to go to bed early on my days off in order to get up at 11:10pm but its guaranteed hours and winter schedule sucks for on-calls.

I HATE graveyards but getting a nice guaranteed paycheck every month for 3 months will be worth it.

We're planning on another home renovation which will include:
Septic Design upgrade from 2 bedroom to 4 bedrooms
Add another bathroom upstairs
Redo master bath upstairs, currently Jack & Jill bath.

This is into the bathroom from the other room, our current bedroom is on the other side of the far door. 

We will AT LEAST replace this dated cabinet, countertop & sinks with something pretty, maybe rustic. I'll be looking for a good used one and hope to find a good quartz countertop with 2 sinks. I'm sure I'll have to buy that new. We can add a nice back splash since we know how now.

I'd like a vanity like this, plain & simple

From our current room into the other bedroom, sinks on the right of this photo

We won't do anything to upgrade the tub/shower enclosure because its practically brand new. It needs a new fan as the old one is original to the house & has a red bulb meant to warm a person and the fan is LOUD. The sky light is awesome.

The floor is vinyl & we're going to get a plastic/rubber click in floating floor & just put it in right over the top of this. 

The new bathroom would be added beside this one, just reversed and instead of a tub we'll put in a standing shower. 

A new toilet is about $200 and I'd like to have a new one in each bathroom. 

I'd like a single pedestal sink in the new bathroom. We do have to figure out either a fan or small window & right now there will be enough room for a window beside the shower.

But I'll totally settle for a single vanity sink.

Our bedroom currently measures 14.5 x 13.5 feet, the new bathroom would take up 5.5 feet, leaving the bedroom 9.5 x 13.5, still plenty big enough for a kids bedroom. A doorway would be put in the wall where a closet is at, the closet would be removed. There is still another large closet in that room. The door that goes from the hallway to our room now would become the new bathroom door.

I don't think the carpet would have to be replaced, just cut down to size and the extra added to the new doorway. 

We would have to move into the other bedroom as we can't  use that room for the bathroom because of hallway doors & permanent walls. The door from our room into the jack & jill would be moved to the closet area so we wouldn't even have to purchase another door.

Its not going to be cheap, I'm figuring upwards of $10k. And while we're at it, we're going to get the septic tank upgraded to a 4 bedroom (currently 2 br) which could run an additional $10k if it all goes well. We can  only hope for that BUT doing these things will increase our homes value and make it a heck of a lot more sellable.

4 Days

Our vacation begins in 4 days.

4 days from now, Sunday, I'll be doing last minute things like giving the dogs belly rubs, ruffing up the kitties, making sure I have EVERYTHING I might possibly need on our trip. We catch the airport shuttle 5 miles down the road at 9:50am, arrive at airport at 11 and our flight leaves at 1:45pm.

We will arrive in London's Gatwick airport Monday morning at 7am and we'll be in London about 36 hours. 

Tuesday afternoon we fly out of Stanstead airport to Carcassonne, France, landing at 5:30pm. We have 2 nights prepaid in the south, then wherever we end up until we fly out again on the 15th.

On Wednesday the 16th, we fly from Heathrow airport north to Gateshead, where we will meet up with Michelle & Guy for a week.

On Tuesday 22nd, we fly once again, from Gateshead back to Heathrow. We'll have a 10 hour window to sightsee, then spending the night at BLOC hotel inside Gatwick airport.

Wednesday October 23 we fly back home and arrive in Seattle at 11:45am. We'll have a couple additional bags by then so will have to gather them, then catch the shuttle back to Purdy. That's going to be a LONG day.

Two Offers

Our home is officially on the market and today we made offers on two houses in Montana. 

The original one in St Regis that we both love and its perfect for what we want, 

and one in Plains that's close to what we want 

BUT its got a 24 unit storage facility that's part of the deal. 

That would make our house payment for us right there.

Our house & farm are on the MLS and 

FOR SALE

with an asking price of $629,950.00

Its a holiday weekend and its been on the MLS for 3 days and exactly ZERO people have come by to see it. That's a good thing because we're still completing projects.

We had never finished the stair treads with the hardwood flooring so realtor suggested I paint them, so I did, the turquoise you see here. It ties in with the color in the bathroom.

And this evening we're hanging up this sliding barn door Lan made for the downstairs bathroom. 

In this photo its just standing there, not complete. 

In about an hour its going to be FINISHED

and the white door should be gone.

We will save the white door for the future owners of the house 

in case they dislike the barn door and wish to remove it. 

That makes them total losers. 

I hope whoever gets the house and farm love it and continue to improve it.

