Well, it has been a couple of crazy weeks…. Lots of driving, packing, painting, unpacking, yard sales, go go going!! This is the first time I have opened my computer in almost 2 weeks, which is actually a long time for me! In our last post, Danny detailed the adventure of going to pick up our new home, so I will fill you in on the the few days after we went to Ormond Beach.

Once we got it back to my mother’s yard we had a cleaning party. My father, step-father and Danny took over the outside, while my mother and I were supposed to tackle the inside. I say supposed to because my mother thought that Danny and I would just be happy bleaching the living hell out of everything and then redoing the flooring, but I had other plans. I had a no holds barred attitude about ripping everything out. EVERYTHING! She went to the bed room to clean out the closet and pull out the mattress while I went nutso in the living area.

First thing everyone should know is that most trailer interiors are just glued and stapled together. As soon as I realized this, I went crazy with the mean (meaner, maybe) end of a hammer, ripping out the dinette set. There are only two of us, and frankly we aren’t planning on having a bunch of house guests so the dinette/sleeper system was a huge waste of space. Because the dinette bench was stapled to the floor, I inadvertently pulled up a chunk of linoleum flooring, revealing (to my absolute horror) rotten wood!!! EAK! 

Well, what did I really expect from an eighteen year old vessel; at least it wasn’t the ceiling. With the new discovery of floor rot, Danny and I went about tearing up all of the flooring to see how much damage there really was. The damage was limited to areas around the storage access hatches. In newer trailers the storage areas are sealed off from the interior, probably just for this reason. Thankfully, what would have been a stressful few days of re-flooring only took a morning thanks to my contractor step-father, Jose. One run to Lowes and a few hours later we were standing on solid ground. In all honesty, I had never been overly fond of my step-father, but he really came through for us and I will always be thankful

The next morning we were on our way home… (Will write about our adventure home in a future post)

Once we got back to Tallahassee, we painted the walls and got closet organizers hung up so we could smoothly move from the apartment to the trailer. We have to wait till next week to put in the new flooring because we had to be out of the apartment ASAP, so we figured that once everything has found a home in the trailer we will be able to lay the laminate wood flooring as a weekend project.

We are officially out of the apartment and in the trailer now. I like to think of myself as a moving aficionado as I have moved more than my fair share during my collegiate years, but this time I thought I might just break down and throw everything away. Reducing the amount of stuff was the hardest part. We no longer have a need for most furniture and decorations. And the random things that hide away in closets and storage bins had to be mercilessly cut from our lives. Danny said more than once that he will never own that much stuff again, I whole heartedly agree! But it is over! And now we get to put all our energy into organizing and getting stuff ready for the road.