I’ve held off bringing this topic up until I had all the paperwork done and could speak with authority about this deal going through – FOR SURE! We have officially purchased the second mobile home for the BOL. As you all know we have the first single wide in place and well on its way to setup the way we want it for the long term. The first place is a 1997 14×70 Fleetwood – 2 bedroom, 2 bath. The second one we just closed escrow on is a smaller unit. As you can see this is also a single but its just a 2 bedroom, 1 bath – 1993 Fleetwood 14×48.

   So, I know your asking yourself, what’s the story with so much excitement over these old mobile homes? Well, I’ll tell you again – mobiles are the way that many of us will find our freedom… At least the freedom from the debt based slavery we are almost all imprisoned by in the modern day USA! These homes are cheap and have so much overlooked potential because of our society’s “Trailer Trash” bias. It’s with these things in mind that I want to take all of you on this journey with me. I want to start at the beginning and document for all of you the steps I go through in getting this home purchased, moved and re-setup at the new location. I’ll show you just what I’m doing and try to answer all the questions you have as to the “what’s, why’s and the how much”…

   Right now we are at step 2 – Tear down! Over the last month or so, Mrs Prepper and I have been in negotiations with this seller and working our way to the final signing of escrow papers that we got completed last Friday. The home is officially ours but there is still a lot to get done before the home can even leave the sellers property. There are some additional steps, paperwork wise, that have to be completed before the home will be in our name. This will require working with some county offices but we will try to keep the government involvement to a minimum. However, the fact is that documents have been signed and money has changed hands so its all ours!

   I’m sure you’re wondering what the dollars and cents are on this place… I mentioned briefly a while back that my wife and I found this place for sale completely by accident. We had been keeping our eye’s peeled for something like this to add to our property but weren’t in any big hurry! The seller had been asking $10,000 for it, which wouldn’t be an unreasonable price. However, the place is pretty rough aesthetically and even though the bones are good, we gave her a low ball offer of $2,500. Like I said, we weren’t in any hurry and could afford to let the seller think it over for a few weeks. Those few weeks did go by and we hadn’t heard form her? I believe it was in week three that I decided to call her up and see how she was coming along in her deliberations…

   The conversation went like this… Seller wasn’t willing to let the house go for that little. I asked what they were thinking would be a fair price, considering the place is in need of a LOT of cleanup and repairs. Seller explained that if they accepted the $2,500 offer, they would have to sell the “newer” appliances separately and that would be a lot of additional trouble. I asked what they might hope to get for these appliances (washer, dryer, range and propane fueled heating stove, looks like a wood stove but is propane)? The response was that they were thinking those appliance would bring $3,000 between them. I asked if I were to by all those appliances for $3,000, would they accept my $2,500 offer. Yes sir, that is what they would need to see – $5,500 and the house was ours. I made them the written offer and the place was ours… Sounds easy but this is just the first part of Step #1, the other part getting the paperwork actually signed around so we can begin the more labor intensive Steps that follow…

   So, for $5,500 we purchased our self a second 2/1 home and a large project in getting the place moved, reset and then fully revamped to fit our needs. We plan to use this place as a “Guest House” for our friends and family when they visit. We’re planning to set this home parallel to the first home, separated by roughly 24 feet. We’ll span this 24 foot gap with decking and have a central courtyard area for the barbecue and fire pit activities. My hope is that the county won’t interfere with my plans and require the homes to be physically adjoined to qualify as a single residence. Either way, we’ll be fine and the price per square foot for living space is so low that we literally couldn’t go wrong.

   I’m sure that someone out there is tempted to remind me that there are a lot of additional expenses to getting this place setup, beside the incredibly low purchase price. Yes, yes and I’ll be sharing each and every one of these costs with you. I’m sure that there’ll be some surprises as the moving contractor hasn’t even given me his bid yet but we’re prepared to share our disappointments with you as well! I believe that this will be an interesting project and proving ground! I’ve been preaching this “Mobiles for Freedom” theme for a while now and it’s time for me to put my money where my mouth is… You will all see just what goes into a project like this, it could easily be scaled up or down depending on your own personal and family needs. The fact that this is a rather small home and just because we are going to use it as “extra space”, don’t discount the lessons we can all learn about affordable housing. This home has 1 decent sized bedroom, an extra bedroom that would make a decent home office or nursery, full bathroom with bathtub (albeit a small full bath), laundry area, full kitchen and a living room. 

