Lauri Ann's New Life

Hide-A-Bed & Cat Stand

As promised in my last post, here's a picture of our new (new to us) queen size hide-a-bed. The cushions are in great condition, and they tell me so is the mattress. We couldn't have gotten it any too soon as my oldest daughter spent a couple of nights here last week, and my son is coming for about 9 days on the 26th of this month. Not only are the cushions in great shape, but all that blue are custom made slip covers to just unzip and throw in the wash when necessary. Truly a steal at $35.00.

Tom finally got around to making a scratch pole for the cats. We had left over material from the carpet we had gotten off Craig's List, and from tearing down a lot of Larkin's mess around here. It turned out really great except the top peace is just a little too small and the cats hang out over the end. LOL. I think we're going to have to change that to just a flat platform that is a bit bigger in circumference. Tom's a little worried that if he does that, it will tip too easily, so we'll have to do a little research first.

Sign Outside One Resident's Home

The Surf and Sand Mobile Home Park has been in total chaos since the park owner and his attorneys sent out the lease packages, income verifications, notices, and intimidating letters. For homeowners in the park, the park owner has to give 90 days notice before he can raise any rents. For me, since I have never been accepted for tenancy, the park owner has tripled our rent and is calling it "Storage Fees", effective July 1. He and his attorneys still say we have no right to occupy my mobile home. The lawyer I spoke to says he can't advise me to pay it because the park owner could just keep raising it and still never give me tenancy. I paid what the space rent should be plus the utilities, and am expecting an eviction notice anytime now. They gave me until 5:00 last Monday to pay the difference and I advised them I wasn't going to, so now they have given me until 5:00 this Monday, the 18th to pay. I am going to have to retain a lawyer eventually, so lately I'm working on how to raise money for a "legal" fund. LOL.

Residents of Surf and Sand Beg for Mercy

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.

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!

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.

So far we've had pretty good luck with the things we've picked up on Craig's List. The one place I would spend more money if I had it is on labor. I'm pretty excited about the carpeting we picked up. I finally saw it the other day laying in the living room and hallway. It's amazing how much homier the mobile home feels with just the addition of a carpet. Where I'm having a problem is getting it actually tacked down. I had advertised for a carpet layer on Craig's List, and of course took the lowest bid. We all know the saying "You get what you pay for". When the gentleman answered my ad, he sounded as if he could get it done right away. As it turns out he comes to me to do the carpet after he works another job putting on a roof somewhere else. By the time he gets to me he doesn't have much time left, either because he's got some emergency at home or because it's getting dark, etc. Evidently his bid was low enough not to motivate him to get me taken care of. This is a problem for us as we are under a time limit and are waiting for the carpet to get laid to move our furniture in. I've paid him in part already for the work already done, but it's like being between a rock and a hard place. I really can't afford to go now and hire someone else to get it finished. I had a long talk with his wife last night and she was going to help motivate him. LOL.

We just picked up a Queen size box spring and mattress that the people took such great care of it, it was wrapped in the original plastic when we went to get it. It's incredibly firm, which my old body will have to get used to, but it's great for my posture. Between the King that we just downsized from and this Queen, I've probably grown 2 inches since our last Queen size bed just by standing up straighter. LOL.

We should be out of here this weekend and living on the other side of the hill by Sunday. It wasn't as fast as I would have liked, but it is what it is. I'm having a heck of a time finding boxes for packing. When we moved in here we gave all of ours away. It's not like the old days where you could drive behind a few stores and pick up tons of boxes. Now they have them all broke down and bundled. It seems the ones listed on Craig's List are gone before I've even seen the ad. Speaking of which, I better get back to packing the boxes we do have. Time is ticking away.

Just remember, if you have a shoestring budget, the one place to spend the money you have is on the labor for things you can't do yourself.

Not everything goes according to the "rebuilding" plan that I have in my head. As I mentioned once before, a friend of ours is moving and is on the same timeline we are. He also has to be out by the end of the month. He's had a couple of yard sales and is to the point of just giving the rest of what he doesn't want away just to get rid of it. One of those things was a 10' metal shed. Originally I didn't know he was getting rid of it. I thought it stayed with the property. Since the Perp already had a plastic 10' shed at the mobile home, when my friend said he was giving his away I jumped right on it. Like most mobile homes all we have is a carport. There is no place for storing anything, least of all Tom's tools.

According to my friend, taking this apart was supposed to be about a one to two hour job. I have no clue what he was thinking. It took two guys almost 2 days to take it all apart. There were a million screws and square bolts to be undone and not only that, but my friend had painted the shed so all the screws were filled with paint. Not a job for the lighthearted. LOL. I just kept reminding Tom how much it would cost if we had to go buy a shed. That took a little bit of the sting out of it.

