Month: December 2018

We forgot to post about our 6-month trailer-versary, but trust me, it was unremarkable and we probably ate take out or something that can be microwaved since the fridge is still out. I cannot believe we have been at this for 6 months, and I am really hoping we don’t make it 7 months.

We are on the home stretch. There are small annoying things left to get taken care of throughout the house. We have a laundry list of electrical issues and finish items. The appliances are all in and (mostly) working. The contractors are scheduled to do their inspection with the city on Thursday. They know they are going to fail on a couple of items they are intentionally leaving because they can’t get the contractors back to do them right until after the holiday, but they figure this will get us a full list of everything that needs to be done and it should save us time as the contractors all make their (hopefully) last visits.

Yesterday they drilled cabinet hardware and mis-drilled one of the cabinet drawers. Ugh. We are also still waiting for the replacement facing for the microwave that was scratched when the oven door broke. We were also home last night when the lender’s inspector came through to verify work. He said he was officially done after this and we wouldn’t see him again. The end is near!

Since it’s Christmas and I am at a real computer, you even got pictures in a gallery! Darwin asked me last week if Santa was going to bring him a Christmas tree. I felt terrible, so we put one up in the house today super last minute so that we can at least open presents in there tomorrow. He saw it and said, “It’s perfect! It even has a star!” My heart melted into a puddle.

Merry Christmas to you and yours, I am thankful for all of you and this crazy family adventure of mine. Enjoy your holiday!

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This week someone who just recently learned about this adventure asked me, “Why the hell are you living in the trailer?” The simple answer is money.

If you know me well, you know that when we started getting serious about this renovation, we talked about logistics. If we moved out of the house, where would we go? What do we do with our pets? Our goats? We looked at some rentals online and quickly realized we’d be paying $2,000+ per month for rent on a house if we wanted someplace that would allow the pets. Then, we’d have to be at the house every day to check on the goats and feed them. And finding anyplace that would be flexible with a 6-9 month window was nearly impossible. It just didn’t make sense, even if we lived with family and skipped the rent. 

At some point last spring, one of us brought up the idea of living in a trailer. I think it was me. Probably as a joke, but then it started to make sense. Mike is a teacher and over the summer we could spend a lot of time at his parent’s lake house. We could pay ourselves rent and just bank the money to help with the house. And we would be here all the time so none of the animals would be displaced other than the cats that officially got kicked out of the house. These same cats that never want to come inside when I want them to, not complain about not being allowed inside during construction. Go figure. 

We went to the RV show because we started wondering if we could really do this and, if so, how big of a trailer did we need? We knew we didn’t want anything new because depreciation on a new RV would be compounded by the fact that we weren’t interested in keeping this trailer after the renovation. We realized that 30 feet and a separate bunk room were really the requirements to make this work after letting Darwin jump around in all the RVs. It gave us enough size without being too large (read expensive) and it also gave us a separate room for the kids so that we had some way to manage babies and toddlers sleeping as Trixie was still waking up 2-3 times a night.

We went to the local RV dealerships and quickly found this trailer. I wasn’t sold on it initially because it was a little more than we wanted to spend, but after watching used listings for a few weeks we realized it was pretty reasonable. I do a lot of automotive advertising so I have a great appreciation for the desperation that comes on the last day of the month when it comes to selling vehicles. We played our cards well and walked out with a great deal on the trailer.

I don’t think anyone thought we’d really do it, much less last this long, and tell people it was still the smart decision, but it was! I can’t wait to sell this thing and spend my rent money on a new leather sofa. 

Let’s talk about something lovely, this backsplash. It’s only partially done, but I am in love. And I am super proud of it coming together because I wanted to do something special, but I didn’t want to spend $15 sq. ft. I searched high and low for grey beveled subway tile that wasn’t glass and initially wanted to do a herringbone pattern, but seeing all the outlets in place made me realize it was a bad idea so I switched it up to this basket weave style today. I’m excited to see it grouted and finished around the edges and I think it will go great with the wall color.

Lots of things are going right and getting done, but it is really hard not to focus on all the stuff that isn’t.

This week started off which the electricians dropping the double oven on Tuesday and the result was not only a shattered oven door, but scraped up cabinets. 

Fortunately, there is a trim piece under the over that hides a large portion of it, but we are still waiting to figure out exactly what to do on the rest of it. The irony is that this is the same cabinet we found sitting in water a few weeks ago, the cursed cabinet!

This week all the lights went in and it’s so nice to have lights and electricity in the house! There was some confusion about what went where and a few missing lights, but it was all sorted out. 

Carpet also went in in the basement. It’s a very neutral brown. I don’t really like carpet, but downstairs it seems like a necessary evil. With the lights and the carpet, you can see the basement living room in all its glory. I do not really like the river rock wall down there, but we left it because some people love it. And I was concerned about it costing me a million dollars to have it removed- those rocks are huge! It goes well with the wood burning stove and it’s cozy. I picked up some leather sofas on FB Marketplace that are in great shape for down there and I am actually really looking forward to getting that space put back together because we’ve never really decorated down there. Taking out some of the wood actually modernized it a little, too. 

