Lauri Ann's New Life

I am a pretty old broad. If anyone ever asked me, I would not say I am a perfectionist about anything. But at this late stage of my life, I have found out I am a perfectionist about one thing. Contact Paper.

Now I remember why in recent years I had switched to just laying newspaper for shelf paper. Of course usually there is already contact paper on the shelves that is too much trouble to remove. I wash it down with Pursue disinfectant cleaner from Amway to kill all the germs, and then I just lay newspaper. No stick (so it does move, which is a bummer) but no hassle. Perfect.

The cupboards we're putting in the mobile home either don't have any shelf paper, or they have shelf paper I don't want, so I actually used the real stuff. Contact paper. Problems with that are:

1. It sticks. You lay it down and if you don't get it right the first time, you have to very carefully lift if up to shift it. At least it's not like the old stuff where once it touches the surface it is stuck as if it were part of what ever you were covering. Once you laid it down, you were stuck with it, or destroyed it and started over. LOL
2. You may run out before you are done with your kitchen (unless you are a math major). If the contact paper you started with is older, you may not be able to find the same pattern, like what happened with me. 
3. You mention to a girlfriend how you have to go to the store for contact paper and she offers you 60,000 feet of contact paper that is totally different in color and pattern than you already have. You have to make a decision. Do you go on using her contact paper, or do you use her contact paper and redo everything you've already done hoping you don't run out of that pattern too? 

I found some contact paper that has a backing, but doesn't stick like contact paper, but doesn't move like newspaper, while at the same time it's that easy to lay. The only problem with that is I found it at the dollar store and it costs about a dollar a piece to do a drawer. I'm used to paying $3.99 for yards of the stuff!

I haven't decided what to do yet, but it's looking likely that I'll switch to the pattern my girlfriend gave me. It's green and white which goes with both the brown and the white cabinets, AND, I've seen more of it at the Dollar Store. LOL. That's a win!

cupboards in original kitchen

When you're rebuilding a kitchen on a shoestring budget, you have to have a little vision. Between having two different and incomplete sets of cupboards, and all the rain we've had ruining a few before we could get them in the house, my vision was becoming a little blurry. LOL.

my hodge-podge of cupboards

I consider myself somewhat of a traditionalist and rather conservative. I'm one of those people that when you're putting things together they should match. Needless to say I was not a happy camper when Tom told me my upper cabinets were going to be the beautiful wood cabinets I love so much, but the bottom cabinets were going to be the white cabinets we had originally found on Craig's List. Due to the rain over the last couple of weeks, the project had been delayed, so in the meantime I have searching Craig's List like crazy to find more wooden cabinets to save me. No luck. As the cabinets are getting attached to the kitchen walls, I'm thinking "man, this kitchen is going to look like just what it is, a hodge-podge of cabinets off of Craig's List". 

As if to tell me what an ungrateful brat I was being, over the last few days I have come across 2 kitchens in other people's homes that were a combination of cupboards just like mine will be, and they actually paid to have them that way! One of my neighbors happened to have her sliding glass door and drapes open that peer right into her kitchen as you pass by. I immediately noticed that she had brown, wood-like cupboards on the top and white cupboards on the bottom.Actually didn't look so bad. Then I went over to another neighbors, and her cupboards were white with wood-like doors, and even this bright blue paint around some of the upper ones. (No, we're not going that far. LOL).

As a final, final, I looked up images of kitchens online. That really made me feel better because I could have actually paid someone for this:
This is another kitchen that has been "designed". It blends the wood and the white. I don't think I would be really big on the red.

As I wrote on March 1st in "15 Days Are Up. Are We Tenants Or Not" the owner of the mobile home park here has been fighting us all the way as to whether we may live in our mobile home or not. As of March 2nd, the answer was still "No". So we have gone back and forth now a couple of times, me submitting more information, him not accepting it, etc. I handed him my last attempt on Friday I believe, so I am currently waiting for his next move. It is actually eerie as to how polite he's been each time I have handed him a rebuttal compared to how irate and condescending he was when we first got here. Of course I'm sure one reason is because he has the final say regardless of how much information I submit, but at the same time I'm submitting it to his lawyers, so hopefully that may pull some weight, at least to what he can do legally.

