Birdsong Cottage: The little old single wide mobile home that could...

Hello!

The time finally came for putting this year's final decorating touches on our little jewel, our diamond in the rough. After several five-hour trips to go up to the mountains and work on her whenever we could, and many weeks of ripping out old carpeting, replacing rotted sub flooring, installing laminate flooring and new baseboards, never-ending painting, much of which was over cheap and ugly old paneling, working on the old furnace that was original to the house, correcting bad electrical wiring, putting in new lighting, installing a new ceiling fan and moving an old one, replacing doorknobs, painting a bunch of old furniture, cleaning up and rebuilding a rotted and bad-smelling vanity and broom closet, and making an ugly old bathroom look pretty on a minimal budget, we have turned our vintage 1969 single wide mobile home into a little gem.

When built, our place was nothing but red carpeting and cheap dark faux wood paneling. Though most of the paneling had later been painted gold to match the gold carpeting that replaced the red, much of it still looked like this...

...and the insides of most of the cabinets and the broom closet looked like this...

Now, our freshly painted and lined cabinets look like what you see below...

...along with a tidy, and also repainted, laminate-floored broom closet that looks like this...

I can't tell you what all of this did to remedy the musty smell of this old place!

Now for the fun stuff! Besides the hung leaded glass windows on the TV wall in the living room (shown in an earlier post)...

...we also hung a a couple more pieces of reproduction art by Billy Jacobs...

We finally got the antique foot board up in our bedroom, after figuring out how to do it without the bed rails that didn't fit...

...and some pretty curtains purchased at half price from Kohl's now replace the ugly old paneled sliding closet doors that didn't slide anyway (and whose wood we used to replace the rotted bottom of the bathroom vanity and the rotted sub flooring in the broom closet) ...

The bathroom hutch now has some pretties in it...

...and our little Miss Phoebe watches down over all...

Yesterday we bid our little cottage goodbye until spring. She will be winterized later this week. After forming such a close bond with her during the last few months, I was sad to leave her sitting there alone for the cold winter months to come. But I look forward to seeing her again in the spring when I will finish painting all the trim and work on the window coverings. We will also start working on the guest room, the porch and the outside of the place. And most of all, we look forward to being able to enjoy all that those beautiful mountains have to offer.

Thank you so much for keeping me company on this journey!

XO

Sue