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I am so sorry about your husband, I will keep you in my prayers I know that has to be hard. I have seen the houses that can be made out of cargo trailers.
Talk about recycling and going green. I am sure that they makes great houses once they are placed and put together. Nothing like living in a house that
is affordable and cheap.
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hmmm. I live in a double-wide with a 40' screened back porch, a 12' front deck, and a barn, all on a chunk of acreage. My horses are right outside my back door now and my chicken coops are behind the barn. It cost a fraction of a brick house but at the time we bought it (right after Katrina) the soonest a contractor could build us a conventional house was a 2-year wait. So we opted for the double-wide and have never regretted it. If we had built that house, we would have lost it when the economy went south. Instead we are sitting with a mortgage we can comfortably afford even though we lost our entire savings in the crash. Sure, sometimes here lately the food is a bit scarcer than we would like, but we can still cover our bills and the mortgage is in no danger of not getting paid. I would not go back to conventional.
The first year we were here, we built ourselves a tornado cellar into the north-facing side of one of our hills. It's only 10 feet square, but there is enough space for us, the dogs, and the parrots. This year we invested in a generator.
Oh, and I don't give a flying leap about what people may say. In fact, any gossip is more likely about our being pagan and gay than about what kind of house we live in.
Rusty
Wow! your place sounds really nice. I would love to put in a screen back porch, that is on our long term plans.
How much did it cost to put in your storm shelter? We are looking into that. After the out break in April we are thinking
that it might be nice to put something in. We have never left our house due to a storm but the outbreak in April did
spark a little interest in us to possibly leave till the storms were past. We ended up at the fire station at the end of our
road along with other people from the area who did not have besements.
Like you I am not sure if I would really want to go back to coventional housing. Our manufactured home is really comfy
and warm in the winter. Our house heats better then the brand new house that my parents just built a few miles away.
Their house is on a slab the floors for some reason always stay cold.
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I totally understand where you are coming from, the stigma can really get to you after a while.
Have you thought about painting your cabnets? I had the same feeling about mine that you did, instead of going to the expense
of putting up new cabnits I just painted them. My kitchen is a country rooster theme so I painted the top one sage and the
bottom one brown. It looks really neat and really made them look a whole lot better. I have some pics of my house
on a previous page, you can look at it and see what I mean.
I painted all my walls as soon as I could. I hated the colors that the previous owner chose and could not stand them.
The walls painted over really well, they look great now.
I have found that there really is a lot that can be done to the MFH to make them more like the way you want them.
We have changed out sinks, put in new faucets, painted walls, painted cabnits, put up new light switches, put new
lights on the outside and other such things. My next project is to change out the carpet and put down wood floors.
It has been kind of fun turning it into a place that I want it to look like.
A man up the road a few miles built a big polebarn on his property.
Then put a single wide mobile home inside it. Actually a pretty nice deal.
Keeps his cars, his camper, everything inside. Just once in a while will you
catch him with the big doors open. Mostly it just looks like a barn in a field
with a pretty nice driveway.
I totally get it...I grew up in Orange County, California...in Yorba Linda...look it up. Froo froo and posh describes my life until I was 18 and graduated High School...I struck out on my own being an independent PITA of a child...and within a year found myself first in a TRAVEL TRAILER and then in another year I was in an actual "mobile home" (though to me the first one was MUCH more mobile
)
At first - it was like camping. I was young, it was an adventure - we were in a camper living literally on a lake! But we needed more room...then came the mobile home and while much roomier...I hated it! I wanted to be in an apartment at least - I couldn't stand the stigma of being "trailer trash" that my friends back home in Cali (because I was by now in Texas) had attached to my housing situation. I painted, decorated, we paid $1500 for a 2 bedroom 1 bathroom 30 year old trailer - I could do whatever I wanted with it - and i HATED IT! I would WISH for tornadoes whiles I was working each day, HOPE for hurricanes each year to barrel through - and it never happened. When I divorced my first husband - I was HAPPY to walk away from what I saw at the time as a dilapidated, ancient, paid for but older than me and falling apart trailer home - what I did not see what that I was in effect giving up privacy, free will, and lot rent that was DIRT CHEAP!
I was glad to be in an apartment - until I realized I no longer had a yard in which to plant flowers or for the dogs to run, it got worse when I realized things like painting were out of the question and when rent that was more than twice what I had been used to paying cut into the budget (because lot rent in a trailer park is super cheap where we were), then I was really sorry. With my second husband now in the picture we were more than happy to live in a trailer on several acres when the opportunity arose! He had NEVER lived in a trailer, and had some worries himself about adjusting, just as I had at first when I arrived in Texas. Surprisingly, we were both just fine with it and only moved this summer to a place with more land - not really a better house by the standards of some people, but to us, it is heaven.