We’re also trying to get our washer and dryer in. It’s a VERY tight fit and we can’t get the dryer vent to not kink when we push it back. We finally gave up tonight. I want to do laundry at home SO BADLY, but it’s just so hard to do even simple projects in the house right now because we have no good place to put the kids. The house is full of hazards for the kids and we have about 30 seconds at a time to do something before one of them is doing something they shouldn’t like “just sweeping” the glass shards off the floor. I finally just told Mike to give up and we’ll try again tomorrow because we were both getting a little frustrated. The counter over the washer/dryer is going to be so nice, but man it makes installing them very hard. We were planning to reuse our washer/dryer, but got a crazy good deal on new ones, but as a result it wasn’t part of the bid and therefor it’s on us. 

In other news, the basement is still flooding on every warm day and the contractor told me this afternoon that they are doing to excavate the foundation from the outside and access. This means out yard will once again be destroyed, so maybe it’s a good thing that the landscaping didn’t get done. I am super relieved, however, that they are just biting the bullet and digging it out. This isn’t normal. 

The biggest news of the week was that Christmas in the new house just isn’t going to happen. While I wasn’t terribly surprised, it’s still pretty disappointing. Back in November, they told us January and we were okay with that, but then they moved it up. I wish they hadn’t. We might have made it, but our main project manager contractor went out of town for a few weeks and as a result, things just didn’t go as smoothly as they were as he’d been our main contact and knew about a lot of the details and preferences. 

Our new date is mid-January. Another month of trailer living.

I’ve had some people ask if we can move back in before they are officially done and we can’t because the house has not passed inspection to be liveable and it is also not insured as a dwelling. It would also just slow everything down to be working around us. 

TL;DR We have another month to go, but finishes are looking great!

This week started off with me feeling terrible. I wasn’t sure exactly what was wrong with me. Mike suggested stress and I told him to stop talking.

While laying in bed Monday afternoon trying to half work and half rest, Mike came in and said he  went downstairs and noticed a disturbing development, the foundation was leaking and showed me this picture. 

He may have been right about that whole stress thing. We called the contractors and they were surprisingly unconcerned. They think it’s a drainage problem because the new gutters which are ironically now keeping the roof from leaking in through the basement door are draining in that spot upstairs and likely leaking through the foundation. We still don’t have a straight answer on whether or not we need to rip out the wall or not. It’s on the list.

That’s what life has basically come down to at this point, a list. Our list has everything big a small small on it that still requires attention before we move in. Our main contractor hasn’t been around so now I’m freaking out a little that all the conversations about the little things, like reusing the garbage disposal, bathroom mirrors we already have, which knobs and pulls go where, etc. all need to be communicated again.

This afternoon our plan is to basically lay everything out that we have in each room. Their goal is still to be done by the 20th, but then we will still need inspections and a closing.

A few developments outside include new window well covers and ladders. When I was little the neighbors house burned down and then when I got older I because the Vice Chair of Disaster Services for the Red Cross so I am weird and crazy about things like this, but with good reason. The back stairs are also done. We were allowed to grandfather in our existing steps that are not to code, but our new steps needed to  have a larger landing. They were worried that if we did them in cement they would be too heavy, so we settled on Trex. It’s not my favorite to have them not match, but it’s just the nature of a remodel.

Inside, the granite went in. I got home at 11pm on Friday night and went inside to visit it. That is how much I love it. Mike and I got super lucky that we looked early because we found a stone that looks expensive, but was in our budget. The kitchen is 6cm on the edges and it’s amazing. These pictures don’t even do it justice.

The only three things that are really causing me heartburn right now are the granite in the basement bathroom where they didn’t center the sink, the squeaky floors in our master because of damaged si flooring, and this foundation issue. You know, minor issues. Ha!

Granite can’t exactly be easily fixed, so we are waiting to see if there is anything they can do on that. The flooring guys are going to take the wood up in our room this week and see if they can remove the squeak. It really isn’t bad, but it just annoys me because it should have been done before, and the foundation issue I don’t even know exactly what to do. We are caught in this battle right now of wanting to be done, but also wanting everything to be done right. 

Oh, and our replacement fridge for the fridge that went out the week we moved out of the house died last night. I’m so annoyed at it and want to know how I pissed off the fridge gods so bad. This means we have the trailer fridge only until we move in because I absolutely refuse to even care about another fridge issue. And this also means I refuse to grocery shop until we move in. You will find me surviving on Club crackers, Cheetos and bottled water.

So, now I will stop complaining and say that we are really lucky to even be doing this and I am so thankful to be staying in this place I love with these people I love. Turns out home is where you park it in some cases. And I’ve learned that Mike and I can do a lot of hard things if we are on the same team. 

TL;DR I think this project is giving me an ulcer. And the house is slowly coming together despite a few pretty big issues we have to figure out. We are grateful and love is where you park it sometimes!