The Divine Double Wide, Part II

Tara & Heidi, Petaluma, CA

I have no idea the make; it’s a double wide, approx 1400 sq. ft. and built in 1974

Only since May 1st, 2012! Closed at the end of Oct. 2011, so began the renovations . . .

Oh, dear. SO many! We are photographers by trade, and architecture and design nerds for fun. We tend towards a vintage esthetic. Heidi has a thing for the 20s and 30s, and Tara loves mid-century modern. Both of us love kitschy farmhouse, organic, industrial, Asian, whimsical . . . I guess “eclectic” really sums us up. Ha! We rarely buy anything new and often fill our home with free finds, our absolute fave! We love garage sales, estate sales, auctions, and opp shops.

Nature! Our living room is painted grass green, our bedroom a sky blue, our guestroom earthy brown . . . If I could fill the place with beach stones, driftwood, branches, shells, moss and lichen, I would! Tara LOVES Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Organic Architecture” and the idea of bringing the outdoors in. We wanted to live here because it sits at the end of a private lane, on a hill, on half an acre . . . We love looking out at our surroundings. We wanted the indoors to reflect where we are: our town, the agricultural history of our area, the garden, homesteading, and wine culture in our county . . .

We spend the most amount of time in the office area, as we work from home, but our favorite room has to be the bedroom. It’s the exact color we wanted, white curtains & linens for a crisp, spa feel . . . We didn’t overcrowd it with furniture or “stuff.” It’s as relaxing as we need it to be. And it houses our most prized heirlooms – quilts Heidi’s Mum made for us!

Umm, not having ever done any home renovation before, ALL of it was challenging! We were doing everything for the first time and winging it! We are HGTV addicts, and they deceptively fit SO much into that 30 minutes, making it all look so easy. Everyone said we could do it ourselves, so we believed them. Once we started ripping up the carpets, there was no going back. We uncovered all sorts of issues with the subfloor, and there were decades of layers of linoleum, lots of gaps and holes to patch . . . And then we have this wall of built-ins that seem typical of older mobile homes. We’ve painted it, removed the awful glass shelves and mirrors, took off some of the cabinet doors . . . But it’s still a strange little area that in hindsight, I kind of wish we had drywalled.

No one can believe it’s a mobile home! The outside could pass as a ranch style home, I think. And apart from the beaded curtains we left in the guest bathroom, it doesn’t look like a mobile on the inside anymore. What I have always told Heidi (and everyone else for decades) is that I would live in a trailer if it meant I could live in the country. Be careful what you wish for is a common mantra for us. I remember calling a schmancy realtor and asking to see the inside after falling in love with the property. He said, “You know it’s a mobile home, right?” (Way to say no to a commission, buddy.) We quickly found a realtor who was a mobile home specialist and when we met her here to show us the place, she kept shaking her head in disbelief. She thought it was amazing. We didn’t think we’d care for the inside, but we immediately saw the potential. Heidi is from Australia and mobile homes are not typical, so she wasn’t sure what to expect when I told her about the property. She didn’t care to see it at first. It was only when we were in the neighborhood that she was willing to stop by. Thank goodness!

Oh, the baseboards. We were always quite bad at math, so we had some patching to do after a few bad cuts, but again, not something we ever thought we’d be doing. And there’s a dimple in our vinyl floor that we somehow missed while we were laying it down. It’s all flat and perfect apart from this tiny mound right near our café table. We’re looking for the perfect rug to cover it up!

We also had to paint our Living/Dining room twice. We picked a very safe, somewhat bland green color at first. And we never really loved it. And then we decided that if we could paint any color we wanted, we wanted to be bold, not careful. So we went with a grass green. It’s bright, but we decided it was a happy color and there was no way we could ever be grumpy in those rooms.

Our floors we laid! We used laminate in three rooms and the Home Depot vinyl planks in the others. After we discovered how easy it was to use the vinyl planks, we certainly would have skipped the laminate and utilized vinyl throughout! We divided up the work. I did all the tricky cuts while Heidi used the rubber mallet to set the planks. Apart from a few cracks and short planks, it looks pretty great. We still can’t believe that we just ripped up the carpet and replaced it with all new flooring!

Hmm . . . A couple $300 trips to IKEA is all. We needed rugs and curtains – LOTS of them, and IKEA is perfect for those.

See beyond what’s in front of you regarding possibilities. There’s little need for anything new these days, so re-use and salvage whenever you can. Allow for more time than you think it might take you for renovations. And seriously consider a mobile home as a base for your homestead – they are economical, impermanent, and relatively simple to make over. Recycling is always a plus!