Our new vintage mobile home.My husband and I recently purchased a totally sweet vintage (1967, baby!) mobile home, and we are really excited to finally be home owners. While it took me a minute to get over my middle-class judgements about “trailer trash,” etc., I am now all in and thrilled that while it may not be our dream home, it is OURS. (Also, the wood paneling is pretty amazing.)
But because of my total lack of experience with mobile-home living (see above re: middle-class judgement), I feel really unprepared for the quirks and particularities that will come with our new home. What are people’s challenges with heating, cooling, bugs, and the like? I’m also wondering if people have advice about customizing a small space that has serious restrictions on structural renovation, especially when it comes to storage. Help me out, mobile Homies! –Lara
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Comments on What do you know about vintage mobile home restoration?
First, nothing in your home is a standard size. Go ahead and familiarize yourself with the location of your nearest mobile home parts manufacturer, because there is a good chance that you will be needing to visit them. (Even the inner workings of my toilet have to come from there, not Lowes or anywhere else.) Mobile homes are great in the winter, as they hold heat really well. (Mine does, anyway) But in the Summer, they get super hot because of sun+metal…you’ll probably have to spend more than you think air conditioning the place if you live in a place where that is necessary, and it’s doubtful that you would be able to go without the way you can in a regular house sometimes. It’s nice to have brick underpinning around the bottom instead of metal; depending on where you live it can make a difference in your homeowner’s insurance and it keeps the critters out better than the corrugated metal. Securing homeowner’s insurance can sometimes be difficult, but it can be done and I encourage it. Grange is who we use, if your state has one of those. Farmers is good also I’ve heard. If you’re a paranoid maniac like me and you live somewhere that you have tornadoes, figure out where you would go in the event of a tornado warning and make sure all members of the family know that plan. Nothing wrong with a trailer, I’ve seen some awesome 60s ones customized in a really awesome way. Just like any other small space it helps to be organized with your stuff. Good luck, hope you post pics when you get finished pimping it out!
Can I just second, third and fourth “nothing in your home is standard size”?
NOTHING in your home is standard size. From door frames to air conditioning vents, everything is just a little off from standard measurements. This was one of my mother’s biggest frustrations when we lived in a single wide, and still plagues her from time to time in a double wide. My mom ended up doing a lot of work to shoehorn standard-size items into the double wide (widening air vents, framing windows so they’d fit the depth of the walls, etc.)
If I learned anything from my mom’s influence, it’s that trailers have fewer structural restrictions than you might expect. She built and removed walls, she added windows where there were none and we added on two rooms. The most important thing is to always do everything on studs, from hanging pictures to adding walls. The studs are smaller than standard, so bear that in mind! If you’d like to remove a wall, I recommend making it a half wall, leaving some of the supports intact.
My final recommendation? Seal the roof, and reseal it often. I think we used something like this. No matter how often you seal, you’re going to get leaks. But this will help, and the shiny surface will help reflect off some summer heat (if you’re in direct sunlight.)
I live in a 12-year old mobile home that belonged to my grandmother, and then my brother. It’s had its ups and downs.
My home is terribly insulated. Doesn’t hold heat in the winter, can’t get cool in the summer. I’ve learned to set up box fans across the house to help circulate the air. I put light-reducing screens over the living room windows to help cut out heat in the largest part of the house, but it does nothing to prevent heat coming in from the giant seam down the middle of my home (if yours is a single you might not have this problem). Each season change, we go around windows and doors with a caulk gun and fill holes and gaps. This helps with heating, cooling, and bugs.
We have problems with bugs but I wouldn’t say any more so than a traditional home–they just might have a few more places to come in. We chose to use pesticides (we don’t have any outdoor pets or small children to worry about), and it really helps for us to lift up the vinyl skirting and spray under the house as well as around it.
Plumbing, electrical work–all will need repair and RARELY will you be able to shop at a normal hardware store. I don’t know why, but nearly all mobile home parts are ridiculously different than normal hardware pieces. We frequently shop online and have made friends with returning packages.
When it comes to customizing your space, if you have vinyl wallpaper (most mobile home wallpaper is vinyl) you won’t be able to paint unless you use a special primer. It’s more expensive, but is supposed to prevent the peeling that would happen if you painted onto the wallpaper directly. It’s really, really hard to strip wallpaper in mobile homes because the wallpaper is often directly applied to the wallbaord. It’s a pain and giant mess.
We had to rip out our carpet because my brother’s dog marked the place and he didn’t clean well. We were originally going to put down laminate flooring, but decided against it (we aren’t going to be in the mobile home much longer and preferred to save our money). Instead of putting anything new down, we painted our plyboard floors with a light gray floor paint, and it’s actually been much more resilient than we originally expected.
One thing that happened to us that I would warn you about is dealing with rainwater. Our mobile home does not have gutters (most don’t), and there is a section of our house where rainwater tended to seep. We didn’t notice it at first, but over time, a section of flooring near our back door actually rotted out. We noticed it when a bookshelf near the back door was sinking in through the vinyl flooring. We had to go beneath the house, cut out the rotted wood, replace it with pressure treated wood, replace the insulation (which had mildewed), and replace the vinyl flooring on the inside of the home. There were a few days in which there was a giant hole in my floor and we had to keep our cats locked in another part of the house (not easy in a small home). Check for these kinds of issues frequently as they tend to crop up more often and the negative results appear faster than in brick and mortar homes.
The biggest challenge I faced, in addition to the sun beating on the metal siding in the summer and super-heating the whole house, was the open space beneath our home. I spent a few years in a 1975 model in Massachusetts. Since there is not a solid foundation under the house, we were prone to mice and and other critters finding their way inside. Believe it or not, a raccoon made his way into the walls. Keep the space underneath free of wood debris, because it will attract termites.
Winter posed another problem. The pipes underneath were mostly exposed, so during those especially frigid New England nights, our water pipes would freeze. This was easily avoided by keeping the cabinets under the sink open so the warm air from the house could circulate along the pipes. Check out the plumbing aisle at your local hardware store and pick up some “heat tape”. It looks like an extension cord, but it’s flat. Place it against the pipes, cover with an insulated pipe tube, and plug it in. It will generate heat and keep your pipes from freezing.
As far as storage goes, get creative! Instead of traditional kitchen chairs, we had a booth that was taken from an old diner. The cushions on the benches lifted up and I stored extra pots & pans. IKEA is a great place to get inspired. They’re all about small-space living.
