Enjoy!

Even though I was raised in a family that was financially comfortable, I have actually lived in mobile homes by choice more than once (maybe this accounts for the financial comfort?). Four times in fact!  Yes, we have ultimately graduated from a 12×68 single wide with an add-a-room glued on to a 28×52 double wide. But a mobile home is a mobile home, even if we have sworn to never call our double wide a…a…trailer!  The ultimate definition of a “humble abode”, mobile homes provide a comfortable, affordable way of life.  If you find a used one, you can pat yourself on the back for recycling a useful resource.  AND you can comfortably remodel them to fit your needs without feeling like it will cost you an arm and a leg.

Here’s a list of just a few of the memories that have come to mind this week about mobile home living.  These stretch back as far as the early Seventies for some of the best of them.  Most of them taught lessons that have alleviated our having to relive them in any way with our modern digs.  Enjoy!

1.  Home Heating- Growing up in a mobile home out in the country meant that when the furnace wouldn’t start, it was time to run to the Corner Store and get a can of kerosene.  Heating with fuel oil offered this benefit that if you couldn’t afford $300 to fill your 300 gallon tank (wouldn’t that be nice today?), you could go buy 10 gallons of kerosene to last a week or so.  We also had a pot-belly wood stove that was certainly not up to code (was there such a thing back then in a town with no zoning?).  And the stovepipe glowed red enough to melt horseshoes on.  The grownups often joked about our place being a “tinderbox”.  Well, when your bedroom is right next to that stove, that joke isn’t too funny!

2. Tiny Bedrooms- Nothing like living in dormitory style! 8′ x 10′ bedrooms aren’t enough space for anyone who is not a convicted felon to exist in. (Note to self- Google “standard cell sizes” for reference)

3. Built-In Furniture- The multitasking living room wall that does honorable duty as a library-gun rack-entertainment center is truly a site to behold! No mobile home bedroom would be complete without the built-in dresser with a half closet that has a hanging rod 8 feet up that only Wilt Chamberlain could reach.  These glorious feats of human ingenuity take the burden of needing furniture away from those who live in 8′ x 10′ rooms!

4. Mobile Home Parks- As a child, I lived in a  newer mobile home (circa 1972) in a park in Florida.  It was quite a grand estate with a section for families and a section for senior citizens.  We enjoyed a giant family club house and a pool that seemed to be Olympic sized, although at 4 years old, my perspective could have been a bit off.  There was a diving board, and many large people with beer bellies fit in it comfortably.

It seemed to be such an elegant place, but looking back on my knowledge of the families who lived there, it was no different than what you would find now…every day folks just tryin’ to get by.  But…be forewarned…no child shall ride their bike beyond the barrier of the ancient ones’ section lest they be beaten with a cane!

5. Water Troubles- Anyone who’s anyone in the North Country of New York, and dares live in a mobile home, knows of what I speak.  Heat tape does not last forever.  However, the day you must crawl under your home with a hair dryer to thaw out your pipes, or…heaven forbid…your sewer line…that day?  That day lasts forever.

My fondest memory of all is of the winter night when a section of our sewer line ended up propped in our bath tub to speed up the melting process.  Good times!

Yes, these memories will hold for years to come, until I’m old and gray.  They remain solid in the vault of my mind because of the laughter shared around them, the relationships forged in common adversity while under the house in freezing temps, and in the fear etched on our minds of waking in the middle of the night to sound of fire trucks.  After all, how sad would it be to watch all of that marvelous built in furniture burn?

Do you have memories specific to mobile home living?  Share them in the comments section for the rest of us to savor!

On to make more memories!

The McGees

So!  Our old kitchen- where do I begin?  It had your standard double wide flowery vinyl-covered gypsum wall board.  It was an exhibit of epic proportions of cheesy cheap cupboards- and tons of them.  Double wides are infamous for built in furniture!  The only home that a built-in entertainment-center-bookcase-gun rack comes standard in the living room!  Our kitchen was no exception.  Nearly three walls of cabinets, all of which were sagging dreadfully from 15 years of holding our copious collections of junk.

