WE BOUGHT A TRUCK...NOW WHAT?

HOLY COW! I am officially a truck owner! Now what do I do? Lol! Well the first thing on our agenda was to have a mechanic check it out (since we didn't have it done before buying it like my Husband told me to do!).  We did realize on the way home that the windshield wipers didn't work so right off the bat...something needed fixed so my Husband got to tell me "I Told You So". I hope he felt better about himself because it's very rare that he is right about something. I'm usually the one that's always right! ;) Who would have thought to check those out right away? It was summertime!

Anyway, a couple of days after we got it home, we took it to the mechanic and it came back $300 and a week later with a clean bill of health and a new windshield wiper motor. Larry & I (mostly Larry), started removing the wood and railing inside the box to expose the bare walls so we could check it all out and get it all cleaned up. My kitties enjoyed playing inside the truck too.

I started searching for a metal fabricator to remove the lift gate and roll-up door and create a custom door frame and stairs. I contacted 8 different fabricators within the first couple of weeks and only ONE of them even responded to me! What...doesn't ANYONE need a job anymore? This is a paying gig here and NOBODY seems to want to get paid! The ONE guy that contacted me came back with a quote of $3,300 to do this ONE part of the project! Uh...no way! There is NO WAY it is THAT expensive to create what I wanted! I've seen this on another fashion truck and she didn't pay that much, so why is it so expensive for me? Besides the fact that that was like 1/2 my budget for the entire thing! So I continued to try to find other fabricator to give me another quote and still nothing!
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I decided to shift gears and get quotes to either paint or wrap the truck. Maybe if I just gave it a little more time, a fabricator would get back to me. Well...at that point I was getting pretty deflated. I was getting quotes for $5,000 to paint the truck and upwards of $7,000 to wrap it! What was going on here?! I am a part of a Fashion Truck FB group and other ladies had gotten their trucks done for a FRACTION of that! I swear...Oregonians inflate their cost of service 10-fold! Good grief! How on earth was I gonna get this truck going if it's gonna cost this much to modify it? Things were looking pretty grim...

We had lots of wood to remove on the inside...with kitty's help of course. We also bought the new flooring for it. While it was at the mechanics, we had them also fix the hole on the side of the truck. Just a few cosmetic things to fix. ;)