I’m currently renovating our mobile home, and it has been a huge test in trial and error. Painting was tough – I painted and stripped the same room three times, I just couldn’t get paint or primer (even the special primer) to adhere. I’m having to coat the entire wall with drywall compound, then painting over that. I highly recommend doing thorough research on mobile home projects before spending time and money on a task.
I’m also noticing that the subfloor isn’t holding up. We have four couch-leg sized holes under our couch (under the carpet!), a crack running across the kitchen, and some rot under the toilet. Our trailer is 18 years old, and I guess the mdf used for subfloor doesn’t last so long.
I live in Canada, winters are cold. Our pipes froze this winter, and our main drainage pipe got clogged with a chunk of ice. We will most certainly insulate behind the skirting this year, and maybe apply some heat wrap tape to that pipe.
And guys, thanks for the heads up on the hardware stuff! You saved me another annoying mistake.
…but anyway, yay! Homeowners! It is nice to invest in your own place.
I lived in an early 80’s mobile home (or, as my mom likes to call it, a “glorified tin can”) from 2003 to 2012. It belonged to my grandfather, and when he moved to Kentucky, he let us live in it. He died in 2011, and I inherited it (and then signed it over to my father).
So, what did I learn about living in a glorified tin can through my adolescence?
– Your a/c and heating are likely to be major issues. The a/c in our tin can has been nonfunctional since at least 2000 due to animals ripping up the airways. We use window a/c units (two of them) and space heaters for bedrooms and living area.
– I highly suggest that twice a year (during spring and autumn) you check around the house for any random holes or cracks that might have appeared. Because they do. The first spring that we lived in this house, I woke up one morning for school… and there was a snake in our laundry hall.
– Be prepared to make friends with spiders. I didn’t want to be friends with spiders, however, they are an essential part of mobile home living imo. We have an agreement with the wolf spiders and huntsman spiders that hang out in the house.
– When was the last time your home was jacked up? Mobile homes have their own way of settling. If it’s been there for a while, it might be uneven.
– Once you start remodeling or improving, BE CAREFUL. The people who put mobile homes together are apparently INCOMPETENT. When we started ripping the carpet up, we discovered that they had used staples and nails in all sorts of strange groupings. Then we found out that they did the same thing in the walls…
We do NOT have any sort of spider agreement. We also do not have an overly large abundance of spiders, possibly because we have cats; though I grew up in a trailer and we didn’t have a spider problem either. Which is a good thing, because if I saw a huntsman spider in my house I would have to move, assuming that I survived the heart attack. I will say you (the OP) should have the place sprayed for termites every few months and checked for signs of them. Termites can do a lot of damage to a mobile home in a short time, and the damage can be worse because you’re talking about 2x2s and thin wooden subfloor. And, if you lack underpinning, there is a decent chance that your ducts will become attractive to possums, depending on where you live. My aunt had five baby possums in her kitchen once because mama possum chewed through her heating ducts and came up through the floor.
After having a black snake appear in our bathroom, we took some steps to make sure critters didn’t appear. It seemed to cut down on all sorts of unwelcome visitors, so maybe it’ll help you!
• get down on the floor and inspect all around the edges of every wall and cabinet–we found a TON of gigantic holes in our double wide that we patched with caulking, trim or wall patches
• and inspect INSIDE the cabinets! They tend to cut wide holes in the walls for plumbing–we often patched this up with duct tape and plastic bags
• buy a roll of fine mesh screening and attach it inside all vents (I think my mom hot glued it)
• fill the gaps at the edges of corrugated siding with expanding foam then caulk around the trim
• if you think “there’s no way something could get in there”, cover it up anyway. Because something can. And it will.
My mobile home is from sometime in the 70s, probably 1970 is my guess. It could have held up well…if the people who had it before me had cared to upkeep it. The main problem we have is water leaks and drafts from the floor. Our central a/c and heat do not work. No hookups for heat and the a/c is torn up from some previous demon critter. We took out the floor vents and wrapped them in newspaper and saran wrap to keep our heat and air in since they are non-functional. They are basically giant holes-you can see the ground under the house through them. Mildew and mold is a constant problem, we a renting so we can’t do much except put fires out when they do happen. Spraying any area that starts to pop up with mildew with vinegar amd baking soda mix kills it on the surface and eliminates the smell. (If you catch the mildew before it gets into the walls/flooring the baking soda/vinegar can solve the problem, but that is not the case with us. Good luck.
Our mobile home is a 1950s Winston. It’s about 11×50, so rather small.
The good: it’s nothing to pull off a piece of paneling to access the wiring/plumbing behind it! It’s also easy to take down the underpinning exactly where you need to work. The exterior walls are the load bearing walls (for the most part) so you can move walls around at your fancy. (Unfortunately the ceiling is bowed in ours, so it looks really funky where we took a wall down.)
The bad: everything is strangely sized. We can’t even find covers for the outlets that completely hide the electrical boxes. The electrical wiring is usually really tight, without much slack to work with. The space between the roof and the ceiling isn’t even six inches, so can lights stick out awkwardly and the ceilings are too low for many light fixtures. Doors and windows are crappy. (We have a regular house door on our trailer, but because the exterior walls use 2x2s instead of normal 2x4s, the door frame sticks out all the way around.) If you still have the original kitchen cabinets, they are probably built to the wall.
We have replaced the nasty avocado green carpeting with laminate, put real cabinets in the kitchen, added lighting to every room, replaced all of the plumbing, upgraded the breaker box, replaced the duct work (now our cold air blows into the house instead if under it!), and gutted and redid one bathroom.
If you choose laminate flooring, you should replace the particle board subfloor (if you have it) with nice thick plywood. I would recommend sturdier flooring because ours feels really springy around the vents in the floors.
You’ll need to either replace the windows or invest in great curtains to keep in/out the heat and cold. We have windows that crank outwards and have just siliconed them shut.
You should also seriously consider adding insulation to all exterior walls. It’s no big deal to take down a few sheets of paneling and stick in the insulation, but make sure you have the right kind of brads to put them back up. It’s pretty simple to reframe for standard sized windows and doors since its so easy to remove the paneling and the exterior metal sheets.
Good luck! My aunt’s old mobile home looks like a house now with her fancy siding and real windows. Hopefully ours will look that nice someday!
Some things I forgot to mention: we wrapped our pipes with regular house insulation and duct tape and have had no problems with freezing pipes, but it only gets into the teens here.
