Author: JessDellen

A Shower for Exhibitionists

JessDellenLeave a comment

You know I’m serious about this property because I didn’t run screaming when I was greeted by this scene upon immediately entering through the FRONT DOOR:

Peep that sweet homemade deer antler shelf.

For whatever reason, the laundry room had a small, non-functional wall sink and a corner shower that was in such bad shape it felt like you were going to collapse through the floor every time you got in. It also dripped all the time, adding to our already humid atmosphere and making mildew grow faster than I and my bleach could keep up with it.

Did I mention there was also no wall or door to separate the nudity zone from the front door? Super neat.

To add insult to injury, what was supposed to be a full bath was actually just a toilet and a dangerously unstable pedestal sink that threatened to fall apart and crush your toes if you bumped into it.

Oh, that? That’s just exposed plumbing sticking out of the floor. In both photos. Cute.

We really wanted to avoid spending big money on this place because we needed all the spare cash for a down payment, appliances, surprise fees, etc. for the big house. However, that shower was so disgusting and scary that I was avoiding using it, and I simply cannot shower once a week for two full years. So we bit the bullet and dropped a not-small chunk of change on something that would make life a lot easier during our time in the tin can.

We ripped out the old shower and replaced it with a toilet, and we ripped out the broken sink and added in a laundry sink. We also added a barn door because everyone should be allowed to poop in privacy. When I say “we” here, I mean we paid a professional to do it.

Kinda miss the antler shelf, honestly.

Then we had a tub-shower installed where there once was literally nothing. And we had a new vanity installed that wasn’t a ceramic Jenga tower of doom.

We splurged on new lights too.
So many shelves!

I’m really glad we spent the money. We scored a new half bath AND, while they had the floor ripped up for the shower/toilet demo, they were able to replace a corroded section of pipe so we could FINALLY have cold water in the kitchen sink. (Fun fact: We didn’t actually have cold water in the kitchen for the first four and a half months we lived here. We had to fill the dog bowls in the shower.)

Meet the Trailer

JessDellenLeave a comment

AKA the tin can. AKA the fish bowl. AKA year-round camping.

I have almost no pics of the outside so this is as good as it gets.

When most people hear “trailer” they probably think a lot of rude things, which I get. Movies and television have painted rather unflattering portraits of trailers because they typically exist in trailer parks.

Having lived next to and within a trailer park at various points in my life, that unflattering portrait is not *NOT* rooted in reality. But there are many types of trailers. Many types of properties they sit on. And many types of people who own them. It’s not a monolith.

That being said, with my history of living in a mobile home and being bullied about it at school, I still have some… hangups about it. I actually don’t often say “trailer” or “mobile home” when talking about it. I just call it a house. We also haven’t had many folks over to visit—mostly because there isn’t much room for entertaining. But also a little teensy bit of baggage from before.

To be fair: It’s not bad. It’s just old and it’s a little obvious that in the last decade, upkeep became less of a priority. This is mostly due to the fact that the couple who owned it previously was older. The husband fell ill and passed away. The wife lived here a bit on her own but opted to move closer to their kids. After that, the trailer sat mostly unoccupied for a year or two before she decided to sell.

It’s from 1972. It did have some updates made over the years, including having a pretty substantial living room added to the back via enclosing a patio.

There were newer windows installed (I’m guessing in the ’90s?) in every room except the kitchen, which still has the original single-pane aluminum windows.

It has a new metal roof… but that was only added after the last one leaked and the damage done by the leak was never repaired. So some of our ceilings are not in great shape.

The home itself is nestled into a little too much vegetation for proper sunlight and ventilation so the outside has a lot of mildew. It’s also not on a foundation, but rather the bottom is just covered by wood skirting, so we have animals living (and fighting and fucking and dying) under us at any given moment.

Speaking of animals, we’ve also had to deal with mice. So many mice. If you’ve never had to deal with mice and their mess, count your blessings. What a constant source of extra work by way of cleaning, baiting, and trapping. Woof.

