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Hairpin Leg Cabinet DIY

June 9, 2018 by anniesarai Leave a Comment

The entry way of our trailer went through a few iterations before I finally settled on something I’m really happy with. This is such a narrow space that whatever I used here had to 1) look good 2) provide enough storage for our entire family 3) be no more than 12″ deep. I had originally tried this cabinet and open bookshelf combo from IKEA, and it looked too clunky for my liking, plus the door kept falling off which was not safe and made me mad each time it happened! I then used a short, vintage mid century bookshelf with cute little peg legs. I loved the look of it, but quickly realized that open storage in such a tight space was going to drive me nuts- with kitchen overflow items and kid craft stuff it was too much clutter in sight!

I decided to get a few of these wood cabinets from IKEA (two of them went into the kids’ room, one for their clothing and one for their toys). I wanted to buy something that I will use in our house once it’s built, and I can already picture a lot of places these cabinet will go! I used this primer left over from the interior of the rv and painted them over the course of a few days, because I decided it’s time for me to actually follow the instructions on the paint can and let coats of paint fully cure :). I wanted a soft color for the cabinet since it’s visible from every room. Our local hardware store had a pint of this called Mandarin Mist, and I’m pretty happy with it! I ordered these hairpin legs from Amazon in 6″ height. They are really heavy duty and I definitely recommend them for projects that need to hold a lot of weight, or visually need something substantial. They install with screws that are included, and even come with floor protectors for the legs! This was such a simple project, it was mostly a lot of waiting for the paint to fully cure between coats so nothing sticks to the paint!

 

Just for the heck of it, here is a picture of what the entry way looked like when we bought the RV. It had a tv/mirror combo that swiveled into the master bedroom. We knew we wouldn’t use it, since we use our laptop for watching shows/movies, and it wasn’t at an angle that we could comfortably see from the couch. The storage above it was about 4″ deep, so not much could go in it. The space beneath the tv was just wasted space! I know these are designed for travel and not daily life so storage space is minimum, so I totally understand why it was built that way, it just wasn’t enough storage space for us, and didn’t look like what we wanted to see everyday. Now it’s much more reflective of our style, it’s functional as an entry way and storage solution!

Filed Under: diy, rv, rv remodel, Uncategorized Tagged With: before and after, diy, furniture hack, ikea hack, rv decor, rv remodel, tiny house, tiny house decor, trailer decor

Trailer Demo Progress

June 7, 2018 by anniesarai 4 Comments

This might be the ugliest blog post I’ve ever published , haha!! There has been nothing pretty about this demo, I wore the same dirty work clothes for weeks on end, was covered in paint and mask lines constantly, but here we are!  Below are a lot of construction pictures of the complete gutting and remodel of our new little, tiny home on wheels!

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Filed Under: before, rv, rv remodel, tiny house, Uncategorized Tagged With: before and after, design process, rv, rv before, rv remodel, tiny home, tiny home remodel

trailer before pictures

February 23, 2018 by anniesarai Leave a Comment

As I get ready to dive into remodeling this trailer into a comfortable tiny house for our family, I thought I would share the before photos taken from the for sale listing. While the trailer is in great condition and certainly could be lived in as-is, we assume we will be living in it for close to a year, so I want to make it as much our style as possible. I plan to really lightened it up, and get more “real” furniture in here to replace the built-in furniture. Plus, those curtain valances HAVE GOT TO GO. They’re so boxy and block so much light, and darken up the space so much. I can’t wait to change this all up!

Here is the floor plan for a better idea of the layout. Click through to see all the before photos!

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Filed Under: rv, rv remodel, Uncategorized

Moving time!

February 22, 2018 by anniesarai Leave a Comment

Our family had a major and unexpected life change happen this past Friday that made Josh and I stop to reevaluate the direction of our home-build. My husband very unexpectedly lost his job, and while we have savings that we can live off of for quite a while, we decided to really stretch that out and move out of our current rental house. Portland’s rent is sky high compared to its wages, and this will allow us to save literally thousands of dollars every month that we will be putting into building our house! This will also free Josh up to work on a lot of the actual building, which he really wanted to do himself but was limited by a full time job and living way across town from our building site. …

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Filed Under: rv, rv remodel, Uncategorized

floor plans that didn’t make the cut

February 7, 2018 by anniesarai Leave a Comment

Now that we have figured out the floorplan of our house, I thought I would share the first couple designs that DIDN’T work.  My husband Josh and I have designed all the versions of our floor plans except for the first one below, which was done by our design guy. The design process is basically me rolling ideas around in my head for days and days, then spending a long time sketching it out on paper, Josh using SketchUp to for a 3D model, then we do some tweaking. Our guy then looks at the design and engineering, gives us feedback, and drafts up a plan. I have a folder full of paper scraps in which I drew ideas, because that’s the way my brain works best! 🙂

 

This first floor plan was designed for us, and if we had a larger lot, I would definitely build this house- the main house was H shaped, the short part of the H facing the front and back yards. It also included a detached garage and adjacent Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) with its own entrance from the alley. We loved the house plan, but felt it was too cramped to grow into. The city of Portland is currently experiencing a HUGE population boom, and ADUs are all over the place. This would have given us the option to have an airbnb, but we would have chosen to rent it out to someone we knew, because we ideally would live on a compound surrounded by friends! While the rental income would have been nice and this layout gave us a decent sized yard, it was not enough outdoor space for the garden, greenhouse, and chickens that we want to have.

 

This next floor plan we LOVED. I still love it and it would be my ideal- one story, room to grow, L-shaped…I spent a lot of time figuring this one out and was so excited that Josh loved it as much as I did. However, it did not meet city code because it was 173 sq ft too big of a footprint on the lot. I was pretty devastated, honestly. The city of Portland has laws about the percentage of a lot you can cover with a single-family home, and we were barely over. We tweaked it so much, and just couldn’t get it to work. We are building this house adhering to ADA building codes so we can “age in place” so this made tweaking the layout challenging. We are building with hallways, doorways, space in the kitchen, etc that will fit a wheelchair and other mobility devices in case we ever need them. Ultimately, there was no way to tweak the plan that didn’t leave us with a house we felt was cramped. Having space to entertain and to host guests is important to us since it’s something we do very often, and we didn’t want to waste this opportunity we have of designing and building our home on something that felt like settling.

I’ll be sharing what we ended up with. We did eventually figure out a layout that we are really pleased with, gives us plenty of room, and is an even smaller footprint than the city requires which means even more backyard!

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Filed Under: building process, design process, house plans, Uncategorized Tagged With: building process, design process, house plans

dismantling the house

January 26, 2018 by anniesarai Leave a Comment

While we are in the waiting period with the City of Portland to fully tear down the house (and because we are on a budget and trying to do a lot of the teardown work ourselves to save money), we are slowly dismantling it from the inside out. By “we” I mean my husband so far 🙂 He is getting it to the point where it is safe for us to have the kids with us while we work, but we had to send out for asbestos and lead tests before we felt ok with them being in the property. I actually can’t wait to get in there and work hard on this house! As you can see in these pictures, it’s a TON of dirty, hard work!

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Filed Under: before, house demo, Uncategorized

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