We have wasps really bad in the summer so what we do is wait for a rainy day and throw a few foggers in the space between the old roof and the new roof that was built on top, and leave the house for the day. It works.
Flex duct is worthless, so if you have it replace it ASAP. It cost us about $300 in materials and a Saturday for my husband to replace all of our ductwork with real ductwork. Best investment ever.
As for storage, if you have a second bathtub you won’t be using, it’s a great place for Rubbermaid totes.
Ditto to above, you are going to have to find specialty providers for maintenance and replacement parts.
I find that air doesn’t move easily in our home, because it’s thin and long, which is good in the winter because it holds heat, but in the summer it gets stuffy. If you do live in a place where the winters get below freezing, make sure your heat tape (which goes around your water pipe under your house) is functioning and make sure to plug it in when it gets close to winter. VERY IMPORTANT. Also-relating to that, because your only water pipe coming into your home isn’t protected by much, in the winter cold water is REAL cold.
When it comes to storage, go vertical instead of horizontal and taking up precious floorspace. And make sure you’ve got things that are double duty (storage ottomans, etc). Putting things into the walls is tricky if it’s anything beyond command type sticky hooks, because there isn’t much for them to hold onto and they tend to pull out of the wall. And wiring can sometimes be cattywompus so make sure you don’t shock yourself!
Neighbor relations in most parks (assuming you live in a mobile home community of some kind) is very important, because you don’t have fences and the boundaries of territory can get fuzzy. Also most communities have rules and make sure you know those well and that you are clear on the terms your lot lease, especially regarding rate increases and what they are required to handle in terms of maintenance (for instance, if a water pipe bursts in our yard, it’s their problem, if it bursts under our house, it’s ours).
Bugs are about on par with other homes, I find. We got some ants in the house last summer and a metric crapton of spiders in our shed, but nothing out of control or ongoing.
We painted over our vinyl wallpaper and so far so good. *knocks wood*
In our home, the wood trimming around our windows and on our doors (and probably everywhere else) is not anywhere close to real wood and is covered with contact paper-like covering, which easily comes off, which is annoying. The previous owner left some kind of velcro on the master bedroom door and if you try to take it off it completely takes off all the finish, so we had to cover that.
Storage: I hacked IKEA billy bookcases into built ins, and put in my own linen/vaccum closet along with a gorgeous set of built in book/media storage along one wall. It’s everyone’s favorite feature when they first come in. I also did the same in another mobile home for a combo pantry/dining hutch. Around $300 including doors and trim pieces to make it look snazzy. I put old kitchen cabinets in both of the laundry rooms with a fresh coat of white paint.
I throw bug foggers under the house once a year and never have had spiders. The foam expand-y stuff they sell in a can at home depot to fill in cracks works great for unanticipated hole-y spots, like around the dryer hose, etc. I get wasps in the light fixtures, but I don’t think that’s exclusive to mobile homes.
I don’t recommend ripping the wallpaper off – it’s generally built into the drywall, and will leave your drywall a terrible mess and tons of work (I had to redrywall a whole house) If you must try it, test it inconspicuously. Inconspicuous tests are probably part of the foundation of mobile home ownership, in fact, as mentioned before, the places are not put together with the same quality checks you’d normally expect.
I painted over all the vinyl wallpaper in the new house without event, and painted all my fake paper wood trim as well. It brightened and cleaned up the house and made it look much less mobile homeish and more cottage. I was lucky to have nice windows in my current home, but in another one, I took the nuts out of the metal edged windows, put flat screws in, and put inexpensive trim around the windows over the metal flanges.
Keep your skirting intact and together, don’t leave it open even for a little while. Aside from providing insulation, it keeps the animals out. Cat pee smell is the last thing you need while crawling around under your house to fix something.
If you live somewhere that freezes, make sure there’s at least a small gutter over your front door, because your storm door/screen door handle will freeze shut late at night.
Consider what your long term goals are for the place, and how much money you really want to put in. Mobile homes don’t appreciate in value with beautiful remodels the same way that stick homes do, and it’s important to remember that in all the excitement of doing things YOUR way from now on. Weigh what is important to you and what isn’t. I put beautiful granite tiles in one kitchen for counters, which was a great steal from a liquidating house, but put simple clearance vinyl tiles for the floors; a family member put 50k of kitchen/bath/decking upgrades into his, that he will never get out of it, but he is okay with that, since he plans to live there for a very long time.
We are in our 70’s. Owned homes. Lost our shirts in the 80’s housing drop. Bought an RV, and upgraded over the years to a 5th wheel. Lived in that for 12 years. Now live in a mobile home park. Own the home, rent the space, and they keep raising our rent by 40 bucks a year. We simply want to have our home refurbished, and no one will do it! HELP!
My parents have managed to modify the structure of their mobile home a lot, with no problems. There is a huge addition off the living room as well as one of the bedrooms, and my dad did it all himself. It is on property they own, which is the main thing about those big renovations since they wouldn’t be able to move it now (except in multiple pieces, maybe)
You guys! Thank you! (I’m the OP.) This is all really useful information and experience. Things that are occurring to me as I read: does anybody have experience with a wood stove in a mobile home? And in terms of brick underpinning vs metal, does anybody have more input? I’m thinking about critter security and insulation vs ease of access.
We are planning to replace the nasty blue carpet with laminate in the bedrooms, but I’m trying to take a breath and not go crazy with remodeling fever. It’s just so exciting to have a space that’s OURS, you know? I’m trying to channel that energy into planting our garden and flower beds around it instead, since we moved the trailer onto our farm. 🙂
My parents had a mobile home until I was 5, which was heated with wood.
What my parents did was build an add-on foyer which housed the stove. They were able to heat the entire trailer by keeping all the doors open inside and using ceiling fans to circulate the warm air from the woodstove.
They loved their mobile home so much, by the way, that they abandoned their farmhouse and bought a mini-home as soon as we kids all grew up.
We had a wood stove in our two built-on rooms, but it did a lot to heat the entire trailer. We also had central air, but we tried to heat everything with the wood stove when possible. It’s important to read up on how to ensure that the stove is safe where you put it–walls and flooring around the stove can get quite hot!
We had metal underpinning (and have vinyl now) and I don’t think we would’ve done it any other way. We live in Kentucky where the winters don’t get terribly cold, but do stay below freezing for long periods–we had good insulation, so the floors never felt cold or anything, and there weren’t any drafts coming up through the vents. It was always nice to be able to push out a panel for light when we were working under the house and repairing the skirting was EASY–I imagine brick would be difficult. Simulated brick/stone underpinning may be a nice choice! It’s thick and insular, but is still formed in removable panels.
