Mobile Home Makeover | How To Make Yours A Luxury Mobile Home

A luxury mobile home is all about making it yours. It’s mostly about completely hiding that “generic” manufactured home feel and replacing cheap or unattractive features with better and more appealing ones.

If you think that the idea of a “Luxury Mobile Home” sounds ridiculous, you haven’t seen anything yet. Just check out this mobile home park filled with homes so luxurious they sell for millions of dollars and have been home to A-list celebrities. Or look at this $3.75 million mobile home also located in Malibu.

If you want a luxury mobile home close to any of those, it means that there are quite a lot of upgrades to keep track of! Let’s look at them a little closer in order to be well on our way to doing a mobile home makeover.

Paint

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again. Painting should be the first you do as part of any renovation, upgrade or makeover. Applying some brand new, high-quality paint to your mobile home is the most effective, yet reasonably inexpensive, way to renew its appearance.

A good paint job will not only make your home look newer and more beautiful, it will also protect the materials your home is made of.

Since we are talking about creating a luxury home here, you should look at fancy paint options, such as a stucco effect, satin paint or special finishes.

If you aspire to own a luxury mobile home, you need to tackle painting seriously. We have written many articles on the subject to show you what paint to buy, what tools to use, and how to paint different surfaces.

• Mobile Home Colors: How To Choose Your Interior And Exterior Paints
• Can You Paint the Outside of a Mobile Home?
• Painting Mobile Home Walls With Style

Walls and paneling

If painting doesn’t go far enough, you can also completely redo the look of your walls with panels.

Wall panels can either be one of the best decisions you make, or the worst. You need to very carefully select the panels that you want to suit the design and feel you are going for. It’s a great way to put some texture on bland walls and make these big surfaces more interesting.

You have plenty of options like faux wood paneling, faux stone paneling, stucco panels (you can also achieve this solely by painting).

Also, take into account that different types of panels and materials will require different paints or painting techniques. So, choose them together to avoid a headache. Your paint and your style of panels need to closely match each other anyway.

Skirting

Many mobile homeowners don’t even know that skirting is a legal requirement in many states and that it’s also a HUD code requirement. As such, you definitely can’t have a luxury home without it.

On top of all the practical benefits, an attractive skirting is also a must to improve your home’s curb appeal. Even if you have a fancy mobile home, no one wants to see its ugly underbelly.

An elegant and high-quality skirting wrapped around the periphery of your home will give it a finish and touch of elegance that’s hard to beat otherwise. You can’t go wrong with a white skirting, although it needs to be kept clean.

New doors and windows

Mobile homes often come with very generic and basic windows and doors, not to mention their frames. So, adding a new window to a mobile home is something that may pop into your head.

Now, the question stands, can you put regular house windows in a mobile home?

Luckily, it’s pretty easy to add new windows or doors to a mobile home as the wall materials are much easier to cut and manipulate.

This opens up a lot of doors (excuse the pun) for you design wise. Windows that cover the entire wall, clerestory windows, and normal sized windows with ornate decorations are just some of your options.

When it comes to doors, mobile homes usually come with plain aluminum doors. This is a great opportunity to go for wood or steel and get a more secure door while you’re at it. Sliding window doors are also fantastic if you go with the full-wall window option.

Porch, deck or patio

What luxury home is complete without a nice patio, deck or porch to sit under and get the best of both your home and the outside world?

You have plenty of options when it comes to these and you should look at others examples. Incorporating an outside entertainment area while you are at it is a good idea as you would ideally want these two to work well together.

To make it a luxury porch, think about the railings, the roof or awnings, and the deck surface itself. You will also probably want to furnish it. If you want some practical advice on how to install a deck, read this article.

Landscaping

Now, what good is that deck if you only get to see your own dull backyard that is nothing more than a plot of grass? Landscaping is almost an entire upgrade project on its own and shouldn’t be taken lightly. However, you simply can’t say you own a luxury mobile home if the lot itself doesn’t meet that standard too.

You will carefully need to consider the style, your climate, and your ability to care for the landscape before proceeding. Here is a Landscaping 101 guide if you need some help.

The kitchen

Another area that you should definitely upgrade for a truly luxury home feel, is the kitchen. There are many upgrades you can (and should) make. Many mobile homes have smallish kitchens so it might be a good time to do some alterations to the floor plan.

Typically, mobile homes also come with pretty dull cabinets. You can completely replace these, give them a new coat of paint or treat them in the case of wood cabinets.

Other upgrades you can make are buying designer appliances, installing a kitchen island, and installing some fancy hanging racks.

The bathroom

As a part of your home where you usually get prepared for the day as well as luxuriate on occasion, you definitely want a fitting bathroom.

Depending on your home, this could mean new showers, bathtubs, cabinets, and floors. Here are some ideas if you need inspiration.