   This house, as I just described, is small but I’ve seen many apartments that are smaller. I’ve actually lived in apartments when I was in my early 20′s that were smaller then this house. I have two Grandfathers that live in senior retirement housing that is a fraction of this size. Many trendy areas of Seattle offer deluxe studio living spaces that are much smaller then this and have rents that exceed $1,500 per month. While all of these housing situations are different, they also have much in common, being that all of them are residential in nature. Some person or persons calls this amount of space home. I intend to show you, first hand, the possibilities that a home this size has to offer and all at a price that is well below anything else on the market.

   Stay tuned for updates on our progress and as your questions come to mind be sure to shoot me an email or comment. I’ll do my best to answer all of your questions and make this a valuable learning experience for all of us!

Prepper

   First off Mrs. Prepper isn’t pregnant, its not that kind of addition! I mentioned yesterday that I had something else to show you… Yep, I had the second cargo container dropped off over the weekend. I took some photos to show you how these things get delivered.

#2 getting delivered

   This is actually the third container that I’ve purchased and had delivered. These last two times were obviously being placed at our current location and went real smooth. However, the first time was at another property that we owned near by. The delivery of that box was a complete disaster from start to finish. To give a little credit to that particular driver, it was a difficult road to navigate. With this in mind we had the owner of the company that sold us the container come take a look and make sure he could get the thing delivered to our site prior to coming to an agreement on the price, to include delivery. We were assured that this was going to be a little more difficult than the average but that his driver would get the job done.

Almost down

   I should have known that this would end badly, the driver was 4 hours late. No good reason just late? What? You don’t just show up someplace 4 hours late without a VERY good excuse… This guy did! I had driven quite a distance to be on hand for the delivery and had to be back home the same night, so needless to say I wasn’t in a very generous mood when he arrived.

   Well, lets get this show on the road… He walks the route before getting down to business backing the trailer up the driveway. He told me that it was a good thing the boss had sent him as he was the only driver that would be able to make such a difficult approach. He was decidedly cocky about his abilities but I didn’t really care how it got done as long as it did and quick. So he starts getting the truck lined up down on the road and then he’d back it up the drive and around the corner to where I wanted it put. He got no more than a third of the way up the drive when he gets stuck. The more he jockeyed the trailer around the worse he tore the driveway up, the more he tore the driveway up the worst he would get stuck. This sad competition went on for more than 2 hours when he finally decides that he just can’t get it up there. OH, OK – I explain that I have paid for it to be in a certain place and unless he wants to take it back with him, he needed to come up with something because it wasn’t even on my property yet… We went round and round before he decides to call a local track hoe operator that the boss knew of. The heavy equipment guy said he could come drag it up into place in the next few day but it would be about $300 dollars. The driver offered to split the cost with me, uh no! You either put it where I contracted to have it or you reduce the cost by enough for me to pay the other guy to finish your job. A few phone calls later and the boss had given him approval to reduce the bill.    

Containers side by side with room for the garage area...

   I thought we had this all taken care of, he would just drop the box in the approach to our driveway and the track hoe would do the rest. I told him that I couldn’t stay any longer and he was on his own. It should have taken just a short time to dump it off and he could head out as well… The operative word here was – “should have”.

  I called his office the next day to make sure he had done as we agreed to… I was told that the owner wouldn’t accept my call and that the driver hadn’t succeeded in dropping the load until well after midnight and only then with the help of 2 tow trucks. WHAT? It seems that he blew out the transmission when he was showing off his extensive skills… After I left, he tried to drop the box and found that it wouldn’t come off the truck in the current position. When he went to reposition everything he found that he had ruined the tranny. He apparently was able to call a tow company but had to wait for hours before they got there and even then it required a second truck to get him straightened out. He did get the delivery made roughly where he had agreed to and the track hoe put it in place, so a happy ending after all. Except for the shipping companies owner that had to replace the transmission, after reducing my price on what was a low profit product to start with.

   Anyway, back to my original story! You had already seen the first container at the BOL and now we have a second. My photography skills aren’t exactly professional grade but I wanted to document this second delivery. This would help me illustrate to you what was going on in the disaster delivery! 

