This is a section of the farm story

1995 Life goes on with necessary improvements

I will begin this section with some pictures of the cabin when I originally bought the property then give some of the building before the flood, then pictures of the wall around the house and finally pictures of the last phase of the building with the landscaping in place.

south side after leveling 93 east side with retaining posts 93 the very beginning cabin surrounded with trash

cabin view from trash pile 93 cabin with porch and 1^st trailer 94 94 cabin porch with 1^st trailer and screened in porch

I began to look for another trailer early that January of 1995. I found two almost back to back. The first one was in really good shape. The guy wanted 24 hundred dollars for it, but settled for 1600 hundred and my 20 foot flat bed trailer. The second was a mess. I wanted it for storage. The roof didn’t leak, but it had in the past. There were sections in the ceiling that were coming down. The corresponding sections on the floor were rotted away. I even fell in one hole up to my hip when I first looked at it. It is a wonder I didn’t break my other leg. It didn’t have a hot water heater or breaker box. It did have a whole bunch of metal shelving like grocery stores use. I told the man I would give him 1000 dollars for it with the shelves if he would deliver it. The first trailer arrived before it started to rain in January. I had already hired a guy to bring a load of ground fill and smooth it out level for me. The delivery driver parked the trailer just where I wanted it. He was great parking it right on the dime. I had him put the trailer facing east and west with the back end two foot away from the kitchen trailer side. This gave the trailers an arrangement like an L shape.

Art studio trailer on the south side 95 bedroom trailer on left, kitchen trailer on right with the

middle section for the living porch area to be built later

Start of dirt wall around the house complex. Picture on left

Makes the third side of the living area

I quit the furniture manufacturing plant the first of January because I was allergic to the dyes in the fabric. I would go to work on Monday feeling fine. By Friday I would be sick with congestion then by Monday I would feel ok again until Friday. It didn’t take long to find out why. I sat hunched over a sewing machine all day with my nose about 6 inches away from all the loose threads and material residue. That was deadly enough, but the feeling I had working with the zombie women be-moaning their station in life was worse. I said, ‘I quit.’ By doing that, I got my days freed up again in time to work on the new trailers.

Before the second trailer arrived we had more rain and it came just in time to be stuck in the mud. He driver tried to back it in through an opening in the fence he made by removing the wire. He promptly got mired in the mud. He had to leave it sit for a couple of weeks until the ground dried out. In the meantime I had another load of ground fill brought in and leveled out to form a pad for the trailer to sit on. This time the storage trailer was backed up to fit 3 foot away from the bed trailer. That gave me a C shape configuration with the 3 trailers. The purpose was to build a porch in the middle and connect everything together.

It worked beautifully. I already had a plan in mind for the porch. The door of the kitchen trailer would enter the porch then you could cross the porch to enter the bedroom trailer. The porch was to measure 35ft long by 20ft wide. On the far end of the C the storage trailer would have an extension on it to house the spa. Before all that could be done I put temporary steps to the doors to be able to get in and out.

Jump right in

The trailer was a standard two bedroom, one bath, kitchen and living room. It had two outside doors with one on each long side of the trailer. This way one would open to the future porch connecting it to the kitchen and the other opened facing the west side of the yard. The plumbing was still functioning and the breaker box worked. All the windows were in good shape along with the roof and ceiling.

I chose the end bedroom as the office area. Adjoining it was the bathroom. The next little bedroom had a wall system connecting it to the living room area. I wanted a large bedroom area so I took the wall down. Anyone who says a trailer is built flimsy should try and take a wall out with 3-inch staples holding it together. I had to be careful with the disassembly until I found where the electric wiring was located. After I found the wiring I banged and crashed with a sledgehammer until I was pooped. It was almost as bad as digging holes in the yard. When I finally got the wall out, the living room area extended another ten feet making that room 20 feet long by 12 ft wide. This would be my bedroom.

The kitchen area didn’t have a stove or refrigerator in it. That was ok, because I turned it into a sewing room. I kept the sink and plumbing and used the counter and cabinet space for sewing supplies.

I began the remodel by putting in 5/8 in plywood flooring. The floor wasn’t too bad with a hole in a couple of the corners, but I wasn’t going to re-do it later or ever again, so I floored the whole trailer. I also wanted to have enough strength to hold up the waterbed. I’m glad I went to that expense as it made all the difference in the world. I bought some low nap multi-colored carpet that is commonly called rag carpet and is usually used for porches. It is fairly inexpensive as it is made out of left over carpet yarns. I think I got a whole roll that did the entire trailer for a couple hundred dollars. This stuff could also be swept with a broom if necessary. The carpet went down easy. I used just a small amount of glue on the seam lines. The office area had a closet and built in dresser. I left them in to use for storage.

There is a hole in the bottom of the bathroom and the tub is sitting in the bottom of it

The bathroom had a problem. Besides a rickety hot water closet where the floor was disintegrated by water damage, the tub had suffered the same fate. I took the tub out of the hole and floored over the whole area and made it a closet. I fixed the floor under the hot water heater and made a platform for it to sit on.

The kitchen floor I put in wood grain linoleum tiles. I didn’t want to make a mess with pins and fabric scraps on carpeting.