Pitched roof

Many people prefer the look of a pitched roof. It’s also technically better for your home as it gets rid of water and is structurally more sound. You can even just roof over your old flat roof with a new pitched one instead of replacing it entirely. We advise a professional for this job.

You can also install a raised roof if you want to add clerestory windows, an attic, a secret enclave or just to add higher ceilings to a room.

Install some special features

Once you have finished with all the must-dos, it’s new the time to let loose and have a little fun picking and choosing some truly luxurious features.

How about a jacuzzi?

A fancy, jet shower?

A new room built on to the home?

An observatory?

Skylights?

Really get creative. No matter how crazy the idea sounds, jot it down. You can research it later and might be surprised to find what is possible with modern mobile homes.

The devil is in the details

While you are at it, don’t forget about the small things that really make a home feel polished. These include:

• Light fixtures
• Curtains and blinds
• Floor trims
• Furniture
• Carpets
• Decorations

Upgrades make all the difference in a mobile home makeover

Get inspired and do your research

Before you do anything, you should spend some significant amount of time looking for ideas, what other people have done, the latest trends, and anything else that might help speed the process along and make it easier.

On top of getting potentially hundreds of new and fresh ideas that you might not have thought of yourself, you will also be able to learn some real-life lessons from others makeover projects.

Start off by just doing some random Google searches and make sure to look at any makeover jobs from actual mobile homeowners. Advice from these types of bloggers is often invaluable. Also, check out idea-sharing sites like Pinterest.

Don’t just read it and forget about it! Save, print, and make a scrapbook of everything you come across and like. Putting effort into this step will inevitably make all the following steps much easier and will help you avoid the regret after the makeover is completed.

Choose your upgrades

Now that you have a whole collection of ideas to remodel and things to do with your home that you found, it’s time to whittle them down to what you really want, that’s practical, and that will fit your home.

Unfortunately, none of us have unlimited space to work with and with most mobile homes, you have to be that much more careful in selecting appropriate upgrades to make.

You have to match colors and physical additions that match with each other like the color of your wall paint with that of any skirting or trim as well as any wall panels you might install. Think of it as separating and putting the pieces of a few different puzzles together that somehow got mixed up.

How to budget for an upgrade

Now we get to that word that all DIYers hate: budgeting. However, it’s a very necessary step. At best, you will need to spend more than you planned on. At worst, you might be left with a half-finished makeover with no more funds.

What can you afford?

Let’s get the obvious one out of the way first. You should establish what you can afford before you go any further. Look over your financials and choose a figure that you are comfortable spending and that you absolutely cannot go above.

If at first glance it seems if you can’t afford a lot of upgrades, don’t worry! Most of these upgrades can be done with materials that vary wildly in cost. You might just have to compromise slightly.

You can also plan to do your makeover in “stages.” Just make sure that each stage covers off a single section or room so that it doesn’t look unfinished when you pause the makeover. You can then do the whole upgrade over a certain period, spending more money when it’s available.

DIY vs. a contractor

Many of you might be tempted to immediately banish the thought of hiring a contractor and DIY the whole thing. However, you should be very careful to not damage your home’s structural integrity or botch any of the jobs.

If you haven’t done any of these tasks yourself before. It might be best (and cheaper in the long run) to fork up and pay more for a professional.

Emergency fund

You should always have an emergency or “contingency” fund when tackling a huge makeover or upgrade like this. At least some things are likely to go wrong and you want to be prepared financially if that happens.

So, when we say find out what we can afford, you should subtract a few hundred or thousand dollars from that and leave the rest as an emergency fund.

Prioritize

Prioritize individual tasks in a way that is logical, that helps you complete the biggest changes before you risk running over budget, and that you really want the most. This step will probably have to be done in tandem with your budgeting as they will influence each other. Especially if you decide to do the renovation in stages.

From a practical perspective, it’s typically best to work from the top down, which is an example of small-scale prioritization. On a big scale, you should consider which room to do first. For example, if you want to upgrade your home with an eye on having guests over, you might want to prioritize the foyer, living area, and maybe the exterior.

Establish a timeframe and create a schedule

By elaborating on the previous steps, we have already touched on scheduling. You should know that even a relatively simple home upgrade will take a lot of time. If you go the DIY route, it could take up to a month based on the amount of time you have available and your upgrades.

Even a professional upgrade can take a week or more. So, ensure that you approach it in a way that fits in with your life.

Luxury is just a mobile home makeover away!

We hope that this guide inspires and motivate you to turn your mobile home into your dream home! There are no limits to what’s possible if you really apply yourself. Don’t sell yourself (or your home) short. Gone are the days where mobile homes are relegated to the status of the ugly cousin in the housing family. Now it’s your turn to do a mobile home makeover the envy of all your neighbors.