Miss Minty Fresh

Since the folks at Offbeat Home were so nice to publish our house tour I thought I would post a little update.  Those pictures in the tour were at least a couple months old and I’ve already started making some changes!

I ripped up the nasty carpet (not the carpet on the slide, though):

Sorry for the blurry phone photos up there. You’ll notice that I also removed half of the dinette. It really feels much bigger in the main living area without that carpet or one of the dinette benches.

I was going to knock down this entire wall (for the love of pete make sure it isn’t weight-bearing!). I ended up just removing the door instead:

This is why…it’s built into the wall itself and connected to the battery power:

I mean…whatever…it’s just the propane gas leak detector. (Notice the expiration date. Oops). In lieu of taking the whole wall out, taking the door out also really opened up the space. Check it out:

Much better. This is the view from the couch, looking towards the rear of the trailer. We keep the shoes in two milk crates for now. Looking to get this soonish.  Anyone out there have it and like it?

Someone recently commented on the Offbeat Home post and asked about the baby’s space.  Glad you asked now…because it was a shitting mess before.  He also was sleeping in our bed until about a month ago, so the fact that we were using “his” room as the dump-crap-here area didn’t really matter.  Because it’s a toy hauler, we have a small garage door and fold-out ramp to allow for a motorcycle or something to travel along, so both the top and bottom bunks fold up.  But I just removed the bottom one (see the picture above for a peek inside the room with the bottom bunk folded up) and it’s already feeling very roomy and much brighter. I will be reinforcing the top one with heavy shelving brackets and installing a ladder.  He’s only six months old, so it’ll be quite a while before he’s sleeping up there.

We keep all his toys in two cardboard boxes for now (SO classy, yes?).  We’ll probably upgrade to a single toy chest soon.  When he gets older, our rule is going to be that all toys will need to fit into the toy chest.  If one new one comes in and doesn’t fit, another will have to go.  Of course, I won’t be too draconian, but it’s simply a fact of life if you’re a full-time traveler.  I also would like to do this to one of his walls.  So cool (and handy if you’re low on space).

Here’s a view of the main bedroom in the daytime:

The paint chips above the bed haven’t sold us yet.  We’ve already settled on cheery yellow and grey for the living room (ugh, so trendy.  But whatever….yellow and grey are awesome together).  I just bought primer this weekend, so that will be happening soon!  ANYthing to cover that textured beige/fake marble plastic stuff.  

After painting I will be ripping up the rest of the slide out furniture (the dinette table and the pull-out sofa) and installing a long, deep bench with futons as cushions and lots of big square pillows to lean on.  It’ll be like this, sort of.  Except with no arms…and it’ll be attached to the wall.  I need to hop to it because I need a place to put a second litter box. We added to the family this weekend:

I’ll tell you all about her later.  For now, I’ll just say that she is learning how to ride on my shoulders and she doesn’t yet understand that her tail is attached to her body.  The other three (?!) are not exactly pleased, but I’ve definitely seen them all far more pissed for lesser things.  I’m sure they will all be friends soon.

Thanks for visiting us again.  Renovations will be posted as I get to ‘em.