At about the 10 year mark, we decided that we were going to plan our kitchen remodel, but that it was too expensive a prospect to go at it with our full plan just yet.  When we do it right, we want new flooring, new walls (resurfaced), new appliances, molding, cabinets, counter-tops.  If it’s going to be in the kitchen, it’s going to be new!  So, at that point, we did a “patch-job” on the kitchen to get us by until we had time to do it right.  Our kitchen cabinets were painted, new snap and lock laminate flooring, new windows and trim (part of a larger whole-home replacement project), and the counter-tops were resurfaced in a cheap, labor intensive, DIY way.  This whole project (not including the windows) was less than $800 to complete.  We were satisfied with the results and it was enough to get us by without wanting to rip the cupboards off the wall each time we opened them.

We did a great patch job on the counter tops that I highly recommend if you don’t have the money to invest in new cupboards and counters.  A technique we found on the internet is similar to the method used in this Ginni Granite Paints video.  This product wasn’t available that we knew of at the time we did this project.  We purchased quarts of paint, beginning with a slate black, and adding a dove grey, and finally a white.

We used the dabbing technique with sponges and then coated it with a water based poly coat.  You must use water based poly because it is safe for food preparation.  We applied 6 coats of poly to the counters with a sanding between each coat.  All in all, it took 9 coats of products (paint and poly) and about 8 days of work/kitchen disruption.  In the end, I was thrilled with it.  Keep in mind, this was 8 years ago, money was tight, and we were so sick of our laminate counter tops that I could have painted them with zebra stripes and thought it was trés  chic!  I have noticed that Lowe’s now sells kits for this for over $200.  I did this with three quarts of paint and a quart of poly, a sea sponge, a paint brush, and steel wool.  It is NOT worth over $200 in my book.  These counter-tops lasted us for about 7 years and were still in great shape when we tore the old kitchen out.  I have no doubt that they would have lasted for many more years.

At the left is a rather messy pic of our first kitchen touch up with the cabinets painted white and minty paint and decals on the walls.  This picture was taken during the beginnings of our demo of that kitchen in preparation for our major kitchen remodel that we had been planning for for a few years.  While at the time of this demolition, I was completely ready to rip every cabinet off the walls (as I was every time I opened one for the year before we tore them out), this touch up lasted us for many years and made us happy until we were prepared to do a thorough remodel.

I loathe mobile home cabinets and the cheapo way they throw the plumbing in, allow for open spaces under the cabinets for rodents to get in, and how they crumble with any exposure to water, which is completely idiotic in a kitchen, no? I also have a hate-hate relationship with popcorn ceilings, but that’s another post altogether.

I apologize that I don’t have a more inspiring picture of this stage of our kitchen’s life, but the $800 I mentioned as the price for this touch up stage did include the laminate flooring for a 20′ x 15′ area, paint and hardware for the cabinets (not cheap when you have three walls of cabinets!), and paint and supplies for the counters and walls, and plantation blinds for two giant windows.  I give you this post to prepare you for the next post about our full kitchen remodel.  This is meant to show you that even a little bit can mean a lot when you want to touch up your spaces, and if you just can’t afford the fabulous makeover you would really like, making due by making little changes for a while is a great way to buy yourself some time.

There was even a period of time when I put a futon, an area rug, and a coffee table in our dining area because our family NEVER sat at a table to eat and felt more comfortable hanging out in a more casual space.  There are no hard fast rules for remodeling.  It’s your home.  Make it feel good to be there.  Redefine your spaces the way YOU want to enjoy them.

Next time, I’ll share with you our complete mobile home kitchen transformation.  It’s a space that I don’t yet call complete as I have not gotten a new refrigerator to match my beautiful stove, and the ceiling hasn’t decided what it wants us to do with it yet, but it is a beautiful space, a space that I LOVE to cook in, and love to share meals with our family in.  Hell, I even love to just stand in it and look at how beautiful it is.  Most of all, it looks NOTHING like a mobile home kitchen.

‘Til next time,

The McGees

This week, we have (haha, well my husband has)  installed a new exhaust fan in our bathroom.  A lot of moisture gets trapped in there because we like to take pretty hot showers.  We’ve also covered the walls and ceiling with bead board for a cottage look (See Bathroom Redux post) and the surfaces in that room are pretty non-porous.  Moisture just beads up on the skylight and sometimes even rains down on me in the shower when the sun is shining!