Rip it up

I addressed the walls in the office and sewing room by padding the walls and installing stretched fabric. That insulated the room and cut down on the noise factor. It also hid the gruesome dark paneling walls.

The bedroom area I used paper pieces made from construction grade mauve colored paper. I ripped the paper into pieces about a foot square and glued them on the wall with wallpaper glue. I overlapped each piece with a torn edge of another one covering the entire room this way. I varnished the whole thing to give it not only a gloss finish but one that was impervious to bug bites. At the top of the ceiling line I stenciled a border of vines in 3 colors.

The ceiling throughout the whole trailer was in good shape, so I just painted it in cream and over-sponged a light blue color. This matched the blue carpet colors and the mauve and blue paisley fabric I bought for the curtains and bed covers. I got the fabrics from the furniture place I worked. It was left over yardage they were selling out of their storage room. It was nice working with 65in wide fabric. I made curtains for each of the four windows, bed curtain ruffle and closet curtain door. With the few scraps left over I made dresser cloths. All in all it turned out to be a very comfortable room that I have liked ever since I finished it.

The bathroom I papered in a faux rag design paper. That pretty much was all I had to do and by the end of April we moved the waterbed over to the trailer. The rest of the puff footed dressers and end tables finished the move. I put in the three small oriental rugs I had saved from the flood and we started to live in it. The cabin was then turned into a guesthouse with twin beds and other comfy things.

The office room we filled with the computer and desk and other stuff from the room in the kitchen trailer we had been using. When that room was emptied it became the library housing the bookcases, trunks and a small day bed. I put family pictures on the walls.

I unpacked my sewing machines and supplies arranging them conveniently in the sewing room. This plan remains to this day with only a minor amount of furniture shifting here and there.

During the time all the trailer refurbishing was happening I was also doing a number of things on the outside.

Dig it and they will come and swim

In February I contracted a man to dig the duck pond. The dirt that came out of the hole I had him place around the whole living complex. When the hole was big enough I started filling it with water. That was expensive. Before I even got it partly full the ducks and geese were in it trying to swim. When it rained a lot the pond would stay full, but when it was dry so was the pond. The dirt was too porous and leached out to the tree roots. I even added some bennonite mud, but that didn’t even help. I finally gave up. I put in a french drain connecting the pond with the gutter system on the roof and made the water go straight into the pond. Feast or famine with the rain but there was never a happy medium.

dirt wall in front of studio and pond freshly dug with geese in it already 95

Life in a moat, without a boat

Even though the trailers and breeze way were 2 ½ to 3 feet off the ground the cabin, patio porch and studio were not. He piled the dirt completely enclosing the whole living area. It was like living inside a moat

The dirt wall (berm) had to be fashioned to fit around the stack of building material that sat in the front yard. I built sets of steps going up to the doors. On the cabin side I had to build a stile step system. That was a set of steps going over one side of the berm and down the other side. The patio porch and front door were ground level so I had to design the step system to fit the level. By the time that whole thing was connected it made a dirt dam around the whole complex. This was tested out in May when another heavy rain made the yard float again.

It filled the pond and we sat high and dry (and trauma free) inside the dammed area. Good engineering. I patted myself on the back a lot for that one.

I spent a lot of time raking and shoveling the top of the dirt bank smooth, taking it a section at a time an working it fairly level along the top so it could be walked on. Eventually in the spring of 1997 I added tin to the trailer edge as skirt filler in back of the dirt from the trailer edge to the ground. This allowed the whole underside to be closed in and weather proof. This also kept the dirt from sliding under the trailer and kept the animals from using the under-house area as unwelcome guest quarters. It was amazing how much that simple piece of tin finished it off and made it warmer under the house and kept the cold

from freezing the pipes.

Picture taken in 96 of the snow, but shows the dirt wall area in front of the living area and the wood fence holding the dirt before the stone wall replaced it in 1999. The semi-circle is where the building materials sat until I was able to use them in the construction of the living room deck, windows and side porch with the spa. This view shows the spa room with the art trailer behind it. Later in 2003 this is where I added the walkway to the screen porch that will sit on the far left. See web page for screen porch pictures

In March 95 I started the foundation to the porch connecting the trailers. I put the 4x4 posts in the bell shape cement blocks and ran floor joists in-between them bringing the floor level even with the trailer floors. Before I was able to put on the plywood decking, I laid planks on the joists in order to walk between the two. I divided this porch area into an inner room of 20x15 and the rest an open porch area. The inner room had the plywood floor. I worked on this section first. After I got the floor down it started to rain a lot. Each time the sky cleared I ran out and swept the water off the plywood decking. Even though I had painted the floor the water still managed to warp it a little.

More of the building improvements are written in the book.

After I published the book improvements continued until I thought I was done, then the building itch started up and I had to add more. Even now in 2005, I am still finding more projects to do, hoping my arm will hold out until I am done. Who knows, I may never be through if the creative ideas keep coming.

cabin porch after windows replaced the screens and the front of the living porch and spa room with the wrought iron fence 1999

front of house with landscaping on the dirt wall (berm). Studio on far right breezeway next then the kitchen trailer followed by the living room, continuing to the left, the Iron fence in front of the living area. Out of sight on left is the art studio room.

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