{the little house on the back of a truck}

Okay, so I guess a more appropriate title for this post might be "the little house FOR the back of a truck", since it's just sitting on a trailer right now as we fix it up. But someday it will be in the back of a truck! I'm getting ahead of myself...

A few months ago I posted a kind of fuzzy picture of the Little House on the Back of a Truck. Tonight I'd like to show you the clear version of that picture...

Just so you can see how bad the poor Little House was, and how very nice and cozy it's looking now. 

 Now for the story behind the Little House. A missionary couple who live in Mexico were storing some things on property here, as they used to work here when the ministry was young. I'm not sure when they became missionaries in Mexico, but when they did, they left behind this 1960-something slide-in-the-bed-of-a-truck camper. And the camper sat and sat and got filled with dust.

Until last year. Then the missionary couple decided to get rid of it, and they told Mr. Mechanic Man that if we wanted it, it was ours for the taking. For FREE! So we looked it over, and although it looked like a lot of work {mostly a lot of dirt to wipe out!} we decided to accept the challenge, since we love camping. And the above picture is what we got. You can see the dust everywhere, the water damage, the curtains that were so faded and dry-rotted that I ripped them off the curtain rods with ease, the cabinets that didn't close. But it was free and it was ours. Ours to make into a little home away from home for those times when we can get away.

We didn't really have too much time to work on the Little House because things got pretty busy. We did a little bit of work on it right away. Mechanic Man changed the vent in the roof and sealed the roof up, and I ripped down the curtains and vacuumed the big piles of dust out. 

And then it sat again for a few months until a warm Saturday not too long ago. Then we got to work again, and made good progress. While Mechanic Man silicon-ed the windows and door, I wiped down the entire camper. Literally, the walls, floors, roof, and everything in between. It took me so long that Mr. Mechanic Man got down sealing, added some cabinet hardware, did some other stuff and then helped me finish wiping it down. It was a long day, but I'm pretty pleased with our efforts!

Here we are looking nice and clean. We have to buy another latch for the bottom cabinet, because the one we had bought wouldn't work right. Anyhow, isn't it just looking so much more...um...livable? You can see the new vent up top. Unfortunately the only thing we can do about the water marks is make sure that no more appear. And I'm happy to say that the Little House has survived some pretty constant rainfall over the last weekend, and stayed dry as a dog's tail the whole time! 

 It's going to be so nice to have a kitchen for camping, even though I'll still cook on the campfire...Did I mention that we had been taking the van and using it as our camper? This is definitely a step up.

 I had some valances that I wasn't using in the house so one day I decided to try them as curtains in the camper. They aren't quite long enough; I haven't decided if I want to lengthen them or not...I've also tossed around the idea of splitting them so they open like curtains. As for the other windows, I'm still trying to decide whether I should just buy more valances at thrift stores or make some. Oh, and one more thing about this picture, we don't have a mattress for the over-the-cab-bed, but we do have an air mattress, and we've decided that will do nicely instead. {technically we don't even have mattresses for our house because they all belong to BPS, but that's another story...}

 Four canisters came in their own specially built shelves in the kitchen. I love their green retro look. I don't know that I actually dump the contents that they're labeled for in them, but maybe if we had enough time and money to take a road trip in the Little House I'd use them.

 Well, that's it about the Little House, but I finished my yo-yo project and thought I'd put a picture of it on here...I re-covered a squish pillow that has long been in need of a new cover {the old one ripped}.

 I guess I'll post more about the Little House on the Back of a Truck when we actually get to try it out...which Mr. Mechanic Man hopes will happen soon.