Anyway, the ceiling fan we installed in the bathroom remodel was very lovely and all, but hardly functional.  And this was pretty disappointing because it was a real beotch pain to put in.  Of course, being a mobile home, the original fan was some backward cheapo fan with an oddball installation method that didn’t match any other logical method known to mankind. But we went at the challenge with gusto and retrofitted a lovely, poorly designed fan just because it matched the decor.  We are nothing if not optimists!

First ceiling fan install. Lovely fan, not so functional.

While the style of the fan complemented our decor very well, if you look at the light cover, it just doesn’t allow for enough air to be sucked up around the globe to go up into the fan. Another reason we chose the fan was because it allowed for a dimmer in the bathroom light so when someone (me!) takes a hot bath in the Winter, they can relax in a dimly lit room.  But, the dimmer wouldn’t work without a slight buzz that made me crazy, so it never really fulfilled all of it’s many claims to fame.

Fast forward to two years later, my husband is on the roof in November ripping up shingles and pulling out the fan assembly to install one that actually works!  What a wonderful world it would be if this could have been done from the bathroom, but alas, no such luck.

Exhaust fans in your bathrooms are essential in a mobile home.  Even this time of year when we run our pellet stove 24/7 to heat our home, the level of moisture trapped in the bathrooms is not good for that space.  Unfortunately it doesn’t spread around the house the way we need it to in order to keep from having to run a humidifier so the living room ceiling (still popcorn of course!) doesn’t crumble to dust from the dry air near the stove.

The new fan “we” (Big D!) installed this weekend is just a fan, no light, full power, jet propulsion style!  Not too loud and works like a charm.  We’re keeping our fingers crossed that this will keep the rain showers to a minimum in there.

Broan White 80 CFM 2.5 sones Bath Fan

I must add, I did do a lot of the installation work on the original fan replacement (as I did much of the demolition and remodel work for the entire project). But today, I was hoping for an easy job so I could get to work on a new project, and this one just ended up taking hours longer than anticipated. So, who got into a snit and bagged out of the project?  Well, that would be me.  But Big D has forgiven me.  He’s nice like that.

Stay dry!

The McGees

If I had a nickel for every time I said these things this year, I’d be a rich woman.  The amount of moisture in the air since the Spring has just overwhelmed our home and our ground and our community. The purpose of this post is to share a few ideas we’re toying with regarding moisture control, but also to offer some great resources we’ve found in our search for ways to secure our home from the horrors of moisture damage.

But! Let me take a breather before I get into this post.  It will be full of information about moisture in our mobile homes, but it involves hard work, observation, preventative measures, and cleaning methods.  I always like to think of something I like before I tackle things I’m not fond of, and in keeping with the theme of moisture, I had an urge to watch one of my favorite movie clips of all time.  Please excuse us while we pause for this brief break…

Okay, now, back to business!

As I was saying, moisture can be a big issue for mobile homes.  We tend to suffer with pretty poor insulation. Many states and the federal government developed new building standards for manufactured housing in the late 90′s.  Our home was built in ’95. Enough said…but yet, I go on… The insulation, windows, and studding quality is questionable at best.  Don’t get me wrong, we love our home and have worked hard to make it more energy efficient, but it seems that as we make changes, more challenges arise that we need to find ways to correct. One simple tip is to use a dehumidifier. These can be expensive, but you can often find one reasonably priced on Craigslist.

The first mistake we made when putting our house on the property was to use only footers for support.  Footers are concrete forms that are a little more than a foot wide and run the width of the home from front to back.  They are placed several feet apart and then the home is propped on cinder blocks supported by these footers.  This method leaves mostly dirt in your crawl space.  In our area, the soil content is mostly clay.  Clay retains water pretty well and the yard around our home was not graded well or prepared for proper drainage.  The home actually sits downhill from the road and yard in front of it, allowing water to drain downhill under the house. Water also collects with each rainfall around the edges of the home and really has nowhere to go but under it.

Here’s a link to a great document about Moisture Problems in Manufactured Homes put out by HUD (Housing and Urban Development).  It lays out the many problem areas for moisture in your mobile home and some solutions to these issues.  One helpful tip in this document that we will be trying this year is to cover the ground under our double wide with 6 mil plastic sheeting.  We built wood skirting three years ago and even though we put four vents (1 for each side) in the skirting, it still retains much more moisture than regular vinyl skirting would.  Add that to the saturated clay dirt from a damp Spring and Summer and you get musty, moldy dampness.  This can’t be good.

