Our 2nd Mobile Home Make Over

Our essay for '' What I did on Summer Break 2011" would go like this...
     We started work on the 2 nd mobile home on the lot beside our daughters(dd) Mobile Home(MH). We had originally in Nov 2009!!! Started on this MH. We had replaced almost half of the floor completely and gutted it but stopped to start work on our dd house. Good thing we did as it took until the time college started to finish her MH.  The 2nd MH got snow damage to the roof as the winter of 2010-- the area got over 4 feet of snow and we had removed the interior walls and as a result the back ceiling collapsed.  We had to finish replacing the rest of the floor before we could fix the ceiling.  Well fixing it was the plan... the result of all the weight on the ceiling was... it had damage 75% of the ceiling.  We choose to replace all of the ceiling with new 2x4x12 boards with the ends angled for the slop of the roof--- remember--we put a total new roof over the MH with it's own support so the MH ceiling will never get wet,well I hope. I am so glad we did as we can now put regular dry wall on the ceiling! Yea!  This took a day more than the planed time and the cost was not much  @ $200.   
       Next was new windows and doors,well the MH was made with 1x2. Do you know how hard it is to re-frame for new windows with 1x2--what were they thinking?? A 2 x4 is not that much more$$..so that is what we did. We replaced all of the walls,yea we are crazy!! lol  It was so much easier to do all the walls this way and since this will be a rental and we live 3 hours away!!! The MH ended up being a total new home.  The outside is Smart Siding.
      We stopped working on the outside and ran all of the electric and plumbing.  We ran out of vacation time but on weekends we insulated, dry walled, painted(A big Thanks to my dd boyfriend Phil for helping me paint).  Winter 2012 set in so we still have work to do with my husbands work schedule we have not been able to get back to work on the MH. SO it will be my husband next vacation 2012 to finish it up. We need to put up trim--already painted. Finish install of kitchen and bath,install flooring thru out MH. Then do the underpinning and cover the top from MH to new roof and add all the detail trim and paint. I am keeping the base color of the MH close to the color it is,but the trim?? Black.Country red?green/White???
     I can not wait to get it done, I hate to have this on my mind.  PLUS  I put all the materials on my Lowes card,thinking" Oh the rent I can pay it off in no time" ....Well the $175 payment a month and no rent is not fun.  ;(
Next, will be some photos if I can figure out how post the again it has been so long since I have blogged.

Inside the MH

As you can see we stripped it clean to start over,add insulation,drywall and all new electric--the dates on the camera are all wrong but we did most of this in the month of July 2010

We still have some things to do in the kitchen--I have some new photos as the microwave installed over the stove and all the trim finished.

The New Roofs over the MH's

I have a lazy Saturday to add to my blog,next weekend we start a vacation lol well we start on the other mobile home beside the one we finished--will blog as I go with that one lol. The roof on the mh gave me the most worries as I was not sure if they would work,and no one had any answers or examples. We had thought about adding a new metal roof directly to the mh,but in this location there is a heavy snow load--4 ft the winter we worked on them. My fear was roof collapes---you will see later what happened to the other mh... Plus I did not want my dd shoving off the roof in the middle of the winter. Plus in the future we might add on to the mh and it is much easier with the design we used--it is a one bedroom and if we rent it out it might have to be 2 bedroom. The photos tell it all if any ?'s just ask.

New Doors and windows

The old windows were new mobile home windows,not very old but not installed correctly and let in a lot of cold air. After we installed the new windows a huge difference in heating the MH. The plywood is up due to us removing the door to install the one piece tub.

After windows and doors installed. We still have the outside to do,new smart siding and new roof. But we are finishing working more inside due to the weather is still very unsure. Inside it is warm and dry lol.