Despite all that, we somehow have a decent amount of space, even if it is rather poorly laid out. The inspector claims it’s 1,000 square feet, which is only 400 square feet smaller than our last house. It doesn’t make sense because this place only has one bedroom and our last place had three. I dunno, we’re able to fit almost all of our furniture in here. We did have to rent a climate-controlled storage unit to house a few extra pieces of furniture and boxes upon boxes of things that used to live in the basement, cabinets, closets, etc.

Glad we sprung for the 10 by 10.

That’s all relatively tolerable, though. The only thing that I truly STRUGGLE with is the poor climate control. It has a furnace that’s more like someone blowing warm air on you through a paper towel tube and there’s no AC. We had to get three separate floor units because the windows are all too small for window units. The insulation is original too, so we get hot and humid in the summer and we freeze in the winter.

Comfort aside, the humidity is tough on everything: spices, medications, fabric… you name it, it’s damp, clumped, or sticky all the time despite the fact that I put a dehumidifier in literally every room (the total count is one large, two medium, and three small units throughout the house).

At this point, our primary goal is to move into the new place before having to spend a third wet, hot, Punxsutawney summer in the tin can.

Doing Big Things in a Small Place

JessDellenLeave a comment

Hello!

Uh, you may have noticed that I took all the old posts down. That’s because we don’t live there no mo’. We’re embarking on a brand-new, even-more-terrifying adventure: Building our dream home!

A few years ago I got a massive bee in my bonnet about getting out of the city. We started saving to move elsewhere, and I started referring to our house savings account as GUTFOOB: Get Us The Fuck Out Of Baltimore. After nearly nine years in the city—nine years that included both a car break-in AND a home break-in—I’d really had enough. It wasn’t Baltimore specifically, I’m just not a city gal. You can keep your amenities… being “close to the action” doesn’t do it for me. I need nature and the single tree in our backyard wasn’t cutting it. Plus, while we were only about six miles from downtown, it still took half an hour to get anywhere. (Ask me if I miss city traffic.)

In addition to being sick of city life, I scored a pretty sweet work-from-home gig. Mike was already working from home, so we were free to move anywhere we wanted. And the housing market was hot in favor of sellers, so we knew we’d make enough money on our sale to get a great head start on building. The timing really couldn’t have been better.

Mike and I have been talking about building our own house for what feels like eons. Every day in our old house inspired a new thought of, “I really wish this room were bigger,” or “I’d love to not have to walk up and down two flights of stairs to do laundry,” and “Wouldn’t it be great to have two sinks in the master bathroom?” But the thought of building a house felt so unattainable. How much will that cost? It sounds hella expensive. How does it even work? Where do we start? There are so many moving parts.

Having seen many friends and family members go through some significant home-building trauma, I started looking into the least melodramatic ways to make it happen. The first thing I set my mind to was living on the property while we build. That way, we weren’t on anyone’s timetable but our own. We’d never have to rent back our first house, live in a hotel, crash with family, or pay two mortgages at once. Unfortunately, that drastically limited our options in terms of available, affordable property.

Another thing limiting our options was location. Oh, and lot size. (Apparently I’m picky and like a challenge.) We wanted something between three and five acres within an hour of Penn State so we can go to more games and just visit more often. Property within an hour proved to be either whole-ass farms or postage-stamp lots in the ‘burbs, so we expanded our radius to an hour and a half. After months of scouring listings and monitoring Zillow alerts, we hit the jackpot…

…a mobile home that sits on 3.7 acres in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania!

As seen from across the street.

Bet you didn’t expect me to be this stoked to move into a trailer that was built in 1972, but here I am. Honestly, we were looking for anything small enough to be knocked down later if we needed to. The property setup is perfect. The lot is bisected by a road, with the mobile home sitting on 0.6 acres and the build site being on 3.1 wooded acres that BACK UP TO A CREEK. I have dreamed about a property like this my entire life. So two years in a trailer seems like a pretty small price to pay in the grand scheme of things.

a creek framed by trees and bushes
Waterfront property. No big deal.

We ended up putting in an offer on the trailer the same day we toured it. From offer to closing, it took us about a month and a half. In that time, we were able to sell our Baltimore house and get settled into our new digs in mid-August of 2021. And that’s when the real fun began.