Our plan was to by a roll of 20′ x 100′ 6 mil plastic sheeting (about $100 at Lowe’s) and run 20′ widths from front to back, using a staple gun to fasten the plastic to the bottom frames of the skirting.  This should keep the plastic firmly in place, and any water that drains under the home should actually drain into the ground beneath the plastic.  The damp ground will no longer share the same space as the underside of our home.  It was our plan to complete this project this Fall and to replace our 14 year old heat tape at the same time.  However, our love of attending NASCAR races and our season hockey tickets have caused us to play hooky from housework on the weekends over the last month…and I think we’re running out of time.

My dream of what it would look like (picture links to another great article from Inspectapedia.com> about sealing under your home):

Home crawl space lined with plastic

But after reading this great article. Isolating The House From The Earth, from Dirt-Crawl-Spaces.com and others on their website, I’ve had an even better idea.

The writer suggests that 6 mil plastic may be fine, but people report that repair is often necessary after entering the crawl space. They suggest that plastic the thickness of a pool liner would be better suited for such installations.  Well, I have personally been in the position of having a swimming pool liner that I didn’t know what to do with when it became stretched or torn.  TWICE!  I have to believe there are people in our community who would love to recycle their pool liner that has been sitting in their garage while the guilt of throwing it in the landfill was just too much for them to bear.  So, now, I begin my quest for enough swimming pool liner in need of being recycled to complete this project next Spring.

In many homes, the heating system’s ducts would offer a bit more ventilation/warmth under the home and keep things from being so damp. However, we have installed a pellet stove to heat our home and only run the furnace about once per month just to keep it from getting rusty.  In the winter months, the pellet stove keeps the interior of our home so dry, we actually have to run a humidifier to keep the static and dust down.  But once the Spring months come and the stove goes off, the humidity climbs once again.

One thing I found interesting in the HUD document I offered above was an item about ventless gas stoves.  We used to have one before our pellet stove was installed.  The installer said that propane burns with much more moisture so it feels warmer in the home. We didn’t realize that heating this way with a ventless stove rather than the furnace or vented pellet stove would trap moisture in our home even more, or that this could be a bad thing.  I will put together an article on heating with various types of stoves in mobile homes soon.

Because our home sits in a dip, the water collects in our side dooryard once the snow begins to melt.  Last year, we expanded the garden in that area and put a sidewalk where standing water was always a problem.  We enlarged the garden two years ago and that helped considerably, so this year we did it up big and covered the whole area that was a problem with a garden.  We’re hoping this garden will soak up all of the water that might collect there in the Spring.  This becomes dangerous because in the Spring in Upstate New York, we’ve had 90 degrees at the end of April, and then snow on Mother’s Day.  Mother Nature really has a sense of humor here. (Yes, this article is being submitted on October 29th, and two days ago we had 3 inches of snow)  Once all of the snow melts, and then we get another cold spell, all of that water turns to ice….in our yard…where we walk.  So!  You can see why we want it to be controlled.

You can see the size of the old garden where the new mulch line is.

We’ll keep you updated on our moisture issues and would love to hear about your own concerns, fixes, and questions regarding moisture in mobile homes.  How are you dealing with it?  Have you had success with controlling it?  Let us know in the comments area below!

Stay dry and warm!

The McGees

On a happy note- I do have lots of photos and posts that I can share as soon as thing settle down for the Summer and I can get those thoughts together.  There have been lots of new things happening here, things I’m dreaming about getting done, and lots of questions I’d like to ask all of you out there who like to make your mobile homes even “homier”.

So- on to the topic- since I’m removing the forum, I’m going to make a few posts with the topics from the forum that actually did have questions and responses there and I will open up all posts for comments from registered users.  Yes, you must be registered to post, but that helps to keep the site more clear of spam for your viewing pleasure.

Here’s the Big Question of the Day-

How do you get rid of the strips that separate the wall board pieces in your mobile home?

