A Home for Our 2nd Home

What a beautiful and productive weekend we had! It was the perfect weather to continue our project to open up the end animal stall to make a home for our trailer. If you recall, when we bought our trailer exactly one year ago, we brought it home to find that it was too tall to fit in the shop. And after tossing around many ideas over the period of several months, we decided to tear down the animal stall. There's more pics and details here. We had been waiting for the weather to get a bit better, and waiting for a time when we (mostly Adam) could devote an entire weekend to the project. We didn't want to tear down the wall and leave the inside of the shop exposed any longer than we had to. Adam already had a plan for how to make a door in place of the wall and had already purchased all the supplies a few weeks ago...so we were set!


Friday night, Adam came home from work and started to tear down the metal panels and stall door. It was a good head-start for the next day. Saturday he continued to tear the wall down and assembled the framework for the doors....and I just sat around an watched...ha ha...kidding! I was hard at work cleaning the trailer that had been sitting outside for the last year. It is amazing how much green gunge can grow over the period of just a few months! It took me the entire weekend to clean the trailer inside and out. I know, you probably don't believe me, but it's true. Much of the cleaning required a toothbrush =) The hardest part of the cleaning process was scrubbing the awning. When we bought the trailer, all was quite clean...except for the awning. It was heavily dirt-stained! I took a harsh scrub brush and some heavy duty cleaner to both sides of it. That, alone, took me about 2 hours.

On Saturday night Uncle Don brought over his little bulldozer so that Adam could dig out and level the floor of the bay to make sure we had enough clearance. Don kindly left it so we could use it for a few days. We skipped church the next morning cause we needed to be able to finish by the end of the day. Adam had mistakenly purchased the wrong sized bolts and had to take a trip into town to pick those up and do a couple of other things. He was back in 2 hours. While he was gone, I finished cleaning the inside of the trailer. When I was finished, you can bet the trailer was spotless and had the fresh smell of Pine Sol. And, no, the inside of the trailer wasn't really that dirty, I was just extra thorough. I also started cleaning the green gunge off of the white shop doors and gutters. I only got to 4 out of the 6 doors...maybe I'll finish today.


Adam continued to fix the doors, so I started to mow the lawn. About halfway through, I had to stop so I could help put the heavy doors on their hinges. Ugh...that was dangerous with just the two of us! We then did a dry run with the trailer before dinner.


We took a break to eat some BBQ'd burgers, then I went to mow some more lawn while Adam placed some underlayment in the newly cleared bay. We then put the large rubber mats that were already in the horse stall on top of the underlayment to make a nice surface for the trailer to park on. Then, we parked it!!! I was SO excited!! Finally, a home for our trailer!! No more cleaning off green gunge and worrying about water leaks and sun damage!!!

We weren't able to completely finish the doors. Adam still has to put the green metal panels back on, but that "should" be the easy part =)