Now we're down to "crunch time". This is where I try to line things up in order for us to be out of here within the next few days. I want to leave enough time for the landlord here to paint, etc. before the new tenants move in. We have the carpet for the mobile. The very first thing I need is to get it laid right away so we can move our furniture over there. Unfortunately, this too has to be done on a shoestring budget as we don't have hardly any money left and we still need to get a truck. I put an ad on Craig's List and have had one offer that is at least realistic for us, and the guy seems to understand the position we're in. The other 2 offers I had were rates guys normally charge. If we could afford to pay that, I wouldn't have put the ad up. Helloooo. LOL.

Another thing I have to put my attention to is the fact that there is no door to my office. Where the green tarp is in this picture is where the Perp totally ripped out what ever door was there. I have no clue if it was a slider or what, but there is no frame, nothing, just wide open space. Needless to say I really don't want to move all my office furniture and computer in there without even having a door. Of course, now that's truly being "open for business". LOL.

According to the "rebuilding plan in my head" things fall into order 1,2,3... In reality it doesn't work that way. It seems when you get down to the steps of moving into the home you are rebuilding or remodeling, so many things have to happen almost at once!

If you live in the San Jose, Santa Clara, or Santa Cruz area and have items you would like to get rid of from a remodel or demolition job, we are still looking for appliances, a bathroom vanity (36" wide), a door to my office (81.5" x 67"), and laminate for the kitchen and dining area (approx. 170sq. ft). Will exchange for a ton of advertising if you are a company or have a business. Just contact me at lauribeamish@gmail.com

Beautiful!

We took a trip over to Capitola to check on the mobile home today. Haven't been over there in almost 2 weeks. I was half afraid. I didn't know if the Perp had been back, and if he had didn't want to know what else he had done. Legally he had until tomorrow to get his shed off my lot, and it appears he did exactly that. (Darn it. Nice shed. LOL). He must have come and done it all in the middle of the night or something, because it would have taken a pretty big truck and my "Watchdog" never heard or saw a thing. Everything else though was as we had left it. Thank you God.

I had put a couple of ads on Craig's List asking for anyone who was remodeling and getting rid of their old stuff to please consider us. (In fact I need to do that again) This really nice lady emailed me and had me send her my email so she could keep in touch after my ad ran out (or got toppled with multiple others). She has been wonderful! She not only had a kitchen sink for us, but she has done a ton of remodeling, some even in a mobile home, so she is a great source of information for some of the stuff I want to do. God Bless her! You just never know when God will put just the right person in your path. LOL. I ran an idea for the bathroom shower over tub we have by her this morning, and she was able to tell me what would not work, which is the part I would like to skip (getting it wrong part).

It felt so good today going over there and putting the kitchen sink and garbage disposal where they will be, approximately. It actually helped get more of a vision of where everything will go, precisely what we need, and how much room to do it in. I know that it is a much larger project than what I am envisioning,
that nothing is ever easy, but I'm excited. It's amazing how one small step in the right direction can do that!
It was a great day for rebuilding a mobile home.

As I've been going through packing, getting ready for the "big move", I realize that even though we downsized quite a bit when we left our last house, I need to do some more. Instead of helping my friend with his yard sale, I better start thinking about holding our own.

I mean, really?

The duplex we're in now is about 1000 sq. ft, 3br./2bath. It's pretty decent size. The mobile home is approx. 750 sq. ft., only a 2br./1 bath, although we are planning to build another 1/2 bath onto the 2nd bedroom. I have collections that I'll never have room to display. I have a huge dining room table that is hoping to be refinished one day. I'll never have space for that. It would take up most of our livingroom! LOL. While I have a big hutch that I am taking with me, I don't need all the dozens of wine glasses, and mismatches that I have held onto.

One thing I learned in the last move is that it is only "stuff". So as I'm packing I will be weeding out more stuff. Where's George Carlin when I need him? LOL

On top of us getting ready to move here, I've been helping out a buddy of mine that has to move also. Friday through Monday last, he had a huge yard sale. I've been doing some advertising for him, and then showed up early a few mornings to help him get organized, etc. We ended up getting the ceiling fan, which the picture doesn't do it justice as to how pretty it is, to go over our dining table. We also picked up a 1/2 horsepower garbage disposal for the kitchen.

My friend had a lot of wood trim, etc. that I thought would be great for the doorway that's open on the porch, soon to be office, but Tom said there wasn't enough that matched. It is a rather large opening. I did remind Tom if there was anything (tools, garden tools, etc) that he was going to want to pay retail for later on, that I would probably kill him.

I also went yesterday and picked up some moving boxes from some people just a couple of blocks away. I had come to a stand-still in the packing. These boxes are quite large, so I have to be careful not to fill them with so much heavy stuff we can't move them. Even though we have hand-trucks, at some point human hands have to move it somewhere.

