The Wood's Secret Garden

I have actually never met Elle from South Boston, face-to-face. In 2012, she had me hand paint a pair of boots for her and through that we became friends and have kept in touch from time-to-time over the past three years. Some years, we may have only touched base a couple times. The other night I was thinking about Elle (for no particular reason.  She just popped into my head).  Since I was thinking about her, I sent her a quick email letting her know that I was thinking about her, and crawled into bed for the night. Littl e did I know, that all the way in South Boston, Elle had been painting her fence, inspired by the pictures she had seen of our move to this little mobile home.   When she read my email, the next day, she was blown away at the timing.  She sent me a few pictures of what she had been doing the very day that I was thinking about her.  There was Elle, holding a picture she printed off the internet of my fence, as her inspiration.   It...

I can't tell you how many times I get the raised eyebrow when I tell people that we live in a Mobile Home.  There is such a stigma tied to mobile home living and mobile home parks and, working in Code Enforcement as I do, I admit there are some who live in mobile homes that are not helping to improve the perception.  Having said that, there are also plenty of people who own "normal" homes that are less then upstanding citizens. With the current trend to downsize and simplify, the best way to accomplish that is by purchasing a vintage mobile home (for next to nothing) and renovating it.  That is exactly what my husband and I have done.  We purchased a 1964, 520 square foot, single wide for $3,500 and turned it into a magical place--both beautiful and functional!  I have posted several of our renovation projects over at hometalk.com which you can read about here: http://www.hometalk.com/4079y/posts After posting my renovation projects, I was bombarded with p...

In the bedroom - We wanted to keep the originals; but they kept spinning around whenever we attempted to turn them on and off; and the threads were stripped, so they had to go.  We were able to find similar ones that actually matched the decor better. . The Kitchen as the sun is setting with the new light fixtures on: Thanks Kelly!  You really blessed us today!

Although we are not yet finished with all the renovation projects, we have decided to host an "Open House" next Saturday - in order to meet all of our new neighbors. Heck, we may not be done for another year and didn't want to put off meeting people in our new community. The first step was to decide on how to invite everyone. I decided to create a photo collage invitation; save it as a jpg; and, have 4 X 6 photo prints printed at Walgreen's for 10 cents each. (We will be hand delivering these to all 500 and something homes in the park.) Phew - Not looking forward to that! I also really wanted to have something for all the guests who might pop in to meet us and tour our little home to take home with them, so step two was created little favors. I found little organza bags (meant for baby shower favors) at the Dollar Tree - (6 bags for a dollar) and filled them with: 1. A brief bio for both me and Michael with our contact information and our blog addresses tha...

As much as one attempts to organize and schedule; sometimes things just don't work out the way we plan.  We had earlier in the month successfully moved three, seven foot high, solid oak book cases and two solid oak desks down the skinny flight of stairs.  So, how hard could it be to move a mattress and a "Monkey"? Well, Monday after work was the scheduled day to find out.  This was the first afternoon move that we had scheduled.  Every other move occurred between 6:30 and 8:30 in the cool of the morning.   I had no idea how much that mattered.  It was over 85 degrees when I got to the apartment at 4:30 p.m. It was not only hot; but, I had put in a full day at the office and was tired.  As we attempted to move a queen size mattress down the skinny stairs, a few yellow jackets decided to check things out.  So here I was contending with a very awkward and heavy mattress, walking backwards down the stairs, while trying not to get stung!   Did...

Moving is difficult enough when one is moving into a new house or apartment that is "ready" to occupy; but, moving when you must first tear just about everything out and start from scratch is another thing all together. We closed on March 8th and have invested every free moment in making the house "live-able".  I took Monday and Tuesday off in order to make our move-out date of April 15th.  We had been spending so much time at the new house, that we had not had time to pack the stuff in our apartment.  Plus, we had scheduled to move all the big furniture (accept the bed which is staying until the last minute) on Tuesday; but with the rain we knew we had better move it on Monday or it would not get moved. So Saturday, Monday & Tuesday were 15 hour, non-stop, days.  Our apartment is pretty much packed.  We are now facing carrying down a flight of stairs over 70 boxes.  Here is our apartment as of Tuesday night. We were not able to fit the Oak Tabl...

As many of you know who have been following our progress, I am taking every Tuesday and Friday off from work to get the house ready to move in.  Tuesday morning we would be moving the 7 foot tall solid oak bookcases over to the house, which meant that we had to spend 5 hours Monday night getting them ready to move.  They were screwed to studs in our bedroom, due to the fact that the bedroom was carpeted which is not a stable flooring for 7 foot book cases.  We also had to move them out into the living area and determine the best way to get them onto the landing and ultimately down the flight of narrow stairs in the morning.  We finally went to bed with these towers looming over us as we slept. Deni and Yvonne (a lady that lives on Deni's block) arrived each with a truck and we actually managed to get the three bookcases down the stairs and onto the truck without incident.  We had previously loaded the table saw onto Deni's truck knowing we would need it to ...

