Oh I might know how excited you are.
We are presently living in the trailer/mobile home that our freinds sold to us for a dollar on the land that they own, that we will be leasing for 99 yrs with first option to buy when the parceling sanction is lifted, if ever.
We have to move the trailer over, and hook up phone and electricity just until we are moved into the home we'll be building.
The whole thing has to be gutted, is missing 13 feet of exterior wall and we have to heat with oil radiators right now.
Very shabby, but our first home and soon to be acreage.
We unhooked the water (from hauled water in a pump house built by our friends) this winter when we were sick of thawing frozen pipes every day. We'd been hauling water for a year and a half before while living in a cabin, so we're used to it, and prefer that to freezing pipes.
We're still hooked up to septic now because we can't cap it until spring, but I as sooooo looking forward to getting back to our sawdust toilet because this dumping hauled water down a toilet bowl stuff is getting very old now.
As soon as we can hook up phone and electricity, we'll be moving the trailer by renting axles and then our neighbour is going to help us by towing the trailer with his huge CAT.
We're on a farm and we'll be homesteading over the one side of the 25 acre property. We'll be butted against first nations land on the other side, a mountainside on the back, north side, and a major but little used highway in front.
Our plans include installing an old woodstove, salvaged front door and windows, tearing out the panelling and replacing it with rabetted pine stained with earth pigments, new floors made of pine or hardwood plank or board, putting in a new low pitch truss roof, new wood exterior, and a complete gut of the kitchen and bathroom with gravity tanks above the sink and shower stalls with heaters for warm water. We'll be building our own cabinetry, toilet and shower stall. Well, we're doing everything ourselves. And by 'new', I mean new to us, but I am hoping to salvage hardwood crates from dealerships in town from atvs and snowmobiles. They'd make great cabinets and floors!
When we've built our home, this refurbished trailer will have a permanent place on the property as a studio and guest house.
I'm pg right now though and due in the summer, so my guess is that it will take two years to do the trailer and two years afterward before we can move into the house although I doubt it would be done in that time, so we'll be living in renovations and building for five or more years, I guess.
BUT we can always escape to the mountains or garden or woods when it is too much. Just a look out the window is a refresher from the sometimes oppressive feeling of living in squalor...
We don't have a commune, but we are living as neighbours with our friends on their farm, and we'll be just a little ways away once we're moved, so it still feels communal if not like a commune proper. They toyed with the idea of a co-op because they really wanted to have neighbours who care about the earth and sustainability and they and we are working toward that more and more, with them ahead having now moved into their house (and having been sustainably farming forever and 9 yrs here), but still living in their build and us just beginning.
It is wonderful. I was delighted to know that someone else is doing this because sometimes I wonder if we're the only ones going about this in such an unorthodox way, so thanks for sharing!
I would love, love, love if you would share your trailer renos! It is very hard to find non-conventional info about converting a trailer to a sustainable living space. Actually, I haven't found any, but have been making plans by piecing things together. Will you blog your plans and progress? If you do, please share here! I am hoping to do so when we are started, but I'm not sure how much time I'll have with having our four boys, one on the way and then renos and building all at once. We can't do much of anything until it's a bit warmer for a consistent period of time. It's too difficult to use materials and tools at -35 degrees, but it seems to be warming up now, so I am hoping to really get at it before my belly is enormous and I can't move without contractions.