MMHM Member “skrapwood” asked:

“Has anyone found a way around those lovely lattice strips they use to join drywall board without replacing the drywall all together?  Either by decorating or another way of taping the seams?  We tried using a stucco effect but the seams just cracked.  And we tried just painting over them as if they didn’t exist but that doesn’t seem to work either, they are still there in all the wrong places.”

Me again:

I would love to hear all the ways people are doing it, whether you’ve had success, even if you’ve had not so much success, since we all want to know what is a bad idea in order to save ourselves time and money.

I’ll post the rest of the questions throughout the week if I find more.  I know there’s one coming up about those infrared heaters.  I’d really be interested in some lively conversation filled with your opinions on those.  I’m not too optimistic!

Enjoy the rest of the weekend y’all.  I hope you find the time to site back and enjoy your labors at your home rather than always laboring.

Remember,  just say “no” to wall stripping!

Peace out-

The McGees

While I try my hardest, I do not have a green thumb. Many people who see our gardens think I am some sort of wizard when it comes to growing things. That, my friends, is the work of the Universe, not me. I got smart a long time ago and chose wisely which plants would work best in our area of Upstate New York and would not require much from me but a pep talk now and then. This has proven to be a great plan of attack as we now have gorgeous gardens that grow on their own and only need to be thinned from time to time.

To give you inspiration, I include here a shot of our home about 2 years after we moved in (1997?). Pretty dull huh?

Click on each image to enlarge.

Here is a shot of our door yard about two weeks ago as things started coming in.

Now, here’s a shot of the door yard after Big D got finished with his vision on Monday:

This garden will continue to evolve as I stain the timbers to match our steps and thin out the plants in the back.  This garden has been overwhelmed by a patch of “Snow on the Mountain” which can be very invasive.  But, we got it from a patch at my late grandfather’s house so it isn’t likely I’m going to do away with it.  I kind of like it, as long as I can keep it under control.  Currently, there are roses, hosta, lilac, lilies, butterfly bush, variegated perennial ivy, and some little yellow flower plant that I love that stays a very succulent green all Summer.

The lilies came from a small pack of about 20 Asian Lilies about 6 years ago.  In the first two years they multiplied to over 100.  I have thinned these out and spread them around to several other gardens and need to do so again this year as the dedicated “Lily Garden” has now completely runneth over with spread as you can see:

This garden needs some maintenance and will be much more attractive next year, once we have worked it a bit.  It takes patience with perennials, but in the long run it really pays off.

Iris is another plant that you just simply cannot kill and look beautiful all Spring and Summer long.  We now have about 5 large Iris patches which all came from a plastic bag of tubers that a friend dropped off one day without me knowing it.  She left the bag by the door in a patch of dirt.  Toward the end of the Summer I finally noticed it (I was busy with kids and college and work that year so it took a while!).  They had broken out of the bag and started growing into the ground.  See!  No work involved on my part…they even planted themselves!  So I simply tore away the bag and each year since I have thinned them out, shared them with friends and family, made new gardens from them and simply loved looking at them.  At the end of the flowering period, the stalks stay tall and lush green so they still look beautiful even after you have dead-headed the petals.

The garden above contains Chive, Lavender, purple Iris, tall Evening Primrose, (another great perennial that spreads!) Hosta, Morning Glory, Ivy for the fence that we are just getting in this year with hopes that it will cover it, and Hydrangea.  This one will have landscape timbers to enclose it this year as well since the area is really wet and the pavers just aren’t cutting it with all of the heaving that goes on in that spot.

One more plant that I cannot speak highly enough about is Hosta.  I love them.  We bought a bag of 7 plants from Lowes about 10 years ago.  I planted them and the dog promptly dug them up.  On their second attempt to grow leaves, a rogue teenage lawn mower plowed them down.  I thought they were gonners.  Two years later, 5 of them came up again.  I moved them into gardens and after 8 years I have thinned, spread, shared them to my heart’s delight.  Here is a sampling:

And a new garden we started last year by defining it with Hostas thinned from another spot:

This year, we will add lavender all around the inside of this garden to fill it even further.  Next Spring it should be a delight!

All of the plants we have are hearty and can tolerate walnut trees around them.  We have a large walnut tree and some plants are susceptible to what they call Walnut Wilt, making them unable to grow well.  Everything we have thrives even in these conditions.  Our soil is almost completely clay!  And somehow these babies manage to delight us every year as we watch them sprout and blossom.  Another plant we have that thrives is Bleeding heart.

