A kitchen update

The finished kitchen!

Covering up the ugly wallpaper.  I just tiled over it.

 The "before" picture- check out the valance and wallpaper...

Hubby and I have been improving the rv.  It is amazing how much some paint can change a space.  The wallpaper in the rv was hideous!  I completely painted the kitchen- cabinets and walls.  I found this awesome thin peely tile at Home Depot and used it for the backsplash.  The kitchen is teeny tiny so a small change makes a huge impact!  What do you all think?

A Leaky Roof

(This is the leak on the seam on the roof... no bueno!)

(Not knowing what to do while it was still raining, I put a tarp down with all my pots and pans to collect the water)

When we bought the rv, we knew it was a fixer upper.  We DIDNT know the roof in the bedroom leaks horribly!  I came home from work one day to find the bed soaked from the rain.  We put a tarp over the roof to prevent any further leaks until we could fix the roof.  We dont have the ability or the funds to take the rv into the shop whenever theres an issue, so we set out to learn how to do it ourselves.  The rv store gave us some sealant that will hopefully fix our problems.  I bought enough to do the whole roof and we just had to wait until hubby had time to go up on the roof.  I am not going up.  No way.  No how.  Hubby was amazing and sealed the whole roof in the scorching sun.  We haven't had a leak yet so he did well!

(can you see hubby up there?)

Monday Update

Happy Labor Day.  We are celebrating by working...haha.  I worked overnight last night and when I got home Hubby had already left for the day.  Sometimes at work I can cat nap if both the babies are sleeping but I can never count on sleep, which is fine because i am at work.  When I got home this morning while feeding the dogs and letting them have time out of their kennel I worked on the computer and cleaning up a bit.  Around eight I laid down for a nap until one.  I like to listen to Dave Ramsey on the radio from 1-4 when I can.  Since today I dont have my second nanny family, I was free to do so.  While listening to dave, I worked more around the rv and then set off to town to go to the bank.  Ha!  I completely forgot that it was a holiday and the bank was closed.  Bummer!  So I popped in to the grocery store and came directly home.  We are doing a no spend month for September (ill do a whole post about that) so I was only allowed to buy necessities at the store.  No magazines, etc.  I got to listen to Dave on my drive back to the rv.  I find it so inspiring to listen to other people's stories about paying off debt and living frugally.  It doesnt hurt that Dave is hilarious too.  I planned on doing laundry which ended up being tricky.  For the whole rv park, there is one washer and one dryer.  Some of the fancy schmancy rvs have washers and dryers built in, but not ours.  We got the budget version of the rvs.  I had to wait a while to get to use the washer.  When I went to put my clothes in, I found a bullet!  Leave it to Texans to not empty their pockets and have bullets fall out.  It gave me a chuckle.  To save money (unless its raining and we need clothes now) I try and hang dry all our clothes.  With the temperature near 100, the clothes dry super fast outside.  And I save the cost of using the dryer.  So now the clothes are hanging, chicken breasts are thawing in the sink, corn is in the fridge for dinner and I am going to go take a little nap before hubby gets home.  The rest of my week is crazy as I will have both families every day, so I want to stock up on sleep while I can.  Hope you all are enjoying your Labor Day!

Be Weird!

I have a bumper sticker on my truck that says "Debt is Normal...be weird" and weird you might think we are!  Sick of throwing money away on rent for a run down apartment and not in a position to buy a house, we naturally decided to move into an rv.  Ok well maybe that's not a natural decision for most people.  Since Hubby got his new job and was commuting over an hour a day, we started looking at other living options.  We thought maybe we would move to the town his job is in... then we saw the rent prices and decided against it.  Somehow I got the idea that rv living would be an adventure and once I presented it to Hubby, he was thrilled!  We are now the proud owners of a used house on wheels.  

  We went to RV Outlet Mall first but the salesman was an a** hole.  When we told him we don't finance and were going to pay cash and were prepared to buy if we found something we liked in our budget, he told us to come back when we were serious and ready to buy.  Nobody pays cash for an rv.  We told him what our budget was and he showed us rvs double our price "so we could put that much cash down and finance the rest".  I think he got the point when he walked us to our truck with our debt free bumper stickers.

We then drove down the road to Crestview RV.  Our salesman was awesome!  Shout out to Gabriel!  We told him what our budget was and he thought it was awesome that we don't do debt.  He only showed us rvs in (and under) our budget.  When we found the one we wanted, he negotiated the out the door price to over $1100 less than the top of our budget.  We bought a 2006 Zinger and its definitely a fixer upper! 

This post shows all the before pictures so you can get an idea of what we are living in.  There is a master bedroom with a queen bed (when they say queen, they mean rv queen... our nice mattress only fits when we flip it sideways- more on that later).  The only "closets" are the cabinets in the pictures.  Then there is a living/dining/kitchen room all together.  The kitchen is teeny tiny but we will make it work (we did buy a new grill so we can cook outside).  The back room is a bunk room.  It has 4 bunk beds and a small cabinet/closet.  Technically the rv can sleep 8-10 people, or at least it could when we bought it.  

Since we brought it home, we have taken out the dinette and folding couch.  We have also removed 3 of the 4 bunks to make room for an office and storage.  I will post after pictures as we complete them.  Its tough to live and remodel/fix up the rv while working overtime..

We parked the rv at an awesome rv resort.  We are right on the river and Hubby loves to sneak down and go fishing.  Our "rent" is $300 which includes water, trash and the space.  We pay for the electric we use, which last month was only $60.  We are definitely saving money vs renting an apartment.  We factored in the cost of paying cash for the rv plus the space and we will break even after 1.5 years.  Anything after that is gravy on top for savings, and if we sell the rv, its pure profit.  So we need to live in the rv for at least 1.5 years!  Ill be posting the struggles and advantages of living in the rv as we go along.  

 What do you think?  Could you do it?