First off, sorry about all the consonants. That’s what you get when your name is computer generated by Taunton Press. Anyway, I have a weird, but interesting question for all you that know more than I do. (That would be, of course, everyone!!)
Our neighbor is selling his 15 year old 24′ x 36′ lake cabin. He’s not selling the lot, just the cabin. After it sold, he moved it off the slab, and built another house that was year round. He had sold it to a relative for a reasonable price, (we were second in line, but the relative got first chance, and he bought it….) but the hitch was that it was too big to go down the road, so it had to removed across the lake in the winter. You probably guessed by now that this cabin is located…. UP NORTH! Well, the ice just didn’t get thick enough this winter, and the cabin is now sitting up on blocks at the water’s edge. A new, year round home has already been built on the old site.
Odds are good that at this time that the deal with the relative is going to fall through, and the neighbor is just going to tear down and sell the cabin for the price of the scrap lumber, etc. This is a shame, because we have land just down the road that we could put it on, IF we could get it there.
This whole, LONG saga, finally brings me to a question:
Could it possibly work to cut the 24×36′ cabin in 1/2, lengthways, so that it made 2 pieces of 12′ x 36′? That way, it could actually be moved down the road to our hunting land that’s less than 2 miles away. The roof has scissors trusses at a 6 – 12 pitch, and the ceiling is tongue and groove pine. The floor is OSB over 2×10″ joists. Is there some way to put everything back together again once it’s placed on a slab? It just seems like too good an opportunity to pass up, and something to explore. I know that in our cabin, we rebuilt some of the trusses to accomodate a loft, and it worked out fine, as long as we built with enough strength to support the ceiling. What do you think? Is this possible? We’d replace the flooring in the home, anyway, so the floor isn’t a big deal. It’s mainly questions regarding the viability of rebuilding trusses and floor joists, and making certain it’s structually sound. Plus, how do you put it back together? Thoughts?
Replies
If you were splitting it the other way (so as not to cut the trusses or floor joists) it would be a piece of cake. Maybe a better idea is to cut it into 3 pieces, so that you don't have to patch any joists or trusses.
Of course, some fairly beefy bracking is needed before you start cutting.
Cutting in half the long way means you are cutting EVERYTHING in half, Basically scrapping its infrastructure. You better be getting a heck of a deal if you are giving anything at all for it. What it would cost to move and reassemble might be nearly the same as putting up a bare shell, which is what I fear you will be left with once you start looking closer at things.
At this point your neighbor should consider himself lucky not to pay someone to take it away.
There are other ways to attack this. How wide is your roadway? could you cut it in three pieces leaving you to move three 12x24s, not cutting roof trusses and floor joists.
Complete disassembly could be the way to go if you have a lot of free time or available volunteer labor. Reassemble on site and try to keep intact larger assemblys like partitions and window walls. At least you would get the basic building materials for free.
That is really good thinking - I agree that the plan is to avoid cutting the floor joists and the ceiling trusses, and 12' x 24' would be more managable. I sort of forgot about the wiring - which is more than a minor detail. At this time we wouldn't be running electric out to it anyway - but eventually we would!Ann