The Mobile Home Project

Get rid of that Carpet!

2010-08-20T10:34:00.000-07:00

If you buy a used mobile home, the first thing you want to do is rip out that gross old carpet in the bathrooms. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? Now I already feel that mobile home manufacturers are the scum of the earth, building crap-ass mobile homes with wallpaper that went out of style the second it was invented and they are always looking for a cheap way out of things, but seriously? It's easier for them to install carpet AROUND A TOILET than to just put linoleum?

Yuck I just threw up a bit.

Like I was saying, rip out that disgusting carpet, and dear Lord, if you are living in your home right now with that carpet in it, get up and rip it out now! Carpet is easy to remove. You just grab the edge and yank. Then you'll need to remove the tack strips with spikes in it, but after that you're golden.

Even if you can't yet afford the $1 a sq ft. sticky tiles I'm about to show you - just rip out the carpet and live on the sub floor. It's worth it. I don't have a picture of this, but what I did was paint a nice coat of primer (the same stuff I used on the walls) on my bathroom sub floor before I tiled. There's already some green crap on there but it was poorly applied. Then I lived on the white floor until my handy awesome dad came over and installed the sticky tiles for me.

Sticky tiles aren't the best thing in the world. But in the spirit of being cheap and trying to improve your mobile home, here ya go.

Cheap and Easy Countertop Redo

2010-08-20T10:12:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick fix to cover those hideous mobile home countertops. Use contact paper! There are websites advertising high quality contact paper made for this purpose. They cost about $10 a roll. I bought this roll from the Family Dollar for $2 and it worked great and has lasted for 2 years so far. In all, it took about 30 minutes to do, with the help of my sister.

1. Unroll the contact paper on your countertop and cut it to fit your counter. For the sink, I laid it ontop of the sink and pressed around the edge of the sink with my fingernail to crease it, then I cut along the crease.

2. When you get to a seam, overlap the contact paper by half an inch, if you overlap it anymore it won't look as good.

TIPS:
**Make sure your counter is VERY VERY CLEAN first!! Even the slightest speck of dirt can cause an air bubble!
**You can let the edges hang over and slice them off with an Exacto-blade when you're done. It makes for a nice clean edge.
**When the counter is clean, keep it wet with some water and dishsoap (any liquid soap will work). Not soaking wet, but damp.. This allows the paper to slide around as you position it and makes things way easier.

**I used a squeegee to carefully peel off the backing and apply it to the counters, if you don't have one try to find something that would work the same way.

Halfway finished

Finished! It was an instant transformation to the room.

Some background info

2010-08-20T09:56:00.001-07:00

At 22, I was a single mom, sick of renting apartments and wanted my own home. On an extremely tight budget and with a little inheritance money, I bought a 2001 single wide mobile home. I hated it. I still hate it. But I knew it was a good move to stop renting and start owning - even if all I could own was what I considered a dumb trailer.

A few years later, I am now in the process of fixing it up so I can sell my mobile home and upgrade into a real house.

I'm starting this blog to give other mobile home owners inspiration and tips on turning their "crappy trailer" into a home. This isn't one of those websites where people worship mobile homes and think they are the greatest dwelling on earth and are willing to pump loads of cash into it - it seems like that's all I see when researching renovation projects. This is a blog for people who are broke-ass poor, like me, who want to fix up their home little by little as cheap as possible.

Because that's exactly how I did it.

Here are some Before pictures of the mobile home I bought a few years ago. It was a foreclosure that had been vacant for 2 years. Everything was original and there was CARPET IN THE BATHROOMS. Yuck.