Make sure you keep up on water damage. the seals of a vintage trailer can very easily give way to let water in…and then the beautiful wood paneling is SHOT! Just because it is a trailer doesn’t mean it can’t be a dream home. Take a look at vintage camper websites for ideas. There is a campground in Bisbee Az and another (I can’t remember where) called El Cosmico. Very cool trailers and I would LOVE to live in one. If we ever make our move from our current house to a city we would rather be…we will definitely be living in a camper… A plot of land somewhere and our little caravan. Someday.
I used to help my dad remodel old mobile homes to be used as rentals. And by old, I mean completely rotted floors and leaky roofs and busted windows. I think we paid $50 for the trailer we renovated for me to live in while I was in college. Here’s a few things I’ve learned about fixing up these old things:
1. Haven’t seen this mentioned yet, which is why I’m commenting. Many old mobile homes from the 60’s and 70’s are wired with aluminum instead of copper, which is a huge fire risk. If your home has aluminum, you really, really need to get it rewired.
2. You can fix anything with enough caulk.
3. Re-seal the roof to save on energy costs.
4. The exterior of a mobile home can be repainted with brushes and rollers just as easy as any other house.
5. From my experience, resurfacing old tubs and sinks isn’t really worth it…the finish starts to peel in a year or two. A tub insert is probably a better choice. Or just work with it! I could totally be inspired by some avocado green.
Ok, now bonus story: the $50 trailer I lived in during college was made before hitches were designed to be removable. But the fancy big city trailer park I moved it to in Arlington, TX absolutely required that the hitch be removed, so dad took a cutting torch to it and made that park my trailer’s forever home.
Fast forward to after graduation and I was getting ready to move to Cally-for-ni-a, and I donated the trailer to the United Way just to get it off my hands (I’d broke even on apartment rent vs. remodel + lot rent, so whatevs). Turns out the new Cowboys stadium landed smack dab on top of that trailer park, so after all the other trailers got moved out, mine stood there in protest and was finally torn down. Damn Tarrant County still thinks I owe property tax on it, too.
Man, I miss that trailer. It was lipstick on a pig, but it was MINE.
My family lived in an older mobile home when I was a kid. Eventually we had to take it to the dump and buy a new one. It was a double wide, and we did not know that it was taking on water and termite damage. The two sides began shifting away from each other. The bathroom floors were made out of perfaboard and caved in. The walls are weak, and someone could accidentally lean on it and knock the wall panel in. I have no qualms about living in a mobile home, but I would have someone come and inspect it for sure if you haven’t had anyone do it already. That way if there’s anything dire you can take care of it sooner rather than later.
A funny thing: The lady before us installed an earthquake sensor near the back door. Every once in a while someone would accidentally hit and we’d have to go around the outside of the trailer opening panels and lighting the pilots again. lol
We purchased a 1966 Vindale in 2004. We have lived in it now for almost nine years. The Vindales were extremely well-built mobile homes. We have had absolutely no problems. The subfloor is plywood. The panelling is real wood. The kitchen cabinets are wood and only the drawers wore out and had to be replaced recently. In Ohio we have all kinds of weather but it has always been easy to cool and to heat. No frozen pipes. Ever. We have an aluminum “roof over” so have no leaks to contend with. The outside is clad in vinyl siding. We have vinyl replacement windows. Everything in the home is top quality items that have lasted 47 years and we plan to live in it another 20 short of any disaster. The home was obviously well maintained before we bought it and we continue to take good care of it. To be truthful, I would not want a mobile home built in the 70s or later because I think they are poorly constructed. My biggest complaint is that they have particle board subfloors which are prone to quickly disintegrate when there is a leak. Next, I don’t like the vinyl clad walls or the fake wood cabinets. Give me a well built mobile from the 60s anyday and I’ll be satisfied.
We have lived in a late 60’s model mobile home for 27 years, and I hope it lasts another 27, when I’ll either be dead or in a nursing home. Roger is right. These mobile homes were constructed in a better manner than later ones. Ours has plywood flooring, and we had it re-wired before we moved into it. Adora is right that wiring can be a concern. We built two rooms and two porches onto it. We redid the bathroom, over the years we have put in laminate flooring and made other changes and repairs. We could have afforded something better probably, but we’ve always been happy with it. We actually moved out of a house (which we owned outright-still do) because it was not in a great location for raising a young family. We were able to put the trailer in a beautiful spot, and although there are problems with older mobile homes, they are worth the time and effort in my opinion.
Amen! I lucked upon a 1958 Rod n Reel three years ago which had been the property of a carpenter for 25 years- turn key move in with a awesone new bathroom, but not totally modern. The kitchen & bedroom have all original cabinets and sliding closet doors. Did I mention it is one mile from the Newport Beach beach, with cooling breezes every afternoon all summer?
Only drawback is that the furnace was removed and all the vents, etc. covered up so artfully that you have to stand in the right position to see the patches. I got 2 wall mounted ceramic heaters for winter use in LR/kit and BR.
I am loving all of the help on this site! I have the opportunity to buy a very old mobile home. I think it is from the 60’s (not 100% sure yet). Here are the problems that I would like some feedback on:
1) The ceiling has leaks in spots. Owner says they have resealed the roof twice however it still leaks when it gets wet and cold (condensation or leaks are still there?), so parts of the ceiling in the house are open and the “insides” are spilling out. Should entire ceiling be replaced or can these spots be repaired?
2) Floor damage due to leaking toilet. Don’t want to fall through the floor so is this an “easier” fix (as in pulling up floor and replacing completely, sealing, put toilet back down?), or is there more to this repair than meets the eye.
My biggest concern is the roof/ceiling damage. The lady wants $2,000 for it. It is I believe around a 12×50. You can “eek” out a very small second bedroom/office space. All in all, I think it has potential to be “home” so I am curious to see what you all would do with the above issues.
I have a 68 the windows have two glass panes that crank up to open . They leak really bad and need new weather seals. I don’t even know what the name of them or where to get the parts. Any suggestions?