   If you noticed there is a considerable space between the two boxes. I bet you can guess what my plans are… Thats right – GARAGE or barn might be a better description. I’m not currently planning to get the thing finished quite enough to call it a garage but when I get done it will provide a number of different uses for our group…

Straight shot up the driveway into the future garage

   The space I left between the boxes is 20 feet wide and 40 feet long, this will provide 800 square feet to work with. I am planning to use most of the area like I said, garage, carport, barn or what have ya… However, I have a plan to completely enclose the back 12 to 16  feet as a bunk room setup. This wouldn’t need to be fancy but just have enough room for a set of bunk beds, wood stove and a 3/4 bath. Maybe have a small table and chairs as well if I can lay it out right. I’m looking forward to this project especially as this will allow more folks come stay overnight than we currently can house! Also, Mrs Prepper has asked about a bathroom outside someplace. This would allow folks to not be coming in and out on her clean floor all through the day! Yes, I do realize that an outhouse would work well for this and I have one of these planned as too. I did build an outhouse on one of our other properties, it worked well for the 8-10 years I needed it. It was fairly snug as it was built like a small shed rather than the traditional style. I will probably go with something like this again for the next one… Don’t worry I won’t ask you to help dig it but I will show you the pictures after its done.

   I guess that pretty well wraps up this delivery and now you have all seen my new addition. I even gave you a peek into some of the projects that are coming up… What still remains to be seen are YOUR PROJECTS… Thats right I’m going to keep harping on you to step up and share somethings that you are doing. I hope that what I have been sharing with you isn’t just reading material but a swift kick in the butt to start getting those projects of your own going! If I can take pictures of hat I’m doing and figure out how to get them up on the interweb than you can to. Except you can even skip a step and just email me the photos and I’ll put them up for you. I will give you the whole days post to share whatever you want or just send a couple pictures and I’ll start a photo album of projects that you guys submit. Either way you know how to reach me prepper@preppernation.com.

See you tomorrow!

Prepper

Faded blue paint color

   Alright, I’ve needed to get back to the BOL project… Where did we leave off? You heard about the drainage issue and me getting the utilities all hooked up… I guess that brings us to some cosmetic improvements!

   I’m sure being the highly sophisticated preppers that I know you are, you all noticed that our mobile home’s paint job looked like crap! Alright, so there I said it, but I know you were thinking it! We hadn’t been to worried about the exterior up to this point, with the exception of the “keeps out the weather” items. Which reminds me I have yet to deal with the whole roof issue – maybe if I ignore it, it will just go away? No? I didn’t think so either but hey you already know I’m a dreamer!

   So, here we are with the ugly faded blue paint in the middle of a fairly picturesque location. Not cutting it… Mrs. Prepper and I had discussed the color options on several occasions, without coming to a firm conclusion. What to do, what to do… I know how about brown? Actually, we hadn’t came up with any other color that would be appropriate.

   So we decide on brown, problem solved… Not hardly, did you know that brown comes in a lot of colors? Check out the brown’s selection next time your in Home Depot. Well, being the take charge kind a guy, I say lets get this one it looks great… Nope, I heard the voice of a wise older man in my head – “Choose a couple samples and then paint it on a section so you can really see the stuff before you decide”… You guessed it, it was the voice of my father. So not wanting to disappoint Dad, even though I was sure I had eyeballed the perfect color, we selected an alternate choice as well.

   I had seen the commercial on TV somewhere about Glidden or Baer paint having the extra small cans of paint specifically for this kind of thing, try before you buy type a deal! When asked about this the salesman at the paint desk says that he doesn’t have those for my paint?? Which was Glidden I think. Oh, alright? – I think to myself and actually say out loud, hate when that happens? I keep looking around prior to making my final decision and what the heck do I discover on the exact opposite end of the counter from Mr. cooperative down there… Mini cans of paint that say the same thing as the commercial, “TRY ANY COLOR BEFORE YOU BUY IT”…

   I quietly walked back down the counter to this pimple faced punk and grabbed him by the shirt collar. He was somewhat surprised at being man handled while generally just minding his own business…

   Alright, this time I actually was thinking it in my head and not acting it out. Darn, good manners rule - Mrs. Prepper requires that I behave in public and since I married far out of my league I generally try to comply with her wishes… But she can’t control my thoughts – yet? Just teasing, she knows who wears the pants in the family – she issues them to me on an as needed basis!

