What Does A Mobile Home Remodel Before And After Look Like?

Examples of other mobile home remodel before and after projects

Just like you’re planning on sharing your mobile home before and after, seeing what others have done can help you prepare for yours. Here, we collected a few of the mobile home before and after projects that we liked.

My Heart’s Song

This is a handy blog for any mobile home owner. In this link, you can find their account of how they remodeled their entire home from top to bottom. As you can see from the before images, the home was seriously out of date before they got started. The style of the home stayed mostly the same, but they modernized and rejuvenated it. Simplicity is one of the most impressive things that they managed to pull off.

Charmaine Manley Design

Charmaine Manley is a professional interior designer that specializes in mobile homes. She is a woman on a mission to change the negative stereotypes attached to this form of housing. Browse through the gallery of images to discover what’s possible. You don’t need to be a professional yourself to achieve similar results.

My Mod, Mod Mobile Home

This is another extensive mobile home renovation taken on by Kim Thompson who runs the blog. The home wasn’t too bad to start with, but Kim saw a lot of room for improvement, and the results are quite stunning. It shows that the sky’s the limit when it comes to how much you can improve your mobile home.

At sites like Country Living, Pinterest and Apartment Therapy, you can find plenty more mobile home makeovers, remodels or renovations to inspire you.

What to include in a mobile home remodel before and after

A clear goal

The clearer the goal is for your remodel, the better. A clear goal will help you achieve what you set out to do with minimal divergences, within budget and within a specific time. Moreover, it will make creating your before and after easier. Readers will also be attracted to a specific goal like, “a pirate-themed kids bedroom” or a “minimalist home office space.”

Depending on the scope of your remodel, the goal might be more or less complicated and encompass. For example, a renovation of your entire home’s interior and exterior is far more extensive than a single room. However, it can still be summed up in something like “a complete mobile home transformation, inside and out.”

Also, tell readers why you want to the remodel. Do you want to improve the value of the home?  Or do you want to create the space for specific personal use? Perhaps you’ve always felt that space was underutilized or subpar? Would you want to make it safer or more accessible? For example, make it kid-proof or easier to navigate for someone in a wheelchair.

It helps to frame your goal in light of a particular problem. You can say how you need to change the room/part of the house for whatever reason or how it has inconvenienced you in the past. Then, present your remodeling idea as the solution.

It’s important that you start with this step as it will inform all the following ones to a great extent.

To avoid yourself, or others, from getting lost at some point during the remodeling, it’s essential to have some plan in place. It doesn’t have to be complicated. In general, you can cover most of the work you need to do within checklists and a few basic spreadsheets. You would be surprised how much a few simple documents to refer back to will help you and others.

Also, you will need to do quite a lot of research to create a plan of attack. Planning out a budget and listing the items you need is an obvious one that we cover in more detail in the following section. Typically, it’s recommended that you come up with a rough schedule of deadlines and the estimated amount of time it will take to complete certain tasks. The complexity of your program will depend mainly on the scope of the remodel.

Without a doubt, it helps to break down your total remodel into smaller chunks of work. For instance, you can put one day aside to shop around for various items. Being able to show others how long you thought things would take compared to how long they actually took will be invaluable to them when they plan their own.

While you are doing the remodeling, be sure to note down the amount of time you are working. Make notes of anything that delayed you, or that sped up the process. Once you are done, you can show why it took you longer or shorter to complete. Be sure to point back to specific tasks.

Budget & Cost

The final cost is always a huge concern when remodeling a home. It’s very easy for unexpected costs to pile up, leading to a much higher total expenditure than you anticipated. That’s why it’s important, beforehand, to have a clear goal. Take time to browse through prices from as many sources as possible. Set a realistic budget to keep you on the straight and narrow road.

It will also be one of the top things others will look for in your before and after. Your results will always be viewed by how much you spent to achieve it. Many will even decide what type of remodeling they will take on or mimic based on the budget they need and the final cost.

So, when including this in your before and after, be as thorough and accurate as possible. Use real figures and totals. You should start by telling readers what your initial budget was as well as how you got to that figure. Did you research the cost of materials? Or, is it simply based on what money you had available for the job?