Michael and I arrived at the house bright and early on Saturday morning.  The plan was for me to prime and paint the dry rot repair area under the living room window and work on the bathroom.  The bathroom vanity back splash was painted apricot orange.  Michael was going to work on sealing the living room window with plexiglass in preparation for covering it with wall-to-wall oak book cases. As I got to work, Michael grabbed the camera and disappeared.  Unbeknownst to me, he had noticed that the single rose bud, on our only rose bush in the garden, had little dew drops covering it and wanted to capture a picture.  He re-appeared after a few moments and started taking measurements and making preparations to seal the living room window. Our First Rose!    After Michael finished the preparation work, he went down to a family owned and operated, Plastics Shop, to purchase a piece of custom cut, Plexiglas and I proceeded to prime and paint the wall ...

Waiting at the light at Sunrise & Zinfindal - Starbucks in hand - 6:45 a.m.! We found a wonderful contractor named Don to do a few of the "Out of our League" projects.  Today the team showed up (His friend Bill "the plumber" and his son Ryan "the Hulk") Wonderful thing #1:  New water heater installed! It took approximately 5 hours to install!  Why?  Because 1964  Mobile Homes are not normal.  In other words, a lay person cannot just go down to Home Depot, purchase a water heater and think they can just install it.  Bill was a seasoned plumber who has installed more water heaters than you can count and yet he had to do some creative stuff to make everything fit.  Thanks Bill! Wonderful thing #2:  Don fixed the dry rot in the window seal!  The damage had not gone very far and for that we were really relieved.  We were also really encouraged to see that our little home has been constructed with 2 by 4's!  Most moble ho...

With my new Tuesday and Friday off from my day job schedule (Thanks Sergeant) we are able to spend 4 or 5 hours each Monday and Thursday night at the house. Well this was our Thursday night.  I had finished re-doing the border on the hand painted plywood sub-flooring and polyurethaned it last Tuesday night.  Here are a few shots of our new faux antique hardwood living room floor.  Although this only cost approximately $40 in supplies, it took 3 days of 10 or more hours a day of back breaking, knee destroying labor from start to finish and that is not counting the ripping out of the carpet and padding and removing the tack stripes and all the staples from the padding. A Close-up! A Fuller view - Notice the "Love" Painted on the right side wall panel! We are really, really pleased with or faux painted sub-flooring.  It could use another coat of polyurethane - but that means sanding, cleaning, coating and waiting another 20 hours to walk on it.  That m...

Michael and I arrived bright and early Tuesday morning, after spending 4 hours the previous night.  (I forgot to mention, I am taking every Tuesday and Friday off to work on the house.) We had decided that today would be:  1) finish the living room floor, and 2) finish painting the bedroom. I decided to totally change up the border on the hand painted sub-flooring and spent 3 hours, masking taping the new design while Michael removed all the drawers and doors from the built-in's in the bedroom and discovered that he also needed to clean the cubby holes from where the drawers had come---50 years of dust and dirt.  Yikes. New Border Design - I will post the finished floor on Friday ! I was able to polyurethane the finished floor tonight and will post pictures after it has dried.  We love how it came out.  Really vintage looking.  In fact, we are tempted to tell people that "this is what we found when we pulled up the carpet". The innards! ...

No fancy pictures on this update, just two very tired, 50 something, husband and wife.  We took off at 7:00 a.m. and headed to Lowe's to pick up another gallon of paint and a few other needed items for full day of painting.  We arrived at the house at approximately 9:00 am this morning because we met a young man named Jack on our trip to McDonald's for a couple egg McMuffins.  Jack was sitting near the doors and asked if we might be willing to buy him some breakfast.  Michael said, "Of course.  Come on in with us." While standing in line, we discovered that Jack was 22 years old and had been on the street (on and off) since the age of 12.  His dad had committed suicide and his mom was a Heroin addict who lived in Reno.  Jack was also diagnosed with bi-polar and found that smoking pot helped keep him mellow and kept his manic swings in check.  He was actually a very bright young man and extremely polite. We spent some time talking with him abou...

I had taken Monday and Tuesday off and thought we would be able to 1) pull out all the carpets and padding (which were 14 years old and rather disgusting); 2) remove all the tack boards and the padding staples; 3) clean the floor; 4) paint the bedroom and living room; and polyurethane the living room sub-flooring (which I knew was 4 inch sold plywood - not particle board or low end ply wood. We had taken a peak under the living room carpet when we first say the house and were delighted with the quality of sub-flooring. The bedroom had the original oil based linoleum glued down to the sub-flooring, so we were going to clean it and live with it since our funds are limited right now. Pulling out the carpet and padding was really disgusting. There must have been an inch of fine dust which would have accumulated over 50 years. What would have taken a couple hours turned into a day and a half and we never got through the list above. Everything ended up with surprises. The linole...

I got home from work at around 4:30 p.m. and the phone rang.  It was Leslie, the manager from the Senior Park where my mom has lived for the past 11 years.  Leslie informed me that the Fire Department was called out because a neighbor heard my mom yelling for help from inside her little house.  She had taken a fall in the office at 8:00 p.m. the night before.  Being unable to get up, she pulled herself along the carpet with her arms and finally made it to the telephone only after sustaining severe rug burns on both her arms.  She was able to pull the phone down and attempted to call 911 only to find that AT&T was having technical difficulties with their lines.  The phone was dead.  She laid in the same spot, near the front door, for almost 20 hours calling out for help.  It wasn't until 4:15 the next evening that a neighbor, who was taking her trash can to the curb, heard her cries for help. Needless to say, it took this incident to make me ...