There was a time when those who lived in caravans and trailer homes were looked down on. With the interest and growing numbers of tiny homes that has all changed now. With people choosing to live in tiny homes for many reasons, including the eco-friendly side, the practicalities of being able to travel and take your home with you, the lack of space in cities for houses etc – the wonderful creativity and inspiration of living in smaller type homes. We now can learn much from those who have lived in smaller spaces and who lead the way in living in a more environmental and creative environment –
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First, nothing in your home is a standard size. Go ahead and familiarize yourself with the location of your nearest mobile home parts manufacturer, because there is a good chance that you will be needing to visit them. (Even the inner workings of my toilet have to come from there, not Lowes or anywhere else.) Mobile homes are great in the winter, as they hold heat really well. (Mine does, anyway) But in the Summer, they get super hot because of sun+metal…you’ll probably have to spend more than you think air conditioning the place if you live in a place where that is necessary, and it’s doubtful that you would be able to go without the way you can in a regular house sometimes. It’s nice to have brick underpinning around the bottom instead of metal; depending on where you live it can make a difference in your homeowner’s insurance and it keeps the critters out better than the corrugated metal. Securing homeowner’s insurance can sometimes be difficult, but it can be done and I encourage it. Grange is who we use, if your state has one of those. Farmers is good also I’ve heard. If you’re a paranoid maniac like me and you live somewhere that you have tornadoes, figure out where you would go in the event of a tornado warning and make sure all members of the family know that plan. Nothing wrong with a trailer, I’ve seen some awesome 60s ones customized in a really awesome way. Just like any other small space it helps to be organized with your stuff. Good luck, hope you post pics when you get finished pimping it out!
Can I just second, third and fourth “nothing in your home is standard size”?
NOTHING in your home is standard size. From door frames to air conditioning vents, everything is just a little off from standard measurements. This was one of my mother’s biggest frustrations when we lived in a single wide, and still plagues her from time to time in a double wide. My mom ended up doing a lot of work to shoehorn standard-size items into the double wide (widening air vents, framing windows so they’d fit the depth of the walls, etc.)
If I learned anything from my mom’s influence, it’s that trailers have fewer structural restrictions than you might expect. She built and removed walls, she added windows where there were none and we added on two rooms. The most important thing is to always do everything on studs, from hanging pictures to adding walls. The studs are smaller than standard, so bear that in mind! If you’d like to remove a wall, I recommend making it a half wall, leaving some of the supports intact.
My final recommendation? Seal the roof, and reseal it often. I think we used something like this. No matter how often you seal, you’re going to get leaks. But this will help, and the shiny surface will help reflect off some summer heat (if you’re in direct sunlight.)
I live in a 12-year old mobile home that belonged to my grandmother, and then my brother. It’s had its ups and downs.
My home is terribly insulated. Doesn’t hold heat in the winter, can’t get cool in the summer. I’ve learned to set up box fans across the house to help circulate the air. I put light-reducing screens over the living room windows to help cut out heat in the largest part of the house, but it does nothing to prevent heat coming in from the giant seam down the middle of my home (if yours is a single you might not have this problem). Each season change, we go around windows and doors with a caulk gun and fill holes and gaps. This helps with heating, cooling, and bugs.
We have problems with bugs but I wouldn’t say any more so than a traditional home–they just might have a few more places to come in. We chose to use pesticides (we don’t have any outdoor pets or small children to worry about), and it really helps for us to lift up the vinyl skirting and spray under the house as well as around it.
Plumbing, electrical work–all will need repair and RARELY will you be able to shop at a normal hardware store. I don’t know why, but nearly all mobile home parts are ridiculously different than normal hardware pieces. We frequently shop online and have made friends with returning packages.
When it comes to customizing your space, if you have vinyl wallpaper (most mobile home wallpaper is vinyl) you won’t be able to paint unless you use a special primer. It’s more expensive, but is supposed to prevent the peeling that would happen if you painted onto the wallpaper directly. It’s really, really hard to strip wallpaper in mobile homes because the wallpaper is often directly applied to the wallbaord. It’s a pain and giant mess.
We had to rip out our carpet because my brother’s dog marked the place and he didn’t clean well. We were originally going to put down laminate flooring, but decided against it (we aren’t going to be in the mobile home much longer and preferred to save our money). Instead of putting anything new down, we painted our plyboard floors with a light gray floor paint, and it’s actually been much more resilient than we originally expected.
One thing that happened to us that I would warn you about is dealing with rainwater. Our mobile home does not have gutters (most don’t), and there is a section of our house where rainwater tended to seep. We didn’t notice it at first, but over time, a section of flooring near our back door actually rotted out. We noticed it when a bookshelf near the back door was sinking in through the vinyl flooring. We had to go beneath the house, cut out the rotted wood, replace it with pressure treated wood, replace the insulation (which had mildewed), and replace the vinyl flooring on the inside of the home. There were a few days in which there was a giant hole in my floor and we had to keep our cats locked in another part of the house (not easy in a small home). Check for these kinds of issues frequently as they tend to crop up more often and the negative results appear faster than in brick and mortar homes.
The biggest challenge I faced, in addition to the sun beating on the metal siding in the summer and super-heating the whole house, was the open space beneath our home. I spent a few years in a 1975 model in Massachusetts. Since there is not a solid foundation under the house, we were prone to mice and and other critters finding their way inside. Believe it or not, a raccoon made his way into the walls. Keep the space underneath free of wood debris, because it will attract termites.
Winter posed another problem. The pipes underneath were mostly exposed, so during those especially frigid New England nights, our water pipes would freeze. This was easily avoided by keeping the cabinets under the sink open so the warm air from the house could circulate along the pipes. Check out the plumbing aisle at your local hardware store and pick up some “heat tape”. It looks like an extension cord, but it’s flat. Place it against the pipes, cover with an insulated pipe tube, and plug it in. It will generate heat and keep your pipes from freezing.
As far as storage goes, get creative! Instead of traditional kitchen chairs, we had a booth that was taken from an old diner. The cushions on the benches lifted up and I stored extra pots & pans. IKEA is a great place to get inspired. They’re all about small-space living.
Enjoy your new home!!
I’m currently renovating our mobile home, and it has been a huge test in trial and error. Painting was tough – I painted and stripped the same room three times, I just couldn’t get paint or primer (even the special primer) to adhere. I’m having to coat the entire wall with drywall compound, then painting over that. I highly recommend doing thorough research on mobile home projects before spending time and money on a task.
I’m also noticing that the subfloor isn’t holding up. We have four couch-leg sized holes under our couch (under the carpet!), a crack running across the kitchen, and some rot under the toilet. Our trailer is 18 years old, and I guess the mdf used for subfloor doesn’t last so long.
