advice please.

[cassie]

I have a little 1940's house trailer. I fixed it up really cute. Does your trailer have a deck? You can find really cute things for the yard for reasonable prices at www.collectionsetc.com. Hanging plants, decorative things on the deck, and some landscaping around the outside can make a world of difference. And if you scrounge a bit, you can do all of that for a very reasonable price.

 

[agnes_day]

thanks for all the great advice!
the one thing i am worried about is this..being in oklahoma, we have tornadoes in the spring..this place is a bit out from anything and i am wondering what we would in case one were to hit. now, in my whole life, i have been in 1 tornado, and it was a small one but i am wondering what we could to do stay safe during severe weather?
other than that, i think we are definitely going to at least try and make a go at it.

 

[Mojo Chick'n]

I live in a mobile home - well, they call it a "modular" home

it's a double wide and I absolutely love it. It is smaller than our old house and more open and bright looking. Granted, single wides are not my favorite choice of living quarters, but a double wide is a very nice home, IMO. But, even a single wide is good enough if you have good land and outbuildings!!!

I've seen very nice mobile homes and very "trashy" looking ones - depends on how you keep the yard and the mobile home looking.

Tornados do give me pause, we don't get too many, but our first winter here we had one pass a couple miles over. What folks do here is build storm shelters - nothing huge or fancy, they have concrete inserts you can put right into the ground, now - enough room for a family and house pets. Dig out with a backhoe or tractor, stick in your conrete insert, then back fill and pile over the top - you can even plant grass or flowers over it when you get the dirt back.

I don't have one, but I've been considering looking into it. We have a concrete milk barn up the driveway, so we go to it when a bad one is coming. I'd love something closer and less "ick" inside. If we had to, our neighbors have a basement and they told us to come down anytime we felt we needed to.

Look at it this way - land/barn/chickencoop/fencing costs more than a house trailer - if the trailer turns out to be bad, simply replace it somehow - you can get good used ones cheaper than new.

I'd go for it

meri

 

[Ol'FashionHen]

When my Dh and I first bought our land we purchased a 1979 14x60 mobile with 2 bedrooms and 1 bath for $3,000 to live in till we paid for the land. The home was in nice condition when we purchased it, just a little out dated. I hated paneled walls, plus one wall looked as if somone threw darts at it. So I filled in the little holes with spackel and painted the livingroom & made one wall to look like creekstone.
I purchased all my paint from Wal-Mart. In the kitchen I wallpapered the walls with some wallpaper I found at a place going out of business, it was actually a paneled look wallpaper that I put up sideways to look like it was a log cabin, and everybody loved my log kitchen ( no one noticed it was sideways).
I painted all the cabinets that rusty-cranberry color and installed trim that I bought from the Peddlers mall. I wallpapered every bedroom and the bathroom with wallpaper no more than 7.00 a roll, some was even 3.00. We found some wood laminate flooring really cheap and installed it in the bedrooms. My sister was replacing the carpet in her house and her old carpet was berber and still nice (she wanted a cashmere mix kind), so we used it in our livingroom and hall. We also installed a dishwasher. The main thing with mobile homes is .. if something is leaking fix it, do not let it go, floors and ceilings, and keep the roof sealed too. When we sold our mobile home, we sold it for $4,000. The buyer and movers could not believe how well it had been taken care of, and how nice it looked.

 

[agnes_day]

how inspiring! even though we will be renting, i dont think doing things like that will be a problem.

 

[mypicklebird]

I would recommend you walk the fence line- and find out who will be responsible for it. Is it a cattle type fence, or something that would keep in your animals and stray dogs OUT? We moved into a place with fenced land, but it was cattle fence (2 strand barbed wire between metal or wood posts, only about 3.5ft high). Dogs, cats ect could get in. Chickens & dogs could get out. Good fencing is expensive! My grandma lived in a double wide mobile home for many years, and though it still looked like a mobile home outside- it was well cared for, landscaped, clean ect. Inside it looked pretty much like a house with lowish ceilings!

 

[rodriguezpoultry]

Quote:
Think of it like this....no home is going to be able to stand up against a tornado. If you're REALLY worried, ask the person you are renting from, if there is a local storm shelter nearby, if you can use their storm shelter or if you can install one. I'd be more worried about an ice storm personally, but...

 

[agnes_day]

oh im used to the ice storms..i figure we are due for one this year!

i think it will be ok really..i mean, the kids will have tons of room to free range, as will the goats and chickens. it looks like we might not have internet for a while, but thats ok.

 

[redhen]

*gasp* No internet!

 

[agnes_day]

yes, that will be hard but i can always drive into town in the evenings and use the free taco bell internet!

it works better than the home internet.