Fixing Up!

 Well, here I sit, in Mount Vernon, Oregon. Almost 5 hours East of "home". Everyone is gone for prayer meeting and a birthday party for two people I don't know, so I have the house to myself for a bit. I've been here for almost 3 weeks, now! 

I haven't wanted to post about the trailer for awhile, which is probably made obvious by the fact that I haven't posted about the trailer for awhile. 😁 There were a few factors in this. One factor has been that I completely forgot what I last posted about it and so I didn't know where to start! And the other being that things kinda came down to the wire and got very stressful, and I didn't want to write about that.

But here I am! The stress of renovation is past, and I just read my last trailer update. So here goes!

The first thing that happened was painting! It was also one of the last things to happen. Since the trailer is such a small space, I thought painting would go relatively quickly. NOPE! The whole trailer is full of tight spaces and corners and awkward shapes. The entire thing was basically edging. Does it look great now? Absolutely! Was it worth it? Sure! Do I wish I had a fairy godmother who could've just done it all for me? Yep, for sure.

All my white paint swatches! It took awhile to find the perfect shade that has a little warmth, but doesn't look off-white.

We thought it was patterned white wallpaper board before.... definitely dingy compared to fresh paint!

You can really see the difference from the wallpaper to the paint, here.

Bailey made sure she was integral to the whole process. 😂

Hannah helped so many times until we got it all done.

Mom came in at the end and got a bunch of stuff done. She's a lifesaver.

So, painting ended up being stressful because of how long it took, and how physically taxing it was. I'm really grateful for all the help I got with that.

The next project to start was replacing the corduroy that was on panels on the cupboards. I popped the panels out, peeled off the corduroy, and painted the ones in the bedroom and kitchen. For the living area panels, Mom cut up a bulletin board for me, and I covered the pieces in burlap and attached them to the original wood panels like it was a backing. 

Painting the bedroom panels. I tried to pick cute things, but in soothing colors.

This is before we even painted the bedroom, and it already felt so much lighter and airier! You can go back to my first trailer post and see the difference.

These panels are in the kitchen! One is all fruit and one is all veggies, but they're both the exact same shades/colors.

Tadah! (I know they're not separated by scientific categories. They're separated by colloquial usage of the terms.)

These are the living area bulletin boards! I got the burlap at MECCA in Eugene, because I love the frog.

Once painting was pretty much done, I think I just moved in. At that point, Izzy (my cat) had been living in the apartment for a couple weeks to adjust to a life of confinement. When I moved in, there were only a couple weeks till I left for Eastern Oregon, and even less time till my going away party. Lots of issues came up, as they will with any renovation project.

The most noticable issue was flooring. We had the new flooring ready to go, and all the linoleum and gross carpet had been stripped back.

Cutting and peeling carpet was an absolute pain. In my back and knees, mostly.

It was pretty gross under there! Luckily no mold or mildew, just a lot of dirt and grime.

Dad had seen me laboriously cutting at the carpet in the bedroom and yanked it out! Which was great, but left a bunch of staples with tufts of carpet around the edges. And then the linoleum! I started pulling it up and could not cut it away from the edge where it was under the metal doorframe. So all the flooring stuff stalled. 

I moved in anyway. 

Again, Mom came to the rescue. She meticulously pulled out stapled tufts of carpet. She cut and peeled linoleum. We were all ready for flooring to be installed......

But things ran too late and I had to leave in two weeks and no flooring person could get it done in time. And we couldn't push back the moving date because Hannah had gotten time off work to come be my copilot and help me settle in. And the going-away party was in a week and a half, and I didn't want to call that off! And everyone was feeling the pressure. So I decided that I could live on plywood subfloor, and find someone to do the flooring once I got here. My uncle is a contractor, so I figured if he or my cousins couldn't do it, they'd know someone who could. So that was settled.

A less obvious problem was my bed. It raises up for storage. Which is very cool for me and Izzy both. 

Here you can see a cat-shaped blob enjoying her elevated view.

However! The mattress was extremely heavy and the old, hydraulic lifts/hinges didn't hold it up. We bought new hinges! They were too heavy-duty and preferred splintering the wood under the mattress, to compressing. So I spent almost half of the week before the going-away party with a mattress through the center of the trailer as Mom and Dad tried to solve this problem. 

It turned out to be unsolvable. 

Until Mom had the genius idea to replace the heavy mattress with a couple layers of foam! A bottom layer of very dense foam, and some softer stuff on top. If nothing else, this would make it much lighter weight, and therefore safer for me to lift the bed and prop it up. And lo and behold, the old hydraulic hinges held up the new foam mattress just fine! But I had just spent multiple days doing minimal moving and settling because the trailer was filled with mattress.

The next problem was the couch! (I feel like I'm starting to sense a pattern.....) It was originally mauve, patterned, fuzzy, rough upholstery fabric.

Bailey, looking adorable on a slightly ugly couch.

I wanted to cover it in denim or something. Preferably a fun, earthy color. The couch also doubles as a futon guest bed, and it was extremely worn down and uncomfortable, so it needed more padding. I got a foam mattress topper and some mossy green denim. The plan was to just lay the foam and then the fabric right over the existing stuff, and then staple the fabric to the backing. Mistake on my part? Yep! There's no backing. It's like an old, wire bedframe that folds up. And the existing fabric is sort-of wired on or something. So the reupholstery project also stalled. And the party was in a few days! And I was moving in a week! 

After thinking and stressing and worrying, I decided that we could just edge the denim, and I could sew it onto the original fabric around the back/underside of the couch. But there was no time. So I safety-pinned it on for the party so people could have a preview. It's still safety-pinned on right now. I haven't finished it yet. 😅

So, that was another issue, sidestepped. But all the dancing from side to side was really draining and stressful.  

All these adjustments to my expectations and life were happening while I was getting ready to host people and also while I was settling two animals into a new home and also while I was moving and also while I was planning to move again.

Somewhere in the middle of everything, Mom built me a pantry in the coat closet. I have no pictures yet, but it's gorgeous and she's amazing.

And Hannah came over and helped put in blue contact paper over the weird mirrors in the cupboard doors.

And she also helped put up vinyl backsplashes in both the bathroom and kitchen.  That's also the day the bed situation was resolved. Three days before the party.

Hannah and Mom coordinating on the kitchen backsplash.

Finally, the trailer was done being a construction zone!! But the construction zone is what this post is about. So if you want a nice, satisfying conclusion.... you'll have to read my next blog post! Whenever I get around to writing and posting it.... 😅

I'm not trying to end on a cliffhanger, or have such a negative post. I haven't even mentioned about Cornelius's emergency weekend at the vet (he's in good hands now with Auntie Dorcas, and he's totally fine.) Or how I felt about turning into such a negative person for a week or two. (I felt bad about it.)

It's just that this post is plenty long enough, and I'm done writing for now. I hope you enjoy the transformation pictures! And now you know why I went silent online like a month ago.

Thanks for reading, and for caring about my life!

-Dolly