I live in Canada, winters are cold. Our pipes froze this winter, and our main drainage pipe got clogged with a chunk of ice. We will most certainly insulate behind the skirting this year, and maybe apply some heat wrap tape to that pipe.
And guys, thanks for the heads up on the hardware stuff! You saved me another annoying mistake.
…but anyway, yay! Homeowners! It is nice to invest in your own place.
I lived in an early 80’s mobile home (or, as my mom likes to call it, a “glorified tin can”) from 2003 to 2012. It belonged to my grandfather, and when he moved to Kentucky, he let us live in it. He died in 2011, and I inherited it (and then signed it over to my father).
So, what did I learn about living in a glorified tin can through my adolescence?
– Your a/c and heating are likely to be major issues. The a/c in our tin can has been nonfunctional since at least 2000 due to animals ripping up the airways. We use window a/c units (two of them) and space heaters for bedrooms and living area.
– I highly suggest that twice a year (during spring and autumn) you check around the house for any random holes or cracks that might have appeared. Because they do. The first spring that we lived in this house, I woke up one morning for school… and there was a snake in our laundry hall.
– Be prepared to make friends with spiders. I didn’t want to be friends with spiders, however, they are an essential part of mobile home living imo. We have an agreement with the wolf spiders and huntsman spiders that hang out in the house.
– When was the last time your home was jacked up? Mobile homes have their own way of settling. If it’s been there for a while, it might be uneven.
– Once you start remodeling or improving, BE CAREFUL. The people who put mobile homes together are apparently INCOMPETENT. When we started ripping the carpet up, we discovered that they had used staples and nails in all sorts of strange groupings. Then we found out that they did the same thing in the walls…
We do NOT have any sort of spider agreement. We also do not have an overly large abundance of spiders, possibly because we have cats; though I grew up in a trailer and we didn’t have a spider problem either. Which is a good thing, because if I saw a huntsman spider in my house I would have to move, assuming that I survived the heart attack. I will say you (the OP) should have the place sprayed for termites every few months and checked for signs of them. Termites can do a lot of damage to a mobile home in a short time, and the damage can be worse because you’re talking about 2x2s and thin wooden subfloor. And, if you lack underpinning, there is a decent chance that your ducts will become attractive to possums, depending on where you live. My aunt had five baby possums in her kitchen once because mama possum chewed through her heating ducts and came up through the floor.
After having a black snake appear in our bathroom, we took some steps to make sure critters didn’t appear. It seemed to cut down on all sorts of unwelcome visitors, so maybe it’ll help you!
• get down on the floor and inspect all around the edges of every wall and cabinet–we found a TON of gigantic holes in our double wide that we patched with caulking, trim or wall patches
• and inspect INSIDE the cabinets! They tend to cut wide holes in the walls for plumbing–we often patched this up with duct tape and plastic bags
• buy a roll of fine mesh screening and attach it inside all vents (I think my mom hot glued it)
• fill the gaps at the edges of corrugated siding with expanding foam then caulk around the trim
• if you think “there’s no way something could get in there”, cover it up anyway. Because something can. And it will.
My mobile home is from sometime in the 70s, probably 1970 is my guess. It could have held up well…if the people who had it before me had cared to upkeep it. The main problem we have is water leaks and drafts from the floor. Our central a/c and heat do not work. No hookups for heat and the a/c is torn up from some previous demon critter. We took out the floor vents and wrapped them in newspaper and saran wrap to keep our heat and air in since they are non-functional. They are basically giant holes-you can see the ground under the house through them. Mildew and mold is a constant problem, we a renting so we can’t do much except put fires out when they do happen. Spraying any area that starts to pop up with mildew with vinegar amd baking soda mix kills it on the surface and eliminates the smell. (If you catch the mildew before it gets into the walls/flooring the baking soda/vinegar can solve the problem, but that is not the case with us. Good luck.
Our mobile home is a 1950s Winston. It’s about 11×50, so rather small.
The good: it’s nothing to pull off a piece of paneling to access the wiring/plumbing behind it! It’s also easy to take down the underpinning exactly where you need to work. The exterior walls are the load bearing walls (for the most part) so you can move walls around at your fancy. (Unfortunately the ceiling is bowed in ours, so it looks really funky where we took a wall down.)
The bad: everything is strangely sized. We can’t even find covers for the outlets that completely hide the electrical boxes. The electrical wiring is usually really tight, without much slack to work with. The space between the roof and the ceiling isn’t even six inches, so can lights stick out awkwardly and the ceilings are too low for many light fixtures. Doors and windows are crappy. (We have a regular house door on our trailer, but because the exterior walls use 2x2s instead of normal 2x4s, the door frame sticks out all the way around.) If you still have the original kitchen cabinets, they are probably built to the wall.
We have replaced the nasty avocado green carpeting with laminate, put real cabinets in the kitchen, added lighting to every room, replaced all of the plumbing, upgraded the breaker box, replaced the duct work (now our cold air blows into the house instead if under it!), and gutted and redid one bathroom.
If you choose laminate flooring, you should replace the particle board subfloor (if you have it) with nice thick plywood. I would recommend sturdier flooring because ours feels really springy around the vents in the floors.
You’ll need to either replace the windows or invest in great curtains to keep in/out the heat and cold. We have windows that crank outwards and have just siliconed them shut.
You should also seriously consider adding insulation to all exterior walls. It’s no big deal to take down a few sheets of paneling and stick in the insulation, but make sure you have the right kind of brads to put them back up. It’s pretty simple to reframe for standard sized windows and doors since its so easy to remove the paneling and the exterior metal sheets.
Good luck! My aunt’s old mobile home looks like a house now with her fancy siding and real windows. Hopefully ours will look that nice someday!
Some things I forgot to mention: we wrapped our pipes with regular house insulation and duct tape and have had no problems with freezing pipes, but it only gets into the teens here.
We have wasps really bad in the summer so what we do is wait for a rainy day and throw a few foggers in the space between the old roof and the new roof that was built on top, and leave the house for the day. It works.
Flex duct is worthless, so if you have it replace it ASAP. It cost us about $300 in materials and a Saturday for my husband to replace all of our ductwork with real ductwork. Best investment ever.
As for storage, if you have a second bathtub you won’t be using, it’s a great place for Rubbermaid totes.
Ditto to above, you are going to have to find specialty providers for maintenance and replacement parts.
