Frenchkitty

This is the second manufactured home we have had. Both have been on full foundatons and no longer moveable with out removing added metal roof, decks ,porches and added on pantry room.WE had this MFH converted to real property meaning it is attached to the foundation and there are no longer axels under it.

We have discussed many times how much we like living in a MFH. The two we have had have been so comfortable to live in. Low electricity bills,we are all electric and run a hot tub too. I think there is a lot of thought of storage built into these homes. We have a Marlette and I think it is 12 years old. All sheetrock walls with bull nosed corners. I would like it to be just a little bit larger but I am also looking at it as a small cottage and have decorated it for the way we live. There is just the two of us.

There are three albums. The 12-1-06 is the inside of the house we are living in now.

The Decorating album has added pictures of curtains I just made for the kitchen. I have weird tastes. LOL

The Cemetery Road Yard is the yard we have now.

The other two houses are houses we no longer own. The Wesier house is the other manufactured home we used to own.

http://groups.msn.com/PyleMeadows/shoebox.msnw

We have discussed moving and if we ever do it again we would go for another manufactured home.

Chris

It seems they live on a common property where every homeowner has part ownership in the property. And there 500 MH on that land. A developer came along and offered each owner ONE MILLION DOLLARS for their home! Yup. $500,000,000 for the 43 acres of waterfront property! Well, the homeowners had to have a meeting about this. They took a vote. And TWELVE percent said NO! Sixty mobile home owners said "I won't take a million dollars for my mobile home!" But the majority ruled so the land is being sold. These were typical single wide Florida retirement homes. Nothing special about them.

So yeah, these owners DO love their mobile homes!

Christopherh: If I ever get to the point where I can say that this is home and it's the last one, I don't know if I would take a million dollars either! I have a magazine that has a story of a lady that bought a MFH in California not far from the beach,(and you know it was expensive)and she turned it into a gem, that is worth much more now.

Frenchkitty

Lynne

Thank you for your reply, and your home is lovely! I know how nice it is to have a talented husband, and yours has done wonders! I especially like the way you framed in the opening between rooms and added the gingerbread. I love old things too, and have many vignettes in my home with old family photos, lace, and whatever else makes my heart pitter-patter! Although we live in a beautiful home we recently built, we are thinking about simplifying. Our children are grown, one married and one about to fly, and we would like to be in a position where we would not have to worry about making a mortgage for many years. We have good equity, it's just that we are tired right now. We still have some things to finish up here to be able to get it on the market. Some days we think about staying because we are almost finished, and then we think about how nice it would be to have a little cottage with just the things that we really love in it, and time to do other things together. I love to make quilts and sew and do other projects, and it would be nice to really get back into that.

On another forum, I told about an elderly couple that we know that completely transformed their old single wide into a charming cottage. They put on a roof, added board and batten siding and new windows, a den and screened porch, wood floors, and painted the kitchen cabinets white. All her rooms were so charming, and in the kitchen her husband had built a cabinet with glass doors to hold her antique teacup and saucers, and on the lower part solid doors, and above that, a row of sewing machine drawers for all her little "stuff". It was such an inspiration to me.

I really love to see what other people have done to make their life more simple, and yet truly enjoy their homes. It helps me to keep my vision! Thanks for the ear!

Frenchkitty

The added on pantry was done when we bought the place by the original owners. It is added onto the end of the house and we have to go out the back door and onto the deck to enter the room. I turned it into my dog grooming room adding my sink/tub and removing most of the shelves. There is also a small walk in pantry in the kitchen so we have lots of storage.

The original owners built a deck half way across the front and all the way across one end all covered. When we bought the place we had a new metal roof built on to include the deck roof and I think it looks a lot nicer this way. Since we are in snow country metal is the way to go for us. The snow will slide easier and it also made the house about 10 degrees cooler in the summer and I would guess it keeps it warmer in the winter. We did not remove the asphalt shingles. Our new roof is white.

As far as changing the rest of the inside of the house. I just removed the doors from the closets and master bath door and added lace curtains. I would have liked to see a pocket door on the master bath and closet instead of the regular door. What is done is done so we just live with it. Other wise we are very happy with the house as it is. Adding curtains to the other two bedroom closets makes them better for me to use. Since there is just the two of us I use those closets for my art stuff.

