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!

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

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.

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.