Someone is emailing me that is remodeling their house and they had 2 bathroom vanities. They look great, but unfortunately our space is probably half of their smallest one. I am waiting with baited breath to see if they are redoing their kitchen. LOL

old bar/new office

While we've been waiting to find materials we need to rebuild our mobile home, we've been packing and planning. Tom is the "engineer" type, so he's very good at drawing out a room, figuring dimensions, etc. Some of the furniture we have here is furniture that came out of the mobile home when I sold it, so we will just take it back and set it up similar to how it was before. I didn't realize until showing the place we're in to prospective renters, but some of the furniture we have now is just LARGE.

I have a couple of favorite pieces that mean alot to me as they have sentimental value, so I would like to be able to take them with us. Enter Tom. He has been taking the dimensions we have for the mobile home and measuring our furniture to see if it will fit and where. God Bless him, because it looks like it will work. We have decided to turn what used to be the bar area off the front porch into an office with it's own entryway.(The part that has the attractive (lol) green tarp).

condition of "office" at mobile (porch)

my office now not including bookcases

As you can see, I have a ton of stuff "stuffed" into my office where we live now. Tom has measured all pieces and says everything will fit including the couple of little bookcases I have that aren't pictured here.

In the livingroom I have a hutch also that is very important to me, but it looks like that's a "go" also. I am so happy! The only thing I see we can't put up in the mobile home will be the King size bed we've gotten rather used to sleeping on, but there is just no way! I will sacrifice going back to a Queen to get my dresser and his Armoire in. Once again, very oversized furniture when you consider if you buy an old mobile with the dresser drawers and everything built in.

If anyone has done this before, or knows of salvage yards basically all mobile home stuff, I'd love to hear. You would think with Capitola having a ton of old mobile homes that there would be a really good salvage yard over there. The one on 38th is great, but not much for a mobile home. So now you know what we're doing while we're waiting for materials to rebuild our mobile home. Never a dull moment. LOL

I've been spending most of the time packing, showing the place we're renting here, and looking for materials. When you're looking for free materials, you definitely have to be patient waiting for the things you're looking for to appear. I have joined Freecycle, the Santa Cruz chapter, figuring it would be great to be able to find some stuff on that side of the hill instead of having to cart things all the way from San Jose or Santa Clara. I have received a couple of responses to my ad for remodeling materials, but I am afraid we are poor as church mice so coming up with even the reasonable prices people are asking for materials is tough.

My watchdog who lives a couple of doors down from me in Capitola says it's been really quiet over there the last few days, so I guess the Perp is either laying low or moving into his own place long enough to leave us alone.

We were able to get into the mobile home yesterday and see the bathroom and back bedroom which we weren't able to see from the outside a couple of days before. I was both surprised and happy to see that the toilet and tub/shower were still intact. He had taken out the vanity in the bathroom and replaced it with a pedestal sink. There is a mirror and some kind of pebbling on the wall behind the sink where the medicine chest used to be. He did a terrible job on the plumbing to the sink, as you can see by the picture.


I called the police yesterday right after we got there. I really didn't want to disturb anything before having them file a report. I also re-posted the "No Trespassing" signs that the Perp had torn down the last time he went inside. As we were waiting for the police to show up, we went ahead and got most of the measurements for everything and started figuring out what could go where.

I am very happy to report it looks like I'll be able to keep my office set up and my china hutch. LOL. The rest is questionable. Actually, the living room and dining room furniture we have now came from the mobile when I sold it, so we should be able to just move it right back Not so sure about my bedroom furniture as it is a bit larger than the furniture we had in there originally. This guy tore out the sliding closet doors that went the full length of the bedroom, so it has been tempting to think about arranging things a little differently this time.

 The police finally came and supposedly filed a report. I'm going to test that theory this morning. There is a nice rubbermaid shed outside, mostly on my driveway, partially on the lot next door. It's full of tools etc. that belong to the perpetrator. Stuff he leaves behind by law, he actually has 15 days to retrieve before I can do anything with it. I had told my girlfriend who lives a couple doors down that if this man came back, to call 911 immediately as I don't want him doing any more damage.

We weren't home long at all when she called to let me know he was there and she had called the police. The policeman that showed up happened to be the same policeman that had filed the report for me earlier. The perp told him the shed was on the other lot, not on mine, and he was retrieving his tools. The policeman told him if he went inside the mobile he would be arrested, and then he left for another call. The Perp is supposed to send two of his co-workers today to retrieve the rest.

Bathroom before "remodel" by Perp

This morning we are headed out to get new locks for the doors and look for a sliding door which somehow the frame has been busted. There happens to be a warehouse or "yard" with a lot of used items for contractors located not too far from the mobile. I've put an ad on Craig's List for anyone in the area that is remodeling and wants to get rid of anything (cupboards, flooring, etc). I keep looking on Craig's List for things we can use, along with Freecycle. We're pretty broke with paying the landlord here yesterday along with our 30 day notice. I will be trying to get packed pretty quickly and told him I would try and help him re-rent.

Now that we've assessed the damage inside, we can start with the re-building.