We had chosen a different house plan before we got this house but when this place became available we stopped the purchase of the other MFH. Sigh I LOVED that one!!!! It was a Nashua. Since the people that owned this place traded us for the MFH we had in another town and it was a done deal it was sort of hard to pass up since purchasing a brand new home would be so much more work and my husband just LOVED the shop that was already here. And of course it is larger than the house. Sounds like a red neck guy thing to me.

Chris

I am not in these forums as often as I'd like, but I liked the sound of this topic and decided to jump in. Dh and I live in a single wide (14x80 3br 2ba) and do I LOVE it??? Well I LIKE it a good bit I guess. There are just days now and then when I long for a big foyer or a giant bathtub and other things that I simply can't have. :-(

As for what style I like, I love country and "shabby chic", like I love stuff with half-assed paint jobs. lol

I read somewhere once (can't recall where), some article about things you can do to make your rectangular-shaped home look less rectangular. Like with softer lines and round items I believe. If you click on "My Page", somewhere is a pic of the super tiny rectangular table we once had in our kitchen. I kept telling dh that we needed something ROUND there and that I had been longing for a pedistal table.

We ended up finding one at an antique shop for half off! It just needed a tiny bit of work. I really like the look of it and we have a bit more room now for sitting. Pic below

Also at "My Page", in the one living room pic where you see the end table with the chicken lamp, I would love to find some sort of round table for that area, but I would need one with storage underneath.

One thing I will never forget..... We once had a guy come in here to replace a small area of carpeting. He had a long pony-tail and tatoos, not that there is anything wrong with that. lol! When he was in here, he mentioned the fact that our home didn't LOOK like a mobile home. I was touched and have never forgotten that. Take care!

>

Lynne

Overall I'm very disappointed and hope I never have to live in another one. At least I can say I have the perfect location, and I keep my focus on that.

Kim; I hate to hear it when people buy something (esp. a home that is supposed to be your haven) and find out that they have been taken advantage of by careless business people. I have seen some MHs that are much better quality than others, but I still do not believe that even a lower line MH cannot be made with better quality materials. (Why do they boast of a ceramic tile backsplash and then install it with caulking??!!) I know it is no consolation to you, but being in the construction industry, my DH and I have seen many stick built homes that were so poorly constructed, with things hidden to boot. One time a builder had cut a large hole in the sheetrock in a bathroom because they had to fish out electrical wire. Instead of fixing the hole, which was about eight inches in diameter, he wallpapered right over it! Another builder framed in a laundry area into the garage to get it out of the house, and when it was all finished, a car would no longer fit into the garage!

DH and I are firm believers in DIY. As we speak I hear the airgun going; we are making a little sewing room for moi. I know that if I were to live in a MH, I would be ripping out and redoing, because if it is going to be my house, I wan't it to be a HOME! I have a couple of cottage style mags that have several articles of creative people who have turned their MHs into lovely places. One did the same thing Blue Velvet Elvis did; they planned on building on the land one day, but ended up turning the DW on the property into a gem, and now are satisfied to leave it at that...

I hate the county we live in. The price was great, only $15,000. It was grandfathered in. So the county says we can't put any wider mobile than the 12 ft. we live in now.

We wanted to put in a basement and a 14 or 16 ft wide on that. My hubby came home depressed the other day after being told that we couldn't put anything wider on the property.

I'm still thinking that we could put a basement in and 'expand' the basement as wide as we want, LOL!

I'm wondering if pop-out's are counted in the width?

I'll tell you what I love most about this old, run-down, fixer upper piece of junk....it's almost paid for with the land beneath it, the apple trees, the garden spot, the nice well, our double car carport which we closed in and two bathrooms.

And Blue Velvet Elvis, thank you kindly for giving me hope. We have a mobile with a roofline like yours, except that ours is arched from front to back, and I've been trying to tell hubby that it shouldn't be a problem to do a roofover. I'll show him your pic, it's beautiful!!!