I find that air doesn’t move easily in our home, because it’s thin and long, which is good in the winter because it holds heat, but in the summer it gets stuffy. If you do live in a place where the winters get below freezing, make sure your heat tape (which goes around your water pipe under your house) is functioning and make sure to plug it in when it gets close to winter. VERY IMPORTANT. Also-relating to that, because your only water pipe coming into your home isn’t protected by much, in the winter cold water is REAL cold.
When it comes to storage, go vertical instead of horizontal and taking up precious floorspace. And make sure you’ve got things that are double duty (storage ottomans, etc). Putting things into the walls is tricky if it’s anything beyond command type sticky hooks, because there isn’t much for them to hold onto and they tend to pull out of the wall. And wiring can sometimes be cattywompus so make sure you don’t shock yourself!
Neighbor relations in most parks (assuming you live in a mobile home community of some kind) is very important, because you don’t have fences and the boundaries of territory can get fuzzy. Also most communities have rules and make sure you know those well and that you are clear on the terms your lot lease, especially regarding rate increases and what they are required to handle in terms of maintenance (for instance, if a water pipe bursts in our yard, it’s their problem, if it bursts under our house, it’s ours).
Bugs are about on par with other homes, I find. We got some ants in the house last summer and a metric crapton of spiders in our shed, but nothing out of control or ongoing.
We painted over our vinyl wallpaper and so far so good. *knocks wood*
In our home, the wood trimming around our windows and on our doors (and probably everywhere else) is not anywhere close to real wood and is covered with contact paper-like covering, which easily comes off, which is annoying. The previous owner left some kind of velcro on the master bedroom door and if you try to take it off it completely takes off all the finish, so we had to cover that.
Good luck in your new home!!!!
Storage: I hacked IKEA billy bookcases into built ins, and put in my own linen/vaccum closet along with a gorgeous set of built in book/media storage along one wall. It’s everyone’s favorite feature when they first come in. I also did the same in another mobile home for a combo pantry/dining hutch. Around $300 including doors and trim pieces to make it look snazzy. I put old kitchen cabinets in both of the laundry rooms with a fresh coat of white paint.
I throw bug foggers under the house once a year and never have had spiders. The foam expand-y stuff they sell in a can at home depot to fill in cracks works great for unanticipated hole-y spots, like around the dryer hose, etc. I get wasps in the light fixtures, but I don’t think that’s exclusive to mobile homes.
I don’t recommend ripping the wallpaper off – it’s generally built into the drywall, and will leave your drywall a terrible mess and tons of work (I had to redrywall a whole house) If you must try it, test it inconspicuously. Inconspicuous tests are probably part of the foundation of mobile home ownership, in fact, as mentioned before, the places are not put together with the same quality checks you’d normally expect.
I painted over all the vinyl wallpaper in the new house without event, and painted all my fake paper wood trim as well. It brightened and cleaned up the house and made it look much less mobile homeish and more cottage. I was lucky to have nice windows in my current home, but in another one, I took the nuts out of the metal edged windows, put flat screws in, and put inexpensive trim around the windows over the metal flanges.
Keep your skirting intact and together, don’t leave it open even for a little while. Aside from providing insulation, it keeps the animals out. Cat pee smell is the last thing you need while crawling around under your house to fix something.
If you live somewhere that freezes, make sure there’s at least a small gutter over your front door, because your storm door/screen door handle will freeze shut late at night.
Consider what your long term goals are for the place, and how much money you really want to put in. Mobile homes don’t appreciate in value with beautiful remodels the same way that stick homes do, and it’s important to remember that in all the excitement of doing things YOUR way from now on. Weigh what is important to you and what isn’t. I put beautiful granite tiles in one kitchen for counters, which was a great steal from a liquidating house, but put simple clearance vinyl tiles for the floors; a family member put 50k of kitchen/bath/decking upgrades into his, that he will never get out of it, but he is okay with that, since he plans to live there for a very long time.
Ha; I didn’t before reading this. And who knew this many people were into vintage mobile homes.
We are in our 70’s. Owned homes. Lost our shirts in the 80’s housing drop. Bought an RV, and upgraded over the years to a 5th wheel. Lived in that for 12 years. Now live in a mobile home park. Own the home, rent the space, and they keep raising our rent by 40 bucks a year. We simply want to have our home refurbished, and no one will do it! HELP!
My parents have managed to modify the structure of their mobile home a lot, with no problems. There is a huge addition off the living room as well as one of the bedrooms, and my dad did it all himself. It is on property they own, which is the main thing about those big renovations since they wouldn’t be able to move it now (except in multiple pieces, maybe)
You guys! Thank you! (I’m the OP.) This is all really useful information and experience. Things that are occurring to me as I read: does anybody have experience with a wood stove in a mobile home? And in terms of brick underpinning vs metal, does anybody have more input? I’m thinking about critter security and insulation vs ease of access.
We are planning to replace the nasty blue carpet with laminate in the bedrooms, but I’m trying to take a breath and not go crazy with remodeling fever. It’s just so exciting to have a space that’s OURS, you know? I’m trying to channel that energy into planting our garden and flower beds around it instead, since we moved the trailer onto our farm. 🙂
My parents had a mobile home until I was 5, which was heated with wood.
What my parents did was build an add-on foyer which housed the stove. They were able to heat the entire trailer by keeping all the doors open inside and using ceiling fans to circulate the warm air from the woodstove.
They loved their mobile home so much, by the way, that they abandoned their farmhouse and bought a mini-home as soon as we kids all grew up.
We had a wood stove in our two built-on rooms, but it did a lot to heat the entire trailer. We also had central air, but we tried to heat everything with the wood stove when possible. It’s important to read up on how to ensure that the stove is safe where you put it–walls and flooring around the stove can get quite hot!
We had metal underpinning (and have vinyl now) and I don’t think we would’ve done it any other way. We live in Kentucky where the winters don’t get terribly cold, but do stay below freezing for long periods–we had good insulation, so the floors never felt cold or anything, and there weren’t any drafts coming up through the vents. It was always nice to be able to push out a panel for light when we were working under the house and repairing the skirting was EASY–I imagine brick would be difficult. Simulated brick/stone underpinning may be a nice choice! It’s thick and insular, but is still formed in removable panels.
Make sure you keep up on water damage. the seals of a vintage trailer can very easily give way to let water in…and then the beautiful wood paneling is SHOT! Just because it is a trailer doesn’t mean it can’t be a dream home. Take a look at vintage camper websites for ideas. There is a campground in Bisbee Az and another (I can’t remember where) called El Cosmico. Very cool trailers and I would LOVE to live in one. If we ever make our move from our current house to a city we would rather be…we will definitely be living in a camper… A plot of land somewhere and our little caravan. Someday.
