The Big Move

Most of August was spent preparing to move out of our house and onto the property. Two obstacles presented themselves: What to do with all of our stuff and getting the travel trailer move-in ready. Both of these proved to validate our two most oft-repeated mottos: “It took longer than expected” and “it cost more than we thought.”

We rented a 8x40 storage unit. Big surprise, it wasn’t big enough. But due to the expert stacking of some good helpers, we managed to fit most of our stuff in it, although we had to stack it—literally—to the ceiling. But despite our best efforts, the day of the move left us with a few extra items, such as the couch, our bed, the fridge, and a couple of my office desks. We found a willing friend to let us stash it in his garage for the time being.

We started the move at 8:00am on August 28th and we finally finished putting these last items in the garage at about 6:00pm. It was a very long and tiring day. But, we cleared our first obstacle.

I thought it was important to prove that my shop could be cleared out, a feat that we had our doubts about.

The second obstacle required our attention before we moved as we cleaned the outside and attempted to clean the inside of the trailer. We quickly found that the trailer needed more than cleaning.

We bought the trailer from a family who lived in it for two years. There may also been a few goats and dogs in it as well. In light of this multipurpose use, it was in surprising good shape. Still, we felt it necessary to pull out the floor covering, replace the plywood subfloor in a spot in the back that had rotted through, and remove the jackknife sofa to re-upholster it.

Here’s what we’ve fixed in the trailer so far or are in the process of doing:

1. Fixed subfloor
2. Installed new carpet in the back and stick-down vinyl tiles in the front.
3. Removed the dinette booth next to the door and installed a computer desk.
4. Replaced two of the roof vents, replacing the bathroom vent fan with a “whole-house'” style vent (works great).
5. Took out all of the window treatments and cleaned them (haven’t put them back in yet and may not because, hey, we’re in the middle of the woods).
6. Replaced the Wedgewood R2145 stove with an almost new one.
7. Cleared the kitchen sink drain (it was not draining) and replaced the p-trap under the sink so it doesn’t leak anymore (yeah!)
8. Repaired about a half-dozen drawers with new or repaired glides so they all work now.
9. Cleaned all of the windows and screens.
10. Replaced the cold water supply line to the water heater (I think I sliced it when replacing the back room carpet and didn’t notice it until I turned on the water—which promptly sprayed all over the new carpet. Ugh.
11. Placed a 200 gallon water tank next to the back of the trailer on a platform so we can easily refill the 40 gallon trailer water tank.
12. Removed the sofa and we are in the process of repairing the frame and springs (done), cleaning the cover (done), replacing the foam (done), and reassembling everything and installing back into the trailer (to be done this week).
13. Removed (done) and replaced (to be done this week) all of the heating vent tubes.
14. Drained the grey water tank into a 4” flexible drain pipe and ran it out a ways from the trailer down hill. (There’s a story in this task, involving a full black water tank with the valve unexpectedly open that includes lots of nasty stuff washing over me. I can’t tell it here because it’s a really dirty story.)

Still to do, which we’ll hopefully do this week:

• Repair the screen door (replace the screen material and rebuild the bottom of the door, which is basically not there anymore).
• Patch the roof of several leaks we found deep in the night of our first really big rain storm.
• Finish installing the bathroom fan trim.
• Re-install the heater vent tubing.
• Finish re-upholstering the sofa and re-install back in the trailer.

Then, we can get down to the real business of being out here: Building the cottage.

So, here we are, one week into our adventure. It’s been a long week in some ways. But I think we have gotten the systems working and we can now finish up on the details and move on. It’s a bit cramped, but we manager fine. Our life improved 100-fold when we replaced the leaking air mattress with a new (real) mattress. So now, we can sleep well, take showers, cook, keep things a comfortable temperature, and move forward.

I am fortunate that we can still get DSL. I was told by the phone tech that we are about 24,300 feet from the “Dawson remote”, as he put it, which means that we are just a few feet from the limit and their last DSL customer on the line. I had to accept a lower band width from 1.5Mbs to .5Mbs, but that is not a huge inconvenience. What is a problem is that it keeps going up and down during the day. Since my business is software development and I spend a lot of my time remotely connected to Chicago and Kenya, this has been a problem. Hopefully, they can work out the bugs and things will stabilize. After all, they had to run about a mile of cable from the nearest trunk to hook me up, at their expense, we are grateful to report.

Here a couple of pictures I took the day we moved out here. I’m afraid to say that it looks more like a refugee camp or a disaster site then our new home. But I’d like to refer to it as our construction site.          

We have electricity, running hot and cold water, air conditioning when we need it, a roof over our heads, and love. What more could a person want?

More space wouldn’t hurt.