The new windows and some new framing. We have installed many windows and doors so as a family we made quick work of it. Most of the houses I have bought over the years,needed new windows so practice...practice.......:)

The winter of 2010 in our area was one for the books as far as cold and snow. We could not get back to our project which is 3 hours away for a long time due to the bad winter, 4+ feet of snow!! We worked my dh first vacation--the week of MLK and got the floor completely done,cold and long hours!

It is hard to see in the photo but we supported the roof while we did this as we had to remove a large section at a time. The window going in, I originally bought to take apart as it is the smallest picture window I have ever seen lol it could be taken apart to make 3 very small windows,which I was going to put in the bath in both of the MH--the other MH is beside this one. BUT it was so cute--and perfect for the kitchen as I was stumped --the other window I had for this spot was too big--it is now my favorite window. If you have an older MH replacing the windows is very easy and outside you can paint trim ==we used 1 x4 but you can use bigger to cover up where you cut to install. We are totally replacing the metal siding so we just covered up the wholes until it gets warmer.

We got back to work full time over Easter Break, we spent Good Friday and Sat,Sun(Easter) working--we had to make up time someway,my dh and I both work full time jobs plus our projects.

The plan was to replace the doors,first, then windows. The door had to come off due to we bought a full size tub--love it- a one piece and well it did not fit in the door. We replaced front door with French Doors and the back door with a regular off the shelf-- 32inch exterior door. With proper framing you can replace mh doors and windows with regular off the box store shelf doors and windows.

New Mobile Home Floor

Sorry--photo of dh and ds, this is from our other mh we started first,can not figure out how to delete it,will blog on this one later,we are restarting on it soon.

As you can see we have two mh projects--both in the 1973-74 age--we were surprised at the different way the floors were constructed.

First photo. After replacing all of the joists and much of the other framing, some dry rot, water damage and a visit from termites. Plus removing old repairs by previous owners that did not fix the problem just made them much worse as they cut joists. So... we are really glad we started from scratch. The way we replaced the floor will be different then the way others would replace the floor in a mobile home. Why? We do not have a furnace(other owners removed it),so we do not need duct work. We are running our water lines inside the MH not under the MH. (which works GREAT,I will blog about this later,but will say my DD was away on Christmas break for a few weeks and temp was 10-20 degrees,electric went out for 4 days and nothing froze and the temp was 55 inside the MH with no heat--yea we really insulated it lol) Ok, we put down a 7/16 inch OSB plywood, then plastic 6 mil heavy duty, then insulated R19, then 3/4 plywood on top a nice sandwich.

Removing the MH Floor

The beginning getting rid of the old floor and finding all the surprises!

The insulation had disintegrated to nothing, removed all the duct work, many of the joist had broke or dry rotted when we removed the floor many came up with them. The cost to totally replace all the joist was not much @250. We placed ours 16 inches apart.

June 2011--Back to blog

Hello! I have been gone for a LONG time. We have worked on the mobile home for many weeks of my husbands vacations. The first week was in January--what were we thinking lol--the coldest winter ever. We decided to work on the yellow mobile home first so that it would be totally done by August. The plan was at first to just fix what was needed--well everything--so it was faster and easier to just gut everything. So glad we went this direction, we found tons of bad things that we would not have found and we could rewire everything,replace all the joist,parts of walls,all the floors,all the insulation and ceiling,new roof, new windows,French Doors, plus much more......

We--let me clarify,my family my husband,me,my daughter 18 and my son 13--my children are wonderful and jump into a project with us,even when they could be doing something with friends and miss activities when we are doing a project. My kids can paint,wire a house, use tools,plumbing do drywall......there is no task too hard for them. My son can build a house. I forget how much they help us,sorry kids!!!

We worked every weekend and in July --my hubby get 8 weeks vacation --I know there was another week but forget when, but the month of July we hit the mh hard and worked sun up to sun down and made allot of progress but we did squeeze in a few days off for a vacation :)

The next few post will be many photos, I hope I remeber the correct order--I should have blogged as we did it but enjoy our mobile home project.