Renovating a prefab (mobile) home

llazyiest · 05-25-2008, 09:30 AM

I have a 1987 triplewide goldenwest on an acre and a third. After living in it since 94 we finally got around to doing the things to it we've always wanted to. A deck went up out back. I found a beautiful "french" type door but modern.. has the grid in the glass.. at a habitat for humanity garage sale.. for $75. Had come out of a nearly new house. We had a contractor take out a window from the home office and put in the door to the deck. It's fantastic. It's in the room next to the kitchen (which has access to the kitchen) so I can pop in and out to the grill. Next.. we decided to get rid of the ugly counters. Did the demolition ourselves and had corian "aruba" (greyish blue with specks) put in with the integrated sink. Kept our newer faucets. Couldn't put the 1987 electric cooktop in the new counter.. In went a kenmore elite induction cooktop. Couldn't take the 21 year old vinyl.. armstrong "oregon slate" vinyl went in last week (see pic). We did the removal of the old vinyl and scraping off of the backing from the subfloor.
We've got boxes of Shaw homespun cherry laminate flooring waiting in the wings. We're going to install it ourselves. Most of my walls are textured finish but the kitchen and baths have that old wallboard with the strips over the seams you've talked about. While working on the kitchen, I ripped off all my old wallpaper.
(see pic of bare wall with windows). It was very easy to remove.. like ripping off shelf paper. This left the bare wallboard underneath (see picture with ladder.. no paper) Some seams were tight, others not. I filled any major gaps with expanding foam (comes in a can.) I wanted to make sure critters had no access. I watched some videos of taping and mudding and gave it a try. Not bad (no pics). Probably going to finish the wall with more mud in a textured look like the rest of the house. I did use that textured wallpaper in one corner (see pic - textured paper painted red) but figured for the work I might as well just mud the wall and paint it. Planning to use moroccan red. Had a friend rebuid the exterior entry which had rotted thru.. previously had been plywood under indoor/outdoor carpeting. He used cedar and built it in a chevron design. Some day I'll make it to the bathrooms and get rid of the built in tub unit. Photo is the new kitchen floor.. was just a quick shot for mom.
Other pic has the textured wallpaper experiment in corner of the peninsula painted red. Molding is still off the area in photo. Another picture is of edge of counter with the old wallpaper that's now gone.

annabell · 05-26-2008, 12:31 AM

Sounds like you've got alot going on. I'm very jealous. lol. I'm still in the dreaming, wishing phase. I'm single and work 6 days a week so i'm proud just to get the grass cut. I love the flooring in your kitchen. Looks very nice. thanks for dropping the reply. Good luck on your home.

llazyiest · 05-26-2008, 01:24 AM

The kitchen floor/ pretty big for a kitchen/ was 2nd to lowest level of Armstrong flooring - Benchmark. Tho we saved money doing the prep work, if you can install yourself you can save a whole lot more. I found it online for about $1.05 a sq ft! While we knew there were alot of things we wanted to do, there never was a "plan".. it was just pick one and start. We picked the deck first because we had no way to get out the back door to the ground. The old temporary steps had rotted off the year before and I'd had enough. I got a lucky referal for a guy who did the deck dirt cheap. We picked the counters next. That triggered the cooktop since we didn't want to put the old one back into a new counter. When I went to donate my old sink to habitats garage sale, I ran into my "dream door" and grabbed it. It needed to be reversed so it could swing the opposite way. That became the standard of picking a contractor. I knew it could be done and it took the third one I talked to who actually knew how to do it. The biggest job is for last.. putting down the laminate wood floor. We decided to do the kitchen first so we wouldn't have workers trotting across it to the kitchen. The shaw flooring came from floormania.com and was a steal. The kitchen flooring job triggered the tearing down of the wallpaper since we had to move a tall shelving unit to do the floor and I could actually get to the whole wall now.
I know what you mean about not having the time when you work. I'm unemployed right now so like to work on projects while my husband sleeps. The work actually started a year and a half ago. So it takes time.

Darylh · 05-26-2008, 09:48 AM

Looking good, you what they say all good things come eventually at least we hope.