What to do? Live in a shed or rv?

jwal10 · #41 06/04/14, 03:10 PM

Sorry, lorichristy, I was typing as you were posting. Mine was not in response to your post. I agree your plan works well with your application. You and husband have the skills to make it work and use the improvements that are there. The OP is starting from scratch. My plan will give them a good start, somewhere to stay, storage and future permanent garage all in one fairly cheap box. Concrete floor is the expense, the rest is 2"x4"s, T-111, trusses, roofing, insulation and drywall to finish, as time and money allows. Also good practice, to learn some skills that will save a lot of money and repetition in the future. It even gives a place to store house building materials, bought cheaply, as they are found, saving even more money....James

ChristieAcres · #42 06/04/14, 03:12 PM

James, great idea, but in our case? We have an existing carport, but it isn't big enough for an RV. DH doesn't want a garage, but a big shop. We want to build our home before we build a shop. Also, we needed to move over to our property faster. This is the quickest way we could make that move...buy an instant temporary home, live here and work to prep our property for each stage. We could live in this motorhome all summer and then sell it if we change out mind about overwintering in it. This motorhome was lived in all year around for 8 years by the last owner! This is only temporary use. My FIL and MIL live in their motorhome 6 months out of the year, overwintering in different states as they travel. They also lived in a motorhome a year while their retirement home was built. They told us there were tips they would be sharing with us to make it as comfortable as possible. It is much less expensive to buy an RV than to build a building, as there are a variety of RV options to choose from. However, I absolutely agree that if one has the time and the $$$ to build a nice garage, go for it. We are trying to be ultra conservative, financially. DH will be able to build the pump house, well house, and log cabin, for very little $, as he will be using logs off our property...

brreitsma · #43 06/05/14, 02:16 PM

At times if you go with an old ugly motor home that's not been used in a long time and may not be running you can literally get them free or running but barely for around $500 and they can be storage or guest housing later. A pickup should be able to pull it to property. Much cheaper than a shed.

ChristieAcres · #44 06/05/14, 03:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brreitsma

At times if you go with an old ugly motor home that's not been used in a long time and may not be running you can literally get them free or running but barely for around $500 and they can be storage or guest housing later. A pickup should be able to pull it to property. Much cheaper than a shed.

I can see your point on the non-runner, however, it is important to have the main appliances working. If one doesn't need a running motorhome, a bigger travel trailer or 5th wheel would be a better choice, even damaged or dirty. Depends on what style of roughing it, is desired...

For our purchase of a running motorhome in good condition, we got a 6.5kw generator, 3-way fridge/freezer, range/oven, microwave/convection oven, water pump/heater for shower, toilet, all electrical working fine, furnace, air-conditioner, etc...Time is $$$ to us, and we didn't have the luxury of waiting, working on fixing up an old beat up RV. If one does, great idea! If we needed to sell this tomorrow, we could get almost twice what we paid... This is due to DH fixing every little thing from bumper to bumper, like he always does.

I should have purchased, it helps if at least one person is very handy and knows a lot about RV repair (makes living in one, much easier).

Freeholder · #45 06/09/14, 10:20 AM

If the tax situation later may be a problem, why not plan the shed to be part of your finished house, and add on to it as you can afford to? It could be a kitchen/bath/laundry core with a sleeping loft above, or?

Kathleen

We lived in an old fifth wheel for nine months before I bought the place where we are living now. It was parked at my mother's place, so we had electricity, and used her house for water/baths/laundry. We paid $1,600 for it; it was absolutely filthy, and had been in an accident, with minor damage, but the frame was warped a little bit and it couldn't have been hauled far on the highway. It worked for the few months that we lived in it, and would have been fine for camping. But it was hard to heat, had issues with the cook stove (I never was able to get the oven to light, and the orifices on the propane burners needed to be cleaned), had a couple of issues with the furnace, and had some issues with the frig, although we finally got it working. There was also a leak around the AC unit on the roof, and the floor was rotted out when we bought the unit. I tore out the carpet (more difficult than you might think, with hundreds of rusty staples holding the filthy stuff down) and put down 1/2 inch plywood over the whole floor -- I should have used heavier plywood, but it works. I'm going to loan the fifth wheel to some friends who live near us; they'll use it for a school-room for homeschooling their six children (they live in a tiny cabin and a motor home right now while they are building).

For our situation at the time, the RV was the right choice. When we moved to this area, we were still in limbo financially, waiting on funds from the sale of a house. I did purchase some bare land, but we would have had to live at my mother and step-father's house for at least three years while I built on it (and step-father is hard to live with), so I ended up buying this place, which is less than a mile from the bare land. We still plan to build on the land, but now we have a place to live while we do it! Here we are living in an old doublewide (it was built in 1971), but it's had a lot of work done on it, and we are quite comfortable until we can get our house built.

This area doesn't allow people to live on property in just an RV. You have to have the septic, well, electricity, and house permit, and then (if they are keeping a close eye on things, which they don't always out here) they still don't want you to live in your RV for very long. If you can show significant progress on your house, they probably won't hassle you too much about it, but you can't get away with it forever.