Mobile home makeover

Teresa Black is a do-it-yourself renovator and decorator who transformed her older model mobile home into a Southwestern-style haven she loves coming home to each day.

From the pine plank floor to the barn wood paneling and copper veneer on the kitchen cabinets, she refurbished the interior with natural elements to give the home a worn, rustic feel.

The rugged setting provides an ideal backdrop for the furniture and accessories she makes from cactus ribs, antlers, leather and other natural materials.

Creating a rugged setting

The dining room is paneled with weathered wood that Black salvaged from her uncle's barn demolition in Arkansas. She hauled the wood in a pickup bed to Yuma, pressure-washed it and piled it inside the house to keep it from warping in the dry Yuma heat. A hired hand helped her saw boards and nail them to the wall.

The paneling job was quick and easy because barn wood is supposed to be rough and uneven, she said. "It doesn't need to be sanded or stained."

The pine plank kitchen floor required more work, however. With hired help and assistance from her granddaughters, Black cut and laid the planks, then countersank screws through them to attach them to the existing floor. After filling the screw holes with wood putty, the crew sanded, stained and applied a protective polyurethane coating to the wood floor.

Unlike other types of wood flooring, planks are simple to install because there are no grooves to align and connect, she said. "Anyone with a saw and tape measure can do it."

From removing walls to replumbing a bathroom sink, she was involved in all the remodeling phases. But she particularly enjoyed helping a hired contractor resurface her kitchen cabinets. He held up the copper panels while she used a torch to heat them to create various colors.

Pleased with her "new" home, she furnished and accessorized it with many Southwestern-style items she handcrafted herself.

Furniture and accessories

A talented seamstress, Black sewed leather coats and purses to earn extra money after her divorce several years ago. But she began making deer-hide bedspreads and matching pillows instead, because they are easier to make and there's a better market for them, she said.

"That's where it all started," she said. Soon, she began making leather wall hangings, deer horn candleholders, rope baskets and many other Southwestern-style accessories.

Though she is a part-time, traveling vendor who sells many of her handcrafted items, she has kept some for her own home. Among them are a bison-hide cover and coordinating pillows she made for the seat of a purchased sofa made of wood and saguaro cactus ribs.

She flanked the sofa with end tables she created by placing flagstone slabs on iron plant stands.

Using the sofa frame as a template, she designed a matching chair and hired a woodworker to build the wooden chair frame. Then she inlaid the saguaro ribs and made a bison-hide cover for the seat.

One day she saw a hunk of mesquite wood. Considering the size and shape, she thought it would make a good footstool to pair with the chair. So she hired the woodworker to turn the hunk of mesquite into a functional piece of furniture.

She also paid him to build a wooden frame for a headboard, then she and her father inlaid saguaro ribs in it, just as she had done with the chair. Black stitched a fully lined, queen-size, deer-hide bedspread with matching pillows to complement the rustic headboard.

Though someone experienced in woodworking should build the wooden frames, just about anyone can inlay the saguaro ribs, she said. "It looks complicated, and it looks really nice, but it's simple to do."

From a room divider made with inexpensive tree staking posts and fabric to a leather-lined, barn-wood pistol box, Black's handcrafted items are too numerous to mention.

It's not only enjoyable and satisfying to make things yourself, it's also a lot cheaper, she said. Yet anyone can do it.
"Don't be afraid. Just go for it. You can always change something if you don't like it."

But for those folks who just aren't into do-it-yourself projects, she said: "If they don't want to try their hand at it, they can try mine!"

Black can be reached at 1-520-909-5349.