Lauri Ann's New Life

Last post I showed you the new door and window that replaced that trashy looking tarp on the front of our home office. Yesterday, Nick called me to let me know he had 3 pints of paint to finish it. Today I will be calling him to let him know the paint won't be necessary. We are losing our home and will be out of here by the end of January.  Thank goodness we didn't spend a ton of money to fix up this place!

We had a pretty good case against the park owner for denying us tenancy, but now that the City has done away with all rent control leaving the park owner to charge what ever he chooses for space rent, there is no point in even fighting any longer. He has raised our rent over 300% and according to my lawyer, could raise it again every 90 days. I'll tell you, I just want to live in peace for a change. I don't know how these people who have been fighting with him for the last decade have lasted. Many of them didn't. And it's getting worse here everyday.

We've had quite a few just walk away from their homes. A couple people have died in the past. Their surviving family members swear it was the stress from the park that finally did in their loved ones. There are a couple now that have cancer and feel they don't have the strength to fight cancer and the park owner both, so they are walking away.

I have never known the old adage "there's no justice for the poor" as it has appeared in the mobile home park. The park owner and his lawyers have and are breaking laws at every turn, but there appears to be no way to stop him. People are either too intimidated to fight, afraid they will lose their leases, or they can't afford to fight the deep pockets of the park owner. His lawyers are known for inundating their opponents in paperwork until their opponents break. They are doing it to whole cities, what chance do little, low income, elderly people have? Not much I'm afraid.

I'll still be carrying on with the blog, but maybe with a little different angle and more tips. I'm not sure. We'll just have to see what direction God takes us. LOL

It's been a little bit since I posted here. It's just so hard to rebuild, be a political activist, and post. LOL.

Psycho-Kitty

I'll start with the psycho kitty. I found her in our garage in the house we used to live in. The mother had abandoned her (now I find with good reason) and left her sitting on a shelf meowing. Of course I had to rescue her, so I brought her in the house and we bottle fed her "kitty formula" until she could eat and drink on her own. She had a pretty rough "kitty-hood". First she had to get all her kitty shots, which she didn't appreciate much. Then my son stepped on her little leg and she had to have a cast put on. When she was 4 months old I had her fixed, which now I'm wondering if that is part of her problem. Maybe I should have let her have a litter first. All these little trips to the vet, and I'm usually the one that takes her. Needless to say, she hated me until my kids grew up enough to leave home and I'm the only one she has left. LOL.

When we moved to the mobile, there is no way to let psycho-kitty outside. She goes completely psychotic out of her comfort zone. She needs glasses, and because she's so far sighted, she doesn't jump and stuff like other cats. When we lived in our other house, there was a fence around the yard but it was tall enough I don't think she could ever see to the top, so she never jumped and I never had to worry about her getting out. So, I decided we needed to do something so she could go outside here. Tom was very good and built a fence around the porch, which we had discussed doing anyway. It only took my black cat 2 days to teach the psycho kitty how to jump the porch, so we can't let her out anymore. She climbs the lattice. So now the plan is to put plastic or acrylic along the backside so she can't climb it like a ladder. What a pain. LOL.

As you can see from the pic above, I still don't have an office door. That green thing in the back is still the tarp that was there when I took the mobile back. Guess what? I put an ad under the "wanted" section of Craig's List for sliding doors, or exterior doors, and got a couple replies. Unfortunately, if you have sliders but don't have a frame, it's pretty tough to get the frame by itself, so that pretty much ruled that out. I had a guy willing to sell me the sliding glass doors cheap, but couldn't make it work. Then, a guy that had bought some flagstone from us and we gave an extra cast iron sink to if he would just take it, contacted me with exterior doors, window blinds, curtains, etc. I am so jazzed! He is super reasonable for pricing on his exterior doors and windows. He has the door jamb and everything!

So now that we may actually almost get this place finished, where do we stand? Well the City of Capitola reached an agreement with our park owner and amended our rent control ordinance. Talk about selling your soul to the devil! The City of Capitola signed the agreement thinking the owner would raise rents, etc. "in good faith". WRONG. He and his lawyers, Hart, King, and Coldren, aka HK&C have gone hog-wild. They handed out 252 page leases with many objectionable clauses. They are doing illegal 'Warehouse Lien Sales' or at least one that I know of (because it's me), and anything else they can do to get ahold of the mobile homes in here. They raised rents to double and quadruple what the appraiser for the City of Capitola's unbiased appraiser says they should be, and that appraisal was done based on the infrastructure being in good condition here, which it is not.