In the meantime, we are continuing to repair and replace inside the mobile home. After all the rainy weather we had and the bad storms, the original cupboards which are really nothing more than press-board are not considered very sturdy. My girlfriend down the road knows a handyman that we just happened to run into at the grocery store. He mentioned he was doing a kitchen remodel for some folks and they were getting rid of everything in the kitchen, including the gas range, refrigerator, and dishwasher. I got so excited! I thought "This is it!" LOL. Silly me. Nothing is ever that easy.

I wasn't really interested in the cabinets, as we already basically had some even if they weren't the best, but I was definitely interested in ending my quest for appliances.

Of course it turned out to be exactly the opposite. When I went to look at everything prior to it being taken apart, I have to say I was a little disappointed to say the least. The gas stove looked halfway decent, but the broiler didn't work and all the burners needed new igniters to light. Needless to say it required a lot of work so I decided to pass. After all, a new one wouldn't be that much more expensive by the time we put all the repairs into this one. The dishwasher turned out to be a bust also. It obviously was leaking under it and had ruined the flooring, not to mention the knobs were gone, and it was just plain ugly. Tom didn't really want to give up the cupboard space for a dishwasher anyhow. This didn't help my case any.

Our Newer Cupboards

What we did end up with was a microwave that goes over the range, so the hood is already built in, and more cupboards. Tom's son was telling me that I might want to reconsider as the microwave is old and will draw a lot of energy, plus it's extremely heavy with not really any way to brace it. Scott also said the inside of it was a mess even tho the people said they only used it to heat coffee. So that is still kind of up in the air as to what we are going to do with it. I think we also scored an upright freezer, but I haven't seen it yet. The Mr. says they don't use it, so as soon as he cleans out the stuff that's in it we can have it. I'm thinking if they "don't use it" there can't be much to "clean out" right?

As you can see from the picture above of the old kitchen the cupboards are coming from, the cupboards don't go all the way to the ceiling. Besides being able to put stuff on top of them, there is a "few years" of dust and grease built up there. Of course while they were hanging, I never thought about that. I did notice how badly they needed cleaning on the front. Most cupboards have residue, etc from people's hands opening and closing them, etc. Trust me, these were no exception.

Tom's Wood Magic

We brought the first batch home after they had been taken out of the old kitchen and Tom went to work on them with some Murphy's Wood Soap and a little magic crayon he has. The difference in how they look is phenomenal! The boys were teasing about how I better not put a picture up of how the cupboards look now or the people we got them from may want them back. LOL. (They're getting new cupboards from Ikea).This picture really doesn't do them justice because the light was poor, but I'll put up a better picture later when there is more to see.

It took a couple of weeks from the handyman saying he was doing the kitchen remodel to us finally getting some cupboards, but I think it was well worth the wait. These are just beautiful, and they are real wood opposed to the ones we originally were going to put up. The grain in the wood comes out so nicely.

If you are going to remodel the way we are having to remodel, on a "less than" shoestring budget where the purse strings are already pulled way too tightly, it helps to see not only "what is" but "what is possible". A little elbow grease and these cupboards are as nice as anything I would go out and buy, but you have to be willing to wait for the right stuff to come along. Patience and vision are necessary and still a virtue, just like they say.

Well it's March 1st and we're still working away here at the mobile home. As I mentioned before in the post on February 13th, the park owner has been fighting us the whole way, though things have been very quiet lately. I had to get my lawyer involved (another expense) and he worked out a compromise with the park owner's lawyers just to get us an application for tenancy. We met the park owner's pre-conditions and I turned the application into the park manager on Feb. 11th. He's supposed to have 15 days for processing. I expected him to use all 15 days, but now it's past that and I don't have an approval or denial. I'm hoping he loses by default, but have a call into my lawyer to find out. In the meantime...