I've been painting a lot, off white on a bunch of spots where there were either marks on the walls 

or entire places I hadn't finished before. 

I'm also busy painting the porch swing again, its hard to get something orange enough!

NO PHOTO!!

Lan removed a couple busted posts in the cross fence, removed a gate and built this new gate with electric fencing on the top. 

No more horses reaching over. 

Assholes.

I've been painting the metal on the pony cart. I know I'll never teach Gussy to pull it so I'm going to let it go for $500 to another gal. I'll include the leather and nylon harnesses and a whicker basket that I picked up somewhere along the way. I'll get better photos of it tomorrow, this morning I actually painted the arms and back supports. It looks good.

Kitchen Finished

We've been working on the kitchen for a couple months now and today it is 

FINISHED.

My brother helped install the range fan/vent yesterday

We saved $1,200 by putting the tiles up ourselves. 

See that little cabinet on the far side of the stove? 

It doesn't match but we needed that exact size and Habitat For Humanity had it 

& it looks pretty dang close to our other cabinets.

This is the view people will see when they are walking into the house.

This was the view 2 years ago

This is the first time I ever saw the kitchen

A Few New Things

The front fence is new because the assholes took to wandering in the frikkin road. They've been contained in the back pasture this last month while this was put up.

Notice the fake gate at the far end? There is an old easement there that we want to maintain so even though there isn't really a gate, it looks like there is.

This is what this section of fence looked like, it had old rotten posts, barbed wire, field fence, hog panels and rotten boards, all being held up by the plethora of weeds & bushes.

Today we gave these boards to a guy who is going to put them up on his fireplace wall. 

This is NOT the section the horses went through, that was the field fence 

between us & the neighbors.

What it looks like without any fence.

What else is new? Hoka One One has brought back the original Clifton 1 running shoe & these are the ones that made running fun & not a chore. I'm going to have to go buy a pair & if I still love them I'll get a few more, before they decide to upgrade them again.

And this is new. I won a contest & this is my prize.

Halterless gus

Gus without his halter loose in the arena for the first time since April 4th.

He's got a handsome face.

Now that Shadow/Laddie is gone, Gus really loves to play with his treat ball.

Lan has the outside runs just about finished. The electric rope is up, tape along the tops but there needs to be a bit more rope inside.

This was as he was taking down the old wooden fence.

Another view

And with it getting cleaned up and mowed. The pile of sand is buckshot, it will be the top finish in the runs. We need another 6 trailer loads, about 36 tons.

This is out back, there's still a lot to do out there too

AirBnB

Last night I put our spare room on AirBnB and today it has been booked for one night with our guest arriving in a couple weeks. With the low price I asked and the fees I have to pay out, I will get about $30.

Today I went shopping and spent $185.28 on things for our guest, including this beach shower curtain. Its not horsey or western at all but the bathroom is light green and there is already a beach watercolor painting in there.

I DID purchase totally westerny material to make curtains for the 2 big windows in the room. I've got leather scraps to use as tie-backs. There is also a new small lamp that I'm going to put spurs around it to make it westerny.

In horse news:

This horse is Penelope, sporting a home made grazing muzzle & I'm going to get a couple for the minis from the gal who makes them. I have real fleece that I will add as padding so there will be minimal hair loss. Instead of having one long piece around the crown of the head it will have snaps on each side to attach to halters.

Stable Comfort Six Week Review

I'm so happy with the Stable Comfort stalls, if we ever build another barn I will DEFINATELY add them again.

Right now the two mini ponies are each in a stall but only to contain them, not for added comfort. Their little hooves barely make an indent in the rubber tops.

But the big news is that this big guy, Mack, DID need the soft mats and they saved him a lot of pain. When he came here he had pads on his hooves and less than a week later he was lame. Pulled the pads & shoes and he was DEAD LAME. So lame his owner contemplated putting him down. but we put a bunch of straw in the stall and left him over night. In the morning, he as good as new; no limping and looking great.

The size difference between the minis and Mack is HUGE and all the horses like the mats. 

Prices that I paid were $789 for each 12x12.5 stall plus $300 each for delivery. But I decided on one 12.5 X 24 mat so it could be used for foaling or layups in the future. 

The price plus delivery was TOO MUCH but since I live in Washington state and these Stable Comfort mats are produced in Canada, right across the border from me, I decided to spend $100 on fuel & go pick them up myself. 

We bought new regular 4 X 6 stall mats for the other two stalls, costing $250 per stall so for the Comfort Stall mats it was only an additional $500 each stall. Not a bad price for the good feelings we get when we see Mack walking easily and the ponies happy.