Sam Storey, Mike Termini- City Council

Mayor Norton

Needless to say, since the amendment to the rent control ordinance, while the City of Capitola may have dodged two lawsuits (that they very likely would have won) they became the subject of two more lawsuits. One they already won, although they shouldn't have, and I hope the fighting for that one isn't over yet. The other won was some of the residents in the park against the park owner. The park owner then filed a cross-complaint against the City. At the end of August, the Capitola City Council held a meeting to repeal rent control completely. That was considered the "first reading". The "second reading" and to make it into an ordinance was to happen Sept. 8th. Surprise! At the Sept. 8th meeting, the Capitola City Council voted to shelve the repeal "indefinitely". We'll see how long "indefinitely" is. The Mayor, during a break after the vote says it's only the next month or two.

We've already lost some of our neighbors who weren't able to afford the higher rents. A lot of us are still here fighting, although it's tough since most are low income seniors and lawyers cost money. Which, by the way, if you care to donate anything, anything at all to our "legal fund" please contact me at lauribeamish@gmail.com. Any amount would be appreciated. In the meantime, I've posted a couple pics below of our new neighbors. I wish I could catch some of the cubs, but haven't been successful so far. LOL.

Mama shares the catfood on the porch

She likes crackers. Drew her out for a pic

I cannot believe it has been a little over 2 months since my last post! Fighting City Hall and the Park Owner have literally taken over my life! My status in the mobile home park is still "non-resident", after him collecting rent from us for the last 7 months. We also have been trying to get some help from the City since changing their rent control ordinance against the mobile home owners, but that hasn't seemed to get anywhere either. The park owner and his attorney sent a 252 page income verification and lease packet to many of the residents in the park. Besides the fact that it takes an attorney to go through the lease, many of the provisions seem to be in conflict with both the City Ordinance and the Mobile Home Residency Law. Yet the City of Capitola has done nothing in the way of coming to the rescue. Part time City Attorney Barisone originally said he would charge the owner with a "Breach of Contract" if the lease and new ordinance conflicted. Like all the other bologna the City gave us before the ordinance was passed and lease packets were handed out, it appears this too was just a line.

In the meantime, I am happy to report that we have obtained most of the major appliances we needed. Tom and I were going over the costs so far and we figure the rebuilding costs are less than $100 so far. I had put an ad on Craig's List in the "wanted" section, and this wonderful gentleman that owns "HoneyDo Services" here in Capitola dropped off a very nice gas dryer to us. He said the lady he was working for, after testing it decided she didn't want gas, and told him to get rid of it.

Not too long after we got the dryer, some very dear friends of ours were cleaning out a house and asked if we would like the washer, dryer, and gas stove. Needless to say I was thrilled! but we had no way to haul them. It turned out they were doing some things on this side of the hill, so they delivered them. Who says there's no God? LOL. Even Tom doesn't say that anymore with the way we have been so blessed!

 Once we got the washer it took me days before I could see the bottom of the dirty laundry. LOL. It's amazing the things I did naturally when I was younger, like going to the laundrymat, are such a bother now. It works like a champ!
This was the second dryer we received, but I think it needed a new thermostat. It took forever for the clothes to dry. Actually the first one we got looked more like it went with the washer anyhow. We donated this and the money will go to help fund Grey Bears, a non-profit for seniors to receive fresh produce, etc.







I couldn't ask for a better stove. It didn't take me long to get used to cooking with gas again. LOL. This thing is so great! It's self-cleaning, the digital clock tells you the oven temp, and the timer gives you a 1 minute warning before it goes off. All the bells and whistles. I just love it. I would have taken a picture of the kitchen, but after cooking last night I swear I used every pot and every available counter space there was.






I added a "wish list" to the right hand side. There isn't a whole lot left that we need. I need to add some measurements. I always thought sliding glass doors were just a standard size, but I have since found out that was not true. The office still has the ugly green tarp on it versus a doorway. Tom hooked up the TV and VCR/DVD player out there and I would like to have a door before it rains again. LOL.

