Day two with the trailer

Went back to work on the trailer today.  Things were looking good until I pulled out the sink and found that the flooring underneath was full of brown woody pulp.  Then we pulled out the tub and found the same thing only with a whole lot of spiders and about a thousand ants.  (I hate spiders.)

We went on to pull out the closet and found black mold and wood pulp where the floor had been.  Apparently at some point someone got the bright idea to take sheet board, lay it over the original floor, nail it into place, then cover it in linoleum and call it good enough.  The whole underside of the trailer looks like it's been turned to mulch.  We literally carried most of it out with a shovel.

Despite this, I think we all had a good time.  We tore out the bathtub, toilet, bathroom sink, closet, refrigerator (broken), oven (still hoping that works), kitchen sink, and the doors of all the cabinets.

Tomorrow we'll start tearing out even more until we've got it down to the bare essentials.  Then I'll need to start pricing insulation.  I'm broke, too, so I need to go back to the work and get $100 for caulking up the roof.  I couldn't afford to get a converter to test the electricity with, but that might have been a good thing since it looks like a five year old did the wiring.  That needs to go to.

Bad though all this sounds, I'm really not suprised at it, and for $800 with free delivery, I think I got a pretty decent deal.  The wheels at least are still in good shape.  Furthermore, our friend R. is a plumber and my future father-in-law C. can be our electrician.  I also think this trailer was built in a far more complex manner than I wanted it to be.

I'd like a compost toilet, a simple water system that goes directly down into a detached gray water tank, and a small wood-burning stove to act as our heater.  I neither want nor need the fancy heating unit under the rusted out refrigerator, or the long tangle of tubes going from the bathroom sink to the bathtub to the kitchen sink.

I was a little disappointed by the extent of messiness in the trailer, but at the same time, I relieved that we can take it down to the bare bones and make it what we want it-- completely.

Anyway, it's very late right now.  My fiance's gone to bed, and I have a cat pressed up against me as I write this.  I have to wake up early tomorrow morning to have breakfast with a friend, possibly get some work done on the trailer, and then go to work to get money to buy some materials to make our future home liveable.

One last note: I've been trying to load photos of our progress onto the blog.  So far they refuse to load directly from my computer, but I have got them all up on a Flickr slideshow at the top of the blog.  It's kind of neat.  I'd still like to stick the photos directly onto the blog, but for now it's a start.

Until next time.  I'm off to bed.