Old Bathroom Set up

New Medicine Chest

The same lady I told you about on Day 13 that was one of the first to help us with some stuff from the remodeling of her house, also had a medicine chest that I bought from her. She gave me a really good price and I just fell in love with it. It works perfect color-wise in our bathroom and it's wood instead of one of those (ugly) metal ones. You know how I mentioned about "cheap labor"? It hits me where I live. LOL. No, that is not a design around the new medicine chest. That is where Tom disliked the rock that the Perp had put on the wall so much, that he pulled it off. When he saw the look of horror on my face, he said "That idiot didn't have a wall or anything behind the rock. I'll figure out something to go around it. Don't worry." Honey, I am looking at insulation of the mobile there. Oh well...LOL.

He totally redeemed himself with this one though. I now have my kitchen floor. Yeah! And it looks so pretty!  We went from this:                                                                                
                                                                                                to this:

Before Laminate

After Laminate..

Not bad aye? Thanks to Tom and our wonderful flooring guy, Bay Area Flooring Broker.

Look here. There's a little bit of the wall so you can see the color, and then see that baseboard? That's not cheap rubber or plastic, Baby. That's a nice wood base. Pretty cool! I thought about sleeping on this floor I was so happy!

Colors Coming Together

 Just for kicks, here's a picture of the "Sidewalk Superintendent".  

Bear At Work

 If anyone is remodeling in the San Francisco South Bay or Santa Cruz County area and wanting to get rid of the old stuff, we are still looking for:

• A gas, free standing oven and range, and possibly range hood
• Cupboards (we have cupboards, but not enough. If you have some like these or you have enough to do the whole kitchen in something else, that would be terrific!)

Scott, Tom's son is fixing the gas and water lines as we speak, so, till the next step...             

Kitchen/Dining Area

This is what our kitchen looks  like right now. Pretty friggin' empty. LOL. We now have kitchen cupboards thanks to a nice couple in Boulder Creek that remodeled their kitchen. These pics are how the cabinets looked in their house. Not bad, and the boys said when they picked them up they were still in pretty good shape. We picked up the cupboards, countertops, and kitchen sink. All we need now is the laminate for the floors and the appliances and we'll be "cookin' with gas". (If you remember that saying, you're probably close to as old as I am. LOL).

 None of the appliances came with the cupboards, but I actually saw an old fashioned stove like this one on Craig's List and was thinking at the time how cool it was. I think we need something a little larger though since we can't even get everything for a holiday meal into a full sized oven now. Something else I've been seeing is a lot of "double ovens" but I'm not sure I'm willing to give up the cupboard space. We would have to do a double oven and then a separate stove top. The kitchen just isn't that big. We've pretty much decided on a free standing oven and range. Tom was right in the fact that it is a lot easier to find an electric stove than it is gas, which is what we are set up for.

The sink that came with the cupboards is cast iron and heavy as can be. Even though we got a kitchen sink already, we may go ahead and leave the one that came with the cupboards just for the ease of it already being a part of the set up.



It appears we also got our carpet thanks to Zion Engineering, a demolition and remodeling company located in San Francisco. Lucky for us a lot of the stuff they rip out during a remodel, he posts on Craig's List either for cheap or to barter, etc. Tom said these guys were so good and so fast it was like watching a bunch of busy bees around a behive as they were tearing this place apart. Tom and Scott say they "think" it's enough carpet to do the whole mobile home. I'm hoping. Part of the carpet is an off white Berber. I'm not a big fan of Berber, but it will look nice in my office and in the extra bedroom downstairs. The rest of the carpet is regular carpet, again in an off white, but should be consistent for the living room, hall and our bedroom. I'll tell you, of all the colors of carpet, white is probably the last color I should have in my house. I am too busy and just not very good at keeping anything white clean. LOL. At the same time, with as small as the mobile is and as dark as it can be, white should be a good color for making it "feel" bigger. It will make a nice contrast under our dark wood furniture.

If anyone has any suggestions or offerings, feel free to leave a comment or contact me by email. We appreciate it.