In answer to your question, Lisa, we have tried to seal all the leaks in the trailer, but there always seem to be some we missed – Airstreams have a LOT of seams! And hey, it’s 45 years old this year (and it’s our 10th year with it, so obviously it’s a keeper) and we want it to last many more years, so we splurged and bought a nice carport for it.

Today a crew came out and assembled it in 2 hours flat. No problems. It is awesome!

The cover is a little taller than I expected, but for years we’ve been parking the trailer under a vinyl carport that it barely fit under, and the frame of the carport would bump the vents on top of the trailer if it wasn’t perfectly centered. This gives us plenty of room to maneuver.

Note the mud tracks – we had a terrible downpour while it was being installed, and Dave kept getting the van with it’s stupid one-wheel-drive stuck in the mud trying to put the trailer back. Why do they even bother to build a truck that doesn’t at least have limited slip? Anyway, we finally got it back there. We would have liked to set it further back, but this will do for now.

Feels good to have the last big project done. The trailer is part of the family, and I’m not completely happy unless it’s safe and secure like the rest of us.

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When we lived on our little farm, we built all the fences we needed. We built rail fences out of treated wood, built our own gates, put up field fences with pound-in posts, cemented in more gateposts than I care to count – did all that stuff ourselves. But now that we are in a neighborhood, I wanted our backyard fence to be done fast, and look good, and that meant someone who knew what they were doing should do it!

We had two reasons for putting up a fence. First of all, our neighbors across the street have pit bulls, and I do not trust them to keep them in their own yard, and I didn’t feel safe with our four foot gate on each end of the backyard. I wanted to make sure my dogs stay IN the backyard, and their dogs stay OUT.

Second of all, and probably most important, our view of the neighbor’s backyard really dominated our yard. No matter what we did, we were looking at this:

Woodpiles, old bird cages, stacks of tires, and blue tarps. Lovely.

So we called a few companies and chose one, Fenceman, with a reasonable price, and they seemed competent when Dave talked to them and had them out. They have a technique using metal posts, which is supposed to make the fence last longer, since wood posts rot out. We walked around the neighborhood looking at other fences they had installed, and they all looked nice and solid.

So two weeks ago they came out and put in the posts, set in concrete. This week they came and finished it. Ta-dah!

Wow! What a difference! Now the only garbage we need to worry about is our own!

We only had the sides of the yard fenced, and left the back alone – it already has a 6ft chain link fence between us and the water tower park, so we can enjoy the view. This makes the backyard feel so much more private!

They also put in a nice 60/40 gate in front of the trailer, so we can open it up all the way to get it out. Next project: Today guys are delivering our new aluminum carport for the trailer. It has leaks so it needs to be under cover to keep it dry inside. I’ve been running a heater in there all winter to drive out the dampness so it wouldn’t mildew from the leaks.

So overall I couldn’t be happier. They did a super nice job on the new fence, the backyard is private and secure for the dogs, and the trailer is barely visible from the street now. We like the new fence so much, I think we’ll have them back to do a nice picket fence around the front yard sometime in the future. Once we’ve recovered from paying for this one!

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This has been a very stressful two weeks! We started moving into our house just over a week ago. On that Saturday a friend came over and helped us load furniture, and with a small box moving truck, his pickup, and our full size van, we moved everything we needed for the house in pretty much one move, except little this and that stuff. When we got to looking around the new house, it needed more cleaning than we expected! But we moved in anyway, and have been cleaning while we go – exhausting!

Also, we decided to use the moving truck to get a load of garbage from our house to take to the dump. Since we were doing that anyway, we looked around the new house to see if he’d left any garbage. We started throwing stuff in the truck, piles of stuff here and there around the backyard, stuff hidden in the garage, even a rusty old pickup bed cap leaning against the house. Two hours later we’d filled the truck! That hadn’t been in our plan! So we got that stuff hauled to the dump right before it closed.

The past week has been a blur of working late nights, getting everything moved over, cleaning up the old house, and getting my husband’s business moved into storage. thank goodness he doesn’t work during the day, or we couldn’t have gotten this far! We’re finding it challenging to stuff everything into our tiny house.
The biggest accomplishments in the last two days:

The trailer, snuggled into it’s spot in the backyard.

The Mustang, safe and dry in the tiny garage.

I’d say I felt worse about leaving our farm, but there’s been no time to reflect on it. Just working, eating out (because we haven’t gotten our kitchen unpacked and cleaned until yesterday) and sleeping good and hard straight through the night – that’s what physical labor will do for you. Lots of ibuprofin for my sore muscles!

The official handoff is Tuesday evening, so we’re almost done. It will be nice to finally sit back and get to know our new house and for our lives to settle into what I hope is a much less stressful routine than the last few years has been.

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