41 Days Into The Project- Where We Are Now

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.