DON'T CRUSH IT, IT HAS GOOD BONES!

In April 2017, my husband, Roger and I sold our Wenatchee home and moved to Chelan so I could help caretake my mother.

- KELLY ROLLEN

Roger is generally furloughed from his job as a foreman for a local heavy construction company for the winters and Mom was doing well that late fall, so we decided to spend the winter road tripping in our new RV.

We stopped when we hit Yuma, Arizona. Roger had spent three years stationed at the Marine Corps Air Station in the early ’80s and had always liked it. It was sunny and warm and that was good enough for me.

We spent the winter hiking the desert and checking out the Southwestern border town.

The day we left to head back home in February, we signed papers to purchase an abandoned city lot with a 40-foot 1977 Santa Fe park model trailer on it.

My husbands first words were, “I can have that thing crushed with an excavator and in a 15-yard dumpster in 20 minutes.”

“Nooooooo!” I screeched. “It has good bones ...”

Two winters later, our marriage somehow survived a DIY remodel project that neither one of us had a clue about. Ignorance is truly bliss my friends.

No, no I did not keep track of what we actually spent, as I’m not sure our marriage would survive that truth. That said, we are really proud of our little ’77 Santa Fe.

Here’s how we got the project done.

That first summer when we were back home, I determined I had just a few short months to convince Roger it was possible to rehab an old trailer — an old house? Sure, but a trailer?

We returned to Yuma just before Thanksgiving and immediately started demolition of the interior.