# Renovating a prefab (mobile) home



## llazyiest (May 25, 2008)

I have a 1987 triplewide goldenwest on an acre and a third. After living in it since 94 we finally got around to doing the things to it we've always wanted to. A deck went up out back. I found a beautiful "french" type door but modern.. has the grid in the glass.. at a habitat for humanity garage sale.. for $75. Had come out of a nearly new house. We had a contractor take out a window from the home office and put in the door to the deck. It's fantastic. It's in the room next to the kitchen (which has access to the kitchen) so I can pop in and out to the grill. Next.. we decided to get rid of the ugly counters. Did the demolition ourselves and had corian "aruba" (greyish blue with specks) put in with the integrated sink. Kept our newer faucets. Couldn't put the 1987 electric cooktop in the new counter.. In went a kenmore elite induction cooktop. Couldn't take the 21 year old vinyl.. armstrong "oregon slate" vinyl went in last week (see pic). We did the removal of the old vinyl and scraping off of the backing from the subfloor.
We've got boxes of Shaw homespun cherry laminate flooring waiting in the wings. We're going to install it ourselves. Most of my walls are textured finish but the kitchen and baths have that old wallboard with the strips over the seams you've talked about. While working on the kitchen, I ripped off all my old wallpaper.
(see pic of bare wall with windows). It was very easy to remove.. like ripping off shelf paper. This left the bare wallboard underneath (see picture with ladder.. no paper) Some seams were tight, others not. I filled any major gaps with expanding foam (comes in a can.) I wanted to make sure critters had no access. I watched some videos of taping and mudding and gave it a try. Not bad (no pics). Probably going to finish the wall with more mud in a textured look like the rest of the house. I did use that textured wallpaper in one corner (see pic - textured paper painted red) but figured for the work I might as well just mud the wall and paint it. Planning to use moroccan red. Had a friend rebuid the exterior entry which had rotted thru.. previously had been plywood under indoor/outdoor carpeting. He used cedar and built it in a chevron design. Some day I'll make it to the bathrooms and get rid of the built in tub unit. Photo is the new kitchen floor.. was just a quick shot for mom. 
Other pic has the textured wallpaper experiment in corner of the peninsula painted red. Molding is still off the area in photo. Another picture is of edge of counter with the old wallpaper that's now gone.


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## annabell (Jan 28, 2008)

*wow!*

Sounds like you've got alot going on. I'm very jealous. lol. I'm still in the dreaming, wishing phase. I'm single and work 6 days a week so i'm proud just to get the grass cut. I love the flooring in your kitchen. Looks very nice. thanks for dropping the reply. Good luck on your home.


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## llazyiest (May 25, 2008)

The kitchen floor/ pretty big for a kitchen/ was 2nd to lowest level of Armstrong flooring - Benchmark. Tho we saved money doing the prep work, if you can install yourself you can save a whole lot more. I found it online for about $1.05 a sq ft! While we knew there were alot of things we wanted to do, there never was a "plan".. it was just pick one and start. We picked the deck first because we had no way to get out the back door to the ground. The old temporary steps had rotted off the year before and I'd had enough. I got a lucky referal for a guy who did the deck dirt cheap. We picked the counters next. That triggered the cooktop since we didn't want to put the old one back into a new counter. When I went to donate my old sink to habitats garage sale, I ran into my "dream door" and grabbed it. It needed to be reversed so it could swing the opposite way. That became the standard of picking a contractor. I knew it could be done and it took the third one I talked to who actually knew how to do it. The biggest job is for last.. putting down the laminate wood floor. We decided to do the kitchen first so we wouldn't have workers trotting across it to the kitchen. The shaw flooring came from floormania.com and was a steal. The kitchen flooring job triggered the tearing down of the wallpaper since we had to move a tall shelving unit to do the floor and I could actually get to the whole wall now. 
I know what you mean about not having the time when you work. I'm unemployed right now so like to work on projects while my husband sleeps. The work actually started a year and a half ago. So it takes time.