I used to help my dad remodel old mobile homes to be used as rentals. And by old, I mean completely rotted floors and leaky roofs and busted windows. I think we paid $50 for the trailer we renovated for me to live in while I was in college. Here’s a few things I’ve learned about fixing up these old things:
1. Haven’t seen this mentioned yet, which is why I’m commenting. Many old mobile homes from the 60’s and 70’s are wired with aluminum instead of copper, which is a huge fire risk. If your home has aluminum, you really, really need to get it rewired.
2. You can fix anything with enough caulk.
3. Re-seal the roof to save on energy costs.
4. The exterior of a mobile home can be repainted with brushes and rollers just as easy as any other house.
5. From my experience, resurfacing old tubs and sinks isn’t really worth it…the finish starts to peel in a year or two. A tub insert is probably a better choice. Or just work with it! I could totally be inspired by some avocado green.
Ok, now bonus story: the $50 trailer I lived in during college was made before hitches were designed to be removable. But the fancy big city trailer park I moved it to in Arlington, TX absolutely required that the hitch be removed, so dad took a cutting torch to it and made that park my trailer’s forever home.
Fast forward to after graduation and I was getting ready to move to Cally-for-ni-a, and I donated the trailer to the United Way just to get it off my hands (I’d broke even on apartment rent vs. remodel + lot rent, so whatevs). Turns out the new Cowboys stadium landed smack dab on top of that trailer park, so after all the other trailers got moved out, mine stood there in protest and was finally torn down. Damn Tarrant County still thinks I owe property tax on it, too.
Man, I miss that trailer. It was lipstick on a pig, but it was MINE.
Can we get some home tours of all of these trailers? I’m so curious to see what you Homies have created!
My family lived in an older mobile home when I was a kid. Eventually we had to take it to the dump and buy a new one. It was a double wide, and we did not know that it was taking on water and termite damage. The two sides began shifting away from each other. The bathroom floors were made out of perfaboard and caved in. The walls are weak, and someone could accidentally lean on it and knock the wall panel in. I have no qualms about living in a mobile home, but I would have someone come and inspect it for sure if you haven’t had anyone do it already. That way if there’s anything dire you can take care of it sooner rather than later.
A funny thing: The lady before us installed an earthquake sensor near the back door. Every once in a while someone would accidentally hit and we’d have to go around the outside of the trailer opening panels and lighting the pilots again. lol
We purchased a 1966 Vindale in 2004. We have lived in it now for almost nine years. The Vindales were extremely well-built mobile homes. We have had absolutely no problems. The subfloor is plywood. The panelling is real wood. The kitchen cabinets are wood and only the drawers wore out and had to be replaced recently. In Ohio we have all kinds of weather but it has always been easy to cool and to heat. No frozen pipes. Ever. We have an aluminum “roof over” so have no leaks to contend with. The outside is clad in vinyl siding. We have vinyl replacement windows. Everything in the home is top quality items that have lasted 47 years and we plan to live in it another 20 short of any disaster. The home was obviously well maintained before we bought it and we continue to take good care of it. To be truthful, I would not want a mobile home built in the 70s or later because I think they are poorly constructed. My biggest complaint is that they have particle board subfloors which are prone to quickly disintegrate when there is a leak. Next, I don’t like the vinyl clad walls or the fake wood cabinets. Give me a well built mobile from the 60s anyday and I’ll be satisfied.
We have lived in a late 60’s model mobile home for 27 years, and I hope it lasts another 27, when I’ll either be dead or in a nursing home. Roger is right. These mobile homes were constructed in a better manner than later ones. Ours has plywood flooring, and we had it re-wired before we moved into it. Adora is right that wiring can be a concern. We built two rooms and two porches onto it. We redid the bathroom, over the years we have put in laminate flooring and made other changes and repairs. We could have afforded something better probably, but we’ve always been happy with it. We actually moved out of a house (which we owned outright-still do) because it was not in a great location for raising a young family. We were able to put the trailer in a beautiful spot, and although there are problems with older mobile homes, they are worth the time and effort in my opinion.
Amen! I lucked upon a 1958 Rod n Reel three years ago which had been the property of a carpenter for 25 years- turn key move in with a awesone new bathroom, but not totally modern. The kitchen & bedroom have all original cabinets and sliding closet doors. Did I mention it is one mile from the Newport Beach beach, with cooling breezes every afternoon all summer?
Only drawback is that the furnace was removed and all the vents, etc. covered up so artfully that you have to stand in the right position to see the patches. I got 2 wall mounted ceramic heaters for winter use in LR/kit and BR.
Just completed a kitchen remodel on an older home that you may like: http://atrailforthecurious.blogspot.com/
I am loving all of the help on this site! I have the opportunity to buy a very old mobile home. I think it is from the 60’s (not 100% sure yet). Here are the problems that I would like some feedback on:
1) The ceiling has leaks in spots. Owner says they have resealed the roof twice however it still leaks when it gets wet and cold (condensation or leaks are still there?), so parts of the ceiling in the house are open and the “insides” are spilling out. Should entire ceiling be replaced or can these spots be repaired?
2) Floor damage due to leaking toilet. Don’t want to fall through the floor so is this an “easier” fix (as in pulling up floor and replacing completely, sealing, put toilet back down?), or is there more to this repair than meets the eye.
My biggest concern is the roof/ceiling damage. The lady wants $2,000 for it. It is I believe around a 12×50. You can “eek” out a very small second bedroom/office space. All in all, I think it has potential to be “home” so I am curious to see what you all would do with the above issues.
Thank you!
I have a 68 the windows have two glass panes that crank up to open . They leak really bad and need new weather seals. I don’t even know what the name of them or where to get the parts. Any suggestions?
Has anyone used or seen wood exterior doors used for underpinning a mobile home?
There was a time when those who lived in caravans and trailer homes were looked down on. With the interest and growing numbers of tiny homes that has all changed now. With people choosing to live in tiny homes for many reasons, including the eco-friendly side, the practicalities of being able to travel and take your home with you, the lack of space in cities for houses etc – the wonderful creativity and inspiration of living in smaller type homes. We now can learn much from those who have lived in smaller spaces and who lead the way in living in a more environmental and creative environment –