Most of these plants were given to me by friends or people I’ve met on Freecycle who were thinning their own gardens.  I am pretty sure we have not spent even $50 on perennials over the years and our gardens are brimming with life that we don’t even have to encourage.  One plant that has stymied me for years is Clematis.  Until this year, I have not successfully gotten one to grow.  The one in this pic is 3 years old and this is the best it has looked.  We added pure compost and a lattice wall this year to help it along.  I think we’ve got a winner!  Patience, joy, gratitude for beauty are pretty much the only things I contribute to these gardens and they are a blessing every year!

Happy gardening!

The McGees

Sadly, I have done this time after time. And because we are always moving on to the next thing, it becomes hard to actually stop and put together a coherent post that shares the project, clearly explains how we completed it, and offers some real help and motivation to people out there who might be reading. I am always looking for inspiration on the Web and I wish to offer it here as well.

So, here is my first post wingin’ it! From now on, I will put the project or post out there and if there are questions, you can ask them in the comments and I’ll do my best to clarify or inspire!

I apologize that this site has not been maintained as I had hoped it would be. From now on, I will update our site with all the happenings from this great home. I hope you enjoy!

It’s just a little corner. You step out of the kitchen, there it is. Step out of our bedroom, there it is. But it’s too small to put anything there. We’ve tried putting a bookcase there, but it just looks awkward and is just a repository for a bunch of old books we never read anymore, and pictures, and knick knacks that collect dust. We tried putting various chairs there, but it’s just not really big enough for that and we would always round the corner coming out of our bedroom and stub our toe. Then we just started putting the vacuum there because we have two large dogs who shed a lot and we vacuum incessantly and we’re just too lazy to put it away. But, alas, that doesn’t really add to the “look” we are trying to achieve.

Recently, while completing our kitchen remodel, we found some rounded corner shelves that worked perfectly near our sink and they just happened to have larger, 18 inch shelves just like them in an Espresso color. I had been hemming and hawing for weeks over what color we would paint the living room this Spring just to liven things up after a long winter and about 6 years of the same color in that room. I chose a risky green that I loved, but wasn’t sure if I would love three large walls of it, and I set out to paint that corner to try it out. Well, lo and behold, it looked fantastic. Even Darren loved it and it was THE color out of all of the swatches I brought home that he DID NOT want. (He finally broke down and said I could just choose a color, thank goodness!)

So, in one afternoon we painted the corner (as well as the rest of the walls we needed to paint), and put up the shelves to remake this corner into something spectacular. I have to say that the paint we used was fantastic. We have never found a paint that we like as well as this. We used Valspar Paint with Primer in it. This can be purchased at Lowe’s for about $30.00 per gallon. I must tell you that it is definitely a ONE COAT paint. And I slathered that paint on with no rhyme or reason while the ceiling fan was on, blowing air all around the paint, and when it dried it dried completely smooth without streaking.

I also use a great brush we have found at Lowe’s, but they may have them at Home Depot as well. It’s a soft bristle brush for paint that has a rubber handle. It’s a short brush intended for corners. The bristles are cut at an angle and I DID NOT HAVE TO TAPE A SINGLE WALL and the edging looks fantastic. This type of brush gives you a lot of control, even with a bit of a shaky hand. You can almost hold it like a pencil.

The shelves were purchased at Home Depot for $26.00 a piece. We purchased 4 of them, plus the gallon of paint and two brushes. To repaint the living room and to transform this corner, it cost us less than $150 and one afternoon. Now our room has gone from dé-bore to décor in one afternoon!

After finishing the corner, we painted a bit more to see how we liked the color in the rest of the room. It’s very green. What do you think? I love how lush it looks with the cappuccino colored shelves and bookcase. Just the look I was going for.

In what ways have you transformed your spaces? Take a moment to share in our comments, link to pictures you have posted on the Web, or take a moment to join our site and post your project to our forum. We LOVE to see what others are doing!

It’s Spring y’all. And Mother Nature is being slow about freshening up the place. Take it upon yourselves to make your space fresh in easy and inexpensive ways.

Happy Spring!

The McGees

We tore everything out, including the sub-floor. Giant wasp nests were found in the walls.

