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

Start

Replacing the Tarp

We are now walking through a front door we got from Craig's List. To the left is what we started with. Talk about looking like "trailer trash", but it had to do until it became a top priority. I think the day it became a top priority was when my neighbor said how trashy our place looked, and she hadn't even been down to see it. When I responded she said "Well, that's what everyone tells me". I had just assumed everyone would understand rebuilding this place doesn't happen over night, but evidently I was wrong. LOL. For appearances sake, the outside is more important than the inside.

It also needed to take top priority as we are still fighting the park owner for tenancy, and expect to be going to court any day now. I surely don't want him to be able to use the fact that we are an "eye-sore" to work against us.

Primered, Ready for Paint

My whole point about this blog is how you can rebuild on a shoestring budget doing it from sites like Craig's List and Freecycle. I have to say that in our journey, we have met an angel or two. One is a guy named Nick Meltzer. We originally met him when we were selling the dessert flagstone in front of the porch. Come to find out he has all kinds of salvage stuff he sells very reasonably. We've been able to call on him more than once for things we needed. We got both the door and the window from him. The door is a solid core door, (very heavy) complete with deadbolt, door knob and all. Needless to say, he also has some primer and paint, which I'm waiting to see what he has now. In the meantime, Tom found a small can of white primer, and painted that on this last  weekend. (It actually looked a lot better before the primer, aye?)

We'll be painting the fence around the porch white, but I'm thinking about possibly introducing a 3rd color around the door and the window. The mobile is a very light gray siding with white trim. I was thinking about a teal maybe, for the door and the trim around the window, or do you think we should just paint it white? I'm open to suggestions.