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## Darylh (Jan 2, 2006)

Looking good, you what they say all good things come eventually at least we hope.


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## llazyiest (May 25, 2008)

*Much later..2014*

We installed our laminate flooring, starting in late summer 2011. Here's 2 pics of the finished kitchen wall- taped, painted and molding added, and a shot of the dining room (kitchen to the left) with the laminate flooring down. Also shown is the diningroom in progress- without carpenting, and after bleaching & sealing the subfloor. We didn't have the molding down for the laminate yet.

Along the way I: found some great ceramic bathroom sinks at the Habitat resale store for under $20, one included a beautiful faucet and spout set that happened to match my bathroom set.. these replaced rusted sinks original to the house.. I faux painted the hall baths countertop to give it a red marble look..it's bold :thumbsup: replaced both original ugly bathroom toilets with brand new ones myself.. replaced the master bath flooring *(rug!!) -happily ripping it out myself- had a similar flooring to the kitchen put in there.. ripped off the plastic wallpaper in most of the master bath and did more mudding, taping and painting. 

Prepping the floors for the laminate was a Huge Job. After ripping out the carpeting and pads, I had to crawl around removing a million staples with bits of carpet padding in them one by one.. remove the tack strips by the walls, then employed my special pet odor removal technique. After sweeping out the carpet dust, I mopped the subflooring with bleach. A few days after it dried, I painted the subfloor with a laquer based sealant which i had tinted white. I had no problem with fumes, doing it with the windows open, and it dried very quickly. We were doing a large area- the diningroom, entry, livingroom, and hall- so it took us a long time - 6 months- to get it done- and that doesn't include the time for prep work. Final planks were laid in early April. We limited ourselves to a few rows per work session. It was rewarding to see the improvements at each stage. Our dog even helped, sitting on long runs of laminate to hold it down while we were assembling it. We had lived about 13 years with the ugliest carpet in the world- a portion can be seen under the hutch sitting on the bare floor. Even just getting the carpet out and the white laquer sealant down was a huge improvement. Having lived with the laminate for 2 years now, I can say it is holding up beautifully and easy to keep clean. :thumbup:


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## llazyiest (May 25, 2008)

Hi Taylor W- I'm guessing what you are referring to is the opening which is between the diningroom and livingroom- the midpoint in the 2nd photo of the last 5 i posted recently (also seen in the 5th one where the flooring's out). It's a great idea- I've often thought of doing something there.. but in this case the houes has a very modern vibe, given the high ceilings, the angles and the large triangular windows over top of the ones at the end of the house in diningroom and kitchen... in my opinion, putting in an arc just seems to go against the homes basic architectural style. It would also reduce by that much more the light that comes in thru the end windows into the living area. I soften that basic modern element of the house using the surface choices- the floorings, colors etc, ....
the hutch echos the cabinetry of the kitchen etc. I am not anti-modern- I do like the mix in the kitchen of the oak cabinets & vinyl slate look floor with the high tech black appliances. Regarding the opening between diningroom and entry- living area, if I was ever going to do anything there I'd consider sliding doors of some type that when open are behind the diningroom walls to each side. Maybe something like a soji screen door or even a multi-pane window door. But the reality is that I like the open concept here and have never needed to close it off. The main thing we need to get done is to put molding back in along the floors- and I've got 1 more room to do with laminate. There are sine bedrooms that need new floor coverings but those will be much further down the line.


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## llazyiest (May 25, 2008)

What you can't tell in photos 2 & 5 is that the place where the ceiling goes flat in the foreground - that's over the entry area that comes in from the right. The ceiling goes back up to the same height and angles in the main living area (tho offset a bit) -where the photo was taken from- as in the diningroom.


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## llazyiest (May 25, 2008)

Regarding what I sealed the subfloor with after cleaning it up.. I used Zinsser B-I-N Primer interior/ exterior / shellac based. Expensive but effective. I even used it a foot or two up the wall in case the cat had sprayed. Odors eliminated forever.


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