When creating a budget, you can divide it into two amounts. The smaller number will be your realistic budget based on your goals and research; the larger one includes your emergency funds should you go over budget. This amount is one you need to try your best to not breach under any circumstances even if you need to get really creative.

During the remodeling process, you should meticulously catalog what you expected to pay as well as what you ended up paying for every single part of the remodel. At the end product, you can then show what you expected to spend, what you spent, as well as the reason why you went under/over budget.

Materials and sources

Even for a relatively small remodel, you will probably need various items. When you paint a house, you still need brushes, paint, protective canvas, ladder, painter’s tape, etc. More extensive remodels could include furniture, accessories, extra tools, and so on.

Whatever shopping list you come up with in the beginning is likely to change. You might discover (or be recommended) better alternatives, realize that one of the items won’t work in your situation, run out of budget or simply be unable to find it. You could also just strike it lucky with an irresistible sale popping up right on time.

Initiate persistently asking yourself what and why and then note down the answers for your remodel before and after. For example, you were planning to buy some potted plants from the local gardening store. Unfortunately, they were too expensive. So you can then say in your remodel and tell the readers where you found cheaper alternatives.

You should mention where you bought or found your materials as this will help others locate the same items or price compare. The whole idea of a before and after is to give people a real life actionable example of how to tackle a remodel which includes sourcing items.

Seeing is believing. Nothing will prove the success of your remodel as much as visual proof of what it looked like before versus after. You don’t need to be a professional photographer to illustrate through photographs what the change looks like adequately. Instead, you’ll just need a camera, a little bit of deductive reasoning, and some patience.

Although you want to show whichever part of the home you worked on thoroughly, you shouldn’t have to rely on hundreds of photos. Think about how you can show as much change as possible within a few pictures as possible. Identify key points that you want to change and highlight them as the main object in some of the images.

If you want to be thorough, also include some photos or videos during of you doing the remodeling work. For example, you could show how you pulled off a particularly tricky task or how a particular change had a drastic effect on the result.

Work process

As we’ve said, people love before and afters because they give such an actionable real-world example of how to tackle a complex task. If you want yours to be thorough, you should provide your readers or viewers with some of the process and your thinking as you tackled the remodel.

You don’t have to go step-by-step. Many of the subtasks that you would have to do will probably have a number of their own steps. It’s important to make the distinction that this is a before and after, and not a guide. However, it still has real value to provide an overview of how you actually did it.

You can mention pivotal moments like when something caused you to go over or under budget. Maybe mention which guides you followed to achieve something or when something pushed you over a deadline, etc. Bear in mind that it helps to go through the order in which you tackled different tasks, especially if you did so with good reason.

An analysis of the remodel

Finish up the before and after by saying what you think of the remodel and whether you feel you achieved what you set out to do. Compare your initial perceptions regarding the budget and schedule with the reality of the remodel.

Highlight the most challenging as well as the surprisingly easy parts. It’s really up to you how you structure and write this piece as it hinges on your personal experience and results. Provide real figures when talking about your budget and schedule.

A basic structure of a mobile home remodel before and after

There is no formal structure to a before and after except for, well, the before and after. However, if you want a basic format on what you could include and in what order, this is a logical and comprehensive numbered list to guide you:

• The problem – Just like we explained earlier, mention your problem or what you want to improve.
• Before photos – Illustrate the problem through some before photos.
• The goal – You can combine this with the problem or split the two according to your preference.
• Planning/schedule/budget – This is like a concrete form of your goal, showing exactly how you plan to do it.
• Step by step process – Walk through the important parts of the remodel and support it with more photos, illustrations or videos.
• After photos – Show off your stunning results with photos that highlight the changes. You can also include a few back-to-backs before and after pictures.
• Analyze results – Wrap up the article by providing your personal analysis of the process and results.

As you can see, this isn’t set in stone, and you can merge, split or swap numbers as you please.

Remodeling ideas

On our blog, you can find a range of articles to inspire you and help you through the challenge of remodeling your home. Whether you want to recreate a log cabin feel, discover budget-friendly renovation ideas, design a minimalist living space or give your home a luxury makeover.

That’s it for us! We hope that this guide helps you during your own remodel as well as to help you create a meaningful and valuable before and after to inspire others and help them follow your footsteps. Live the lifestyle that you deserve and keep paying it forward with your own mobile home before and after.