So what have we spent the almost $100 on? Mostly things like pipe for the kitchen sink, vent hose for the dryer, screws for the shed, things like that. The biggest part of the money went to our lovely queen size hide-a-bed for the livingroom that we just acquired from a neighbor. I'll post a picture of that next time. In the meantime I'm off to write another letter to the park owner's attorney. He's trying to call our space rent "storage fees" and triple what we're paying without giving the proper 90-day notice. May be time to call Senior Legal.

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.

Here we are 41 days into our new project and this is where we are and what we've been through.

We moved out of our place in Santa Clara. Here I was hoping to get out about a week early to let the landlord have some time to paint, etc. before the new tenants moved in. Instead it took us up to the very last hour of daylight on the 31st of January to get all the stuff in the truck and for the guys to get it over the hill before dark. I stayed behind to continue cleaning for a few hours after everyone else and everything else was gone. I didn't have a clue how much stuff we had packed into that little 3 bedroom duplex in just a little over a yr. After all, we had virtually emptied 3 different storages of "stuff" at 3 different times, so I sort of lost track. LOL.

From this...

Leaving Santa Clara was sort of bittersweet for me. I had found a church home I loved and my neighbors on both sides of me were fantastic! In fact while I was cleaning there the last night, the neighbors on one side of us came over and brought the cutest little ice cream cake that said "Farewell" on it and wished us luck. My neighbor and walking partner on the other side stopped by to say good-by and brought me a couple pieces of pizza thinking I might be hungry since I was working so late. While coming back home, so to speak is wonderful and living on the coast seems like a luxery, I will miss the people and wonderful friends I've made over the last year. I'm just lucky to be close enough to stop by and say "hi" once in awhile.

So we rented this huge 24ft. truck and in my dreams, I thought we would load it, unload it, and turn it back in the next day. Our total bill at the end was to be 4 days, and the guy gave us a break because we were 20 minutes late getting it back. He could have charged us another day, but didn't. Luckily the guy at Budget was pretty good and pretty reasonable.

In order to get the truck back when we did, we unloaded a lot of stuff in the mobile home, but then filled up the whole carport and the front porch. The storage shed is still laying flat out there somewhere waiting to be rebuilt.

We are on a side street in the park that has 8 mobile homes on it, including ours. Only ours and my girlfriend at the beginning of the street have anyone living in them. 2 are "vacation" homes, 1 is rotted out and needs to be taken out of the park, and 1 the owner passed away and his son has it up for sale. We are like at the end of a court if it were a housing track. The street light across from us doesn't work and the park owner is angry so he's declared the two spots at the end of the street that have been used for parking for the last 30 yrs. are a "Fire Lane" and no one can park there.

To this...My new kitchen

We ran into sort of a snaffoo over here in this land of Paradise. The park owner who had been so nice the day I auctioned the mobile home and got it back, has turned out to be quite a bitter and nasty man. The day of the sale he told me he didn't know if I needed an application for the park because I had lived here before, and because the mobile home had always been mine legally. He gave me a disclosure concerning the park, about how he was in a battle to close it, (he wants to turn it into a condo conversion), and said he would fax me an application and I could fax it back. I hadn't received the application so I had left a couple of messages for him, but he never got back to me. I didn't think there was any problem, so I just started moving in. Silly me. LOL.

Our street-all our stuff on the right

The next thing I know, this man is yelling at me for having some of the furniture in the street (remember, there's not another soul down here), telling me I have to move everything back out of here, and then he serves me with a 5 day notice to give up possession of the space my mobile home sits on. Now mind you, before I sold this mobile home to the Perp almost 5 yrs. ago, I owned and lived in or vacationed at this mobile home for over 10 yrs. and never gave the park any problem. The way this guy was acting now I was Enemy #1. Needless to say, I had to call my lawyer and have him intervene. Another expense I didn't need, but help I did.

So now we have complied with all his wishes. I have gotten a copy of the title showing me as registered owner, as that was one of the conditions to me even getting an application for tenancy, and he has 15 days to process it. So we are here waiting with baited breath.

In the meantime, I found my laminate for the kitchen and dining room floor. We're supposed to pick it up Tuesday. I found this guy in San Jose who is a "flooring broker" and has basically factory direct pricing. If anyone is thinking about remodeling or redoing your floors, I would highly recommend him. He's located in Willow Glen and you can visit his website at Bay Area Flooring Live. com 

I have such a story to tell you about our carpeting, but that will have to wait for next time. This has already gotten rather long. If you have any suggestions for cheap remodeling, I'd love to read them in the comments below.