We are now in what was once 3 sheds/barns that some clever person stuck together, outfitted in wood inside and out, and made into a one bedroom cabin of sorts - in all honesty, is that a step above or below a trailer? Seriously, my kitchen you can tell by it's shape, was INTENDED to be a barn! But it is oh so special to us! It's apartment sized - which for just us 2 is fine, but equipped like a cabin with hardwood floors and HUGE picture windows overlooking my horse pasture and 10 mostly wooded acres - it's like being in a fairy tale to us. BUT...we do live on a flood plain, very near a river...the reality exists that one day this little cabin could float away and we have discussed it in length before moving here. SHOULD we ever find we need a boat to leave...we're probably just going to come back rolling a trailer home in. I'm not Bob the Builder, neither is my husband - if we ever loose this place, it's back to manufactured housing for us...and we'd be okay with it. We aren't willing to spend tons of time and money if we could instead just spend the money and roll a new home in - heck, we'd probably just leave the wheels underneath concrete slab be darned!
But it did take me time to learn to be okay with. Growing up, the ONLY mobile home community I can think of in the city of Yorba Linda was actually a RETIREMENT community - all elderly people in cute little trailer homes complete with a duck pond in the middle. Other "trailer parks" were in "crummy neighborhoods" and not to be visited - that was how I was raised. I had to come to terms with the fact that not everyone can afford a million dollar home in the hills of California - heck, I don't even think I'd fit in there anymore anyways...I could just see me now as I am...early in the morning...in my pajamas and cowgirl boots, hair a mess...going out to feed things...people I used to know would be SHOCKED! And not all people that live in trailers are redneck white trash or crackheads...but I had to learn that because it wasn't what I was used to. My attitudes on what's important have changed as I have grown and aged some...it just took a good dose of reality post divorce to see how lucky I had been. I spent a few years looking at back at my 'trailer park days' wishing for them between marriages...and now I really do live in a barn...10 years ago I would have given ANYTHING to be in a home in the hills of OC again...crazy how priorities change...
I will admit - we do amongst friends and family joke a lot about being "trailer trash" - I mean, I have walked through the yard in flip flops and a nightgown on SEVERAL occasions to get my niece off the bus after school when I was working nights half awake and looking a mess barely awake...she didn't care and neither did I
I'll also admit, I'm one of those people who just HAS to have fun with it a little bit - I can't avoid the opportunity to have a good laugh...and we've done some crazy stuff living in a trailer I never would have done living in a fancy subdivision with an HOA to answer to...good times, good times
When hubbo and I married, he was 55 and I was 36. We decided that we didn't want to work for the next 30 years to pay off a house, so we bought a 95 Redmond. That was in 96, and we have been living in it since. We moved when we bought the land, and took trailer and all. Now, we have a 22x12 room built on, and a 12 ft wide porch that runs the rest of the front, and a nice back porch. We put cedar siding on it, and a new red roof, and it is great! And our power bill last month was 105 bucks. And the place, including the land is paid for. Hubbs has said that we will get a new one, and I tell him that as long as it doesn't leak, and the floor holds us up, it's home!
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Sounds like you have a good deal with your home. We did not want to work 30 years for a mortgage either. We wanted
to make sure that our house payment stayed a 30% of our income and no more. That way we have more money
for the things that we want to do. I have to admit that although it is a MFH and gets a bad rap sometimes it is not
a money pit by any means. All that we did to it were things that we wanted to do as electives. So I agree with you
on not wanting to work just to pay off a house.
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We looked at a place a few years ago and it was out of our price at the time, but had a big redwood barn. Ugly house. I told my husband I wanted to restore and convert the barn to a house and put another barn up furthur out. I love old converted barns. You can do so much with them.
Then there was the dome on 10 acres for 10k and the guy didn't get out emails until afetr he had sold it for 6k. He just hadn't checked his emails in a couple of weeks.
I like what you can do with other things and I always have liked Different.
i want to feel spoiled lol
i have the paint to paint the walls im taking mirrors down (hate the HUGE mirrors in here) and putting smaller medican mirrors up
im painting one room at a time
im kinda scared of color LOL!!!
always thinking what if i dont like it.
OH GOODNESS AND LIGHTSWICHES i have a few that snap crackle pop when i turn them off and on THAT is scary
aww country rooster i so need to take a look. we took out the toilets and foucets also
i JUST changed the outside light and painted omg it look sooooo better!!
its amazing what a fresh coat of pain and a brand new light does to your home
lol 
