Packrat damage- even worth fixing?

westernrvparkowner wrote:
If you only have $6000 invested in it, take a vacuum to it along with a bunch of rags and some heavy duty cleaning solution and do the best you can. Then sell the thing "as is, where is" for a couple of thousand and be sure to disclose the damage. That will mitigate your losses and it will only be a three or four thousand dollar lesson. I wouldn't get involved in repairing all the damage because even if you could, at night, as you are trying to go to sleep, you will never get the thought of those pack rats completely out of your mind.

Thats pretty much what I would do unless you have alot of time on your hands, and think this type of work will be fun, or looking at it as a hobby.

I'm a pretty handy guy, I rarely back down from a rebuild challenge. However my last camper was structurally really good, looked decent on the outside, but it had a little water damage where the front met up with the roof, and in the shower where the wood was simply not protected from the shower. I rebuilt the bathroom(in the rear) and gradually worked my way to the front. Replaced counter tops, blinds, wall paper, updated the stove, microwave, little fittings here and there, new A/C panel, etc.

Well, getting to the water damage in the front required disassembling the cabinets. When they build these things they staple all the stuff together, its not meant to be disassembled. Much of the trim and stuff is made by the RV company for the run. Once I had my bedroom gutted, I looked at what I had, and what it was worth(about 5000-5500 here in good shape, to the right buyer on the right day). I considered what it was going to take in effort to reconstruct the cabinets, and replace all this RV style trim with RV style trim instead of it looking like I went to Home Depot. I said "screw it", and threw it up on Craigslist and took 2000 for it as is, and didn't look back. Did I lose 3-3.5K? Maybe. On the other hand at $2000 the phone was ringing off the hook and it sold in 2 days. The first buyer that came didnt even hesitate because he heard my phone ringing every 10 minutes. At $5500 fixed up I probably would have gotten a call every day or two, and hopefully after a few weeks it would sell. And I didn't lose another month or two of my life doing work that I do not particularly enjoy.