   Enough with the joking around, this kid said they didn’t have the stuff. I point the display out to him and sure enough… He maintains that it won’t work with, my paint? Alright, I give up – give me a gallon of each. I’m really not a cheapskate but this was already seeming to be ridiculous as I KNEW I had the right color and should just buy the stuff and have done with it! So out I walk with enough material and equipment to get moving on the paint project the following weekend when we got to the BOL. Enough of everything except the paint of course…

   I’m going to jump ahead to that Saturday afternoon. We had pressure washed the exterior and were ready to get the paint selecting show on the road. Mrs. Prepper and I went to opposite ends of the wall. We each applied paint to about a 6×6 foot area. Of course I have the paint I had chosen as the perfect color on my end… I get the stuff rolled on and step back to admire my new home color! I’m looking at this stuff and thinking to myself “I’m not so sure that this is quite right after all”? Wait a minute… I remember you have to let it dry completely before you can tell how it’ll look… So, I put my roller down and walk over to the other end and see Mrs. Prepper doing much the same thing I was just a second before? I look at her color and low and behold it sucks too?

   We decide that this can’t be right, 2 bad colors – Boulderdash! It must be that we’ll have to wait until the next morning to really be able to tell, yeah that was the ticket, wait until morning! We proceed to get everything cleaned up and put away for the night and head inside.

   Well, as you will already guess, I get up the next day to find that it was a beautiful day at the BOL… Remember, they’re all BEAUTIFUL days at the BOL. Seriously though, we get up and get some coffee going before we go on out to have a look. A short time later I find myself standing next to the Mrs. and we are both just shaking our heads. I just can’t believe it? My color looks more burgundy than brown and the other color is best described as a light pumpkin… Not gonna work, no way no how – the old man was right again! I was very glad to have not rushed in and bought 5 gallons of this “Perfect” color! Back to the drawing board!

   We had actually gotten alot of the chores done and much of the needed prep work so we could really paint the place the next trip over. This would mean that we would have to bring back some more trial colors and then make a run to the next big town to buy enough of our final color choice to get the job done. More trouble than I had expected but it would all be worth it to finally have a more earth toned house!

   Needless to say we went with a much more “normal” milk chocolate brown color. We tried a couple and ended up with the color you are looking at now. Could we have gone round and round to find the PERFECT color, sure we could but this was what we went with. Not awesome but very acceptable in our eyes… You might be saying to yourself, “they should have stuck with the pumpkin color, cause that’s just ugly”… You’re entitled to your opinion but just remember, I also thought I could pick out a good paint color. You might just decide that a color like this is good enough after you tried 4 without getting it 100% right!

   I guess that pretty much sums up what it took to get the paint job on the house. It was quite a relief to us to have it done finally. We made ourselves wait to address the cosmetics in favor of getting the less glamorous but necessary tasks completed first. Slowly we’re going to knock out all of our to do list but we can only do one thing at a time… There are more updates coming on the BOL but that’s it for this week… I hope you all have a great weekend and I’ll be back on Monday!

Prepper

Hello Brown

You can see the original paint color and the old 5th Wheel in the background

High security lock set to make sure the doors stay closed while I'm away!

Peek a boo view of the utility area for the well...

    I digress, I was saying that I’ll do a better job in the future of attempting to get every angle and more of the step by step down as I go through my chores. Thanks for sticking with me as I get this all down to a science.

    I have literally a dozen projects that are coming and I’d really like to tell you all what they’re going to be… Unfortunately, I know a few of you would assume that this implied a verbal contract and then I’d be legally obligated to get my stuff done. I’ll get these to you as the budget allows and the weather cooperates. Be assured there is some cool stuff coming up!

Where the conduit and water pipe comes through the floor.

     Additional side note, “ERnurse” and a few others have indicated that they are also in the greater Pacific Northwest area. If there are other folks in the neighborhood, too please speak up! Maybe we can all get together for an afternoon and talk shop? I’m very aware of OPSEC and we could do this on a “FIRST NAME basis only” as we all have alot to lose but also to share. Just a thought, but I would be happy to know that more and more folks are waking up and getting stuff done. I’d be glad to shake anyone’s hand that fits that category.

     Please help me spread the word if you like what we’re doing here. The more the merrier as they say. As one that was a shameless lurker for many, many years without getting involved, I thank all the folks that have corresponded. I do understand most people don’t like to and that’s just fine. If you each would tell a couple buddies about “Prepper Nation”, the better chances I have of finding a few folks that do like to chime in! No guilt what so ever for the silent masses but I really would like to have other contributors giving their unique point of view and sharing their skill sets with us… So tell a friend and we’ll just keep getting better and better!

    Enjoy what I was able to get you on a Sunday morning before church and I’ll bring you something exciting tomorrow. At least it’ll be exciting to me, as usual I can only hope you like it.