Our bathroom was pretty hideous. We had painted it once and the paint was beginning to peel and look pretty bad. The vinyl tub had turned yellow and the floor and fixtures had seen better days. So, we tore everything out. Demolishing the floor was a real treat and a great exercise to get one’s frustrations out! There was quite a let down the moment we were finished tearing it out. It was the moment we had the realization that we could not turn back now…we had to do SOMETHING with our bathroom…we had no choice but to press on.

The flowered wall board on the ends of the tub area was replaced with Georgia Pacific fiberglass mildew and moisture resistant tile backer-board to prevent moisture buildup and water damage to the structure in the future. Although we were not using tile, this seemed the best choice for behind our shower and tub enclosure to protect the framing behind the wall board in the event of water damage. The sub-floor was done with Georgia Pacific Titanium Dryloc plywood, which has a moisture resistant coating.

Ahhh... our new GP Dryloc Subfloor Fiberglass wall board not shown.

Once the sub-floor and wall board were complete, we covered the walls with beadboard, a white, pre-painted wall covering that resembles wainscot. Since this was such a small room and the ceiling was separated from the larger room outside by a doorway, we covered the ceiling with beadboard as well. (There is an entire Internet community devoted to hating and removing the standard “popcorn” ceilings in mobile homes.) This task was not easy and definitely required two people, but ended up looking gorgeous! All of the beadboard was secured with tiny white finishing nails on the edges and LOCTITE heavy duty construction adhesive on the backside.

I cannot tell a lie, the plumbing was not approached easily. We felt very intimidated by the prospect of reconfiguring our water lines, adding a bath/shower fixture set that was not standard mobile home fair, and redirecting the drain line for the bathtub since the old tub had a center drain and the new one was on the end. However, my father was insistent that it could be done, we just had to have confidence! We used plastic compression fittings and installed shut-off valves (see our post on compression fittings here) which all homes should have. We took our time and thought things through and took it one step at a time.

Rope edged bathtub being installed. New floor in place.

With the walls covered and secured, our new laminate flooring was installed. We chose a beautiful wide plank snap and lock floor at Lowe’s that currently runs about $1.99 per square foot. It’s rated suitable for bathrooms and kitchens and looks like a stone tile. We used a radial arm saw to cut the pieces and a skill saw to cut holes for items like heating vents and toilet drain. The tub and surround we chose were the most expensive part of the remodel, running almost $500 together. The “rope” design around the edges was complemented by a baseboard molding that had a matching edge.

In mobile homes, people are frequently posed with the problem of the slats between wallboards. These have become the bane of our existence! However, in the new bathroom, we took the opportunity to use a trim treatment in these areas to enhance the “cottage” style we were trying to achieve. The moldings we chose complimented the tub design and the toilet seat.

I always wanted a dim light feature in the exhaust fan so when I take a hot bath, the light can be soft and relaxing. In upstate NY, hot baths in the Winter are a must have! The opening in the ceiling would not accommodate any of the fans we could purchase that were not from mobile home supply stores. So we got over our fears of messing with our roof and modified the opening with aluminum venting. It’s a super quiet, lovely addition to our room. We added a simple vanity, brushed nickel fixtures, and repainted a decorative mirror that we had above our bed to place over the vanity. A nice set of towel hooks on the wall finished off the accessories.

Since a small linen closet was torn out in the demolition, storage was now an issue. We purchased a simple pantry cabinet at Home Depot for $99 and found a free dresser on Craigslist that we painted to add a little color to the room. These little touches turned a once miserable bathroom into a sanctuary, a lovely place to start our mornings, and cost a little under $1500 to complete from start to finish.

This was the first in a long list of large projects we took on that Summer. We worked on it for two and a half weekends (5 days) for about 8 hours a day. Demolition took one of those days. Below is a gallery of photos. I hope this bathroom looks as great to you as it does to us. t has been nearly 3 years since we completed it and it still looks as good as new. These are products and design features that are easily obtained and achieved by visiting your local home improvement stores and simply deciding what you want and figuring out ways to make it happen. Please feel free to comment or contact us about this or any project you see on MyMobilehomeMakeover.com for questions or pep talks for your project! We love to inspire and to get ideas from others.

Happy remodeling!

~The McGees