Prepper

40 long feet of prepper fun!

   Ok, I promised to get back to this topic later in the week and now its Friday so I better give this post to you, as promised. Yes, I talked Mrs. Prepper into letting me purchase a cargo container for our new land. “It’s sooo neat and all the cool kids have one, pleeaassee!” Actually, its not like that at all, Mrs. Prepper is probably into prepping 75% as much as I am! She actually asked me one time if we had a 50 caliber rifle yet and if not shouldn’t we get one just in case – I know, I know, now you’re jealous! She’s beautiful too! When you eventually see me in the upcoming videos you’ll know I tricked the poor woman for sure – sucker…

   Really how this came about was we were deliberating about what we would do for our “Well House”. This is the building, room or what have ya that holds the well pumps electrical switch and pressure tank! We get some real cold weather through out the winters here and this being a largely unoccupied retreat required a little extra forethought. We contemplated just building a small shed structure for this purpose. I’m not a big showy person at all but I appreciate aesthetics when it comes to my land. Doesn’t have to be perfect but I will always try to make my buildings somewhat symmetrical and keep all the paint colors coordinated if possible. Funny how these traits only seem to come out in me when it comes to things like this.

   We ended up deciding against the shed idea, which does happen to be the most common way the folks around here do it. We really needed secure storage, a well house, garage for the quads and tools, etc. Now, to be completely honest, I really did want to get a container but it had to make sense for our needs. Just so happens it was a logical choice for the needs currently at hand!

   I would be required to design something to maximize our usable space, while also heating and insulating the area for the well house. Just what a guy needs, a challenge, design how you want your containers floor plan laid out… Tough job but somebody had to do it.

   So, next we had to find one and for the allocated funds available. We knew that the best deals were going to be found in the port cities, Seattle, Tacoma or even Portland, depending on what the delivery cost would be from that distance? I got out the phone book and, who am I kiddin, I googled Cargo Container Seattle and with in a couple dozen links was able to secure a good price on a 40 footer. I also found that the 40 foot length is almost the same price as a 20 footer? Doesn’t make alot of sense to go with a 20 to save hundred bucks. I found a company that would deliver a guaranteed not to leak 40 foot box in “Good” condition for just about $2000 dollars. This was when the price of gas was at about the highest it got last summer. I had run the numbers for building a shed large enough to meet our needs and it wasn’t going to be all that much cheaper, materials and time factored in. Plus I could get all the buildings that I had an immediate need for, all in one.

   After making the decision based on all the practical requirements. I was then free to get excited about my 40 foot steel box with the extra secure features to make sure all my preps stayed where I put em! I am impressed with what you really are getting for a relatively small price. I wouldn’t want

this giant eyesore in my yard at home in Seattle but out in the sticks it is more like a badge of honor to have such a treasure…

   Well, right on time the truck showed up to drop the box off. I was surprised to see it came in on a trailer pulled by a 3/4 or maybe it was a 1 ton pickup truck. You would think that it might be difficult to drive around with a forty foot tail behind you but this driver made it look easy and he put the thing within a couple inches of where I told him to! Not to shabby…

   Let the fun begin! Like I said this was going to act as our well house so I had to determine how to get an insulated room inside. The logical place to put the room would have been at the back, leaving the rest wide open to use as storage. Not me brother, I put it in the middle. Doors on both sides and a storage room at the rear. I bet you don’t even have to use much imagination to understand why I wanted the storage room at the rear. Out of sight and out of mind, the neighbors minds that is… Not that we have alot of unexpected company but I’m fairly careful with the OPSEC… “If I tell you, then I have to”, you know the rest but needless to say ”Us Doomers of the apocalypse” like to keep our business and quirks, private!

   Like I was saying, I built the well room in the middle. I basically built a 12 foot section that had wall and ceiling studs and floor joists. This allowed me to bring in fiberglass insulation to try to ward off the cold and maybe keep in a little heat. It came out alright and left me enough room inside to add additional pressure tanks or what have you in the future.

   I cut holes large enough to allow the electrical conduit and water pipes to come up through the floor into the new room. This also meant I would have electrical available inside the container for lights, heater in the winter time, etc. On the down side, the container can’t be moved easily anymore because the utilities.

   I ended up with a 14 foot long by 8 foot wide garage/work room in the front portion and another one roughly the same size in the rear for storage. All door have locks to allow me controlled access. Never know what you might run across inside one of these owned by a prepper type?? More to come, stay tuned…

Prepper