Time to get this thread rolling on my next big project - rehabbing/rebuilding a cabin as the next piece of my empire.

The cabin is a 12x16 portable building that was placed between 20-25 years ago. It was used as a rental cabin up until 2023. There are visible signs of significant water damage to the ceiling and the smell indicates the presence of mold. The exterior siding has degradation from water along the bottom edge, and the roof needs replaced. Simply put, the cabin basically has to be rebuilt around the frame.

Here are the starting pics:











This weekend I'm going out to do demo of the interior walls, ceiling, and flooring. All the insulation will come out and I can assess if any part of the frame needs replaced or repaired. I will apply Concrobium to all framing members and the subfloor to remediate any mold. Hopefully the sour milk stench inside is just moldy insulation.

A roofer is also coming out to look at it and I plan to get a new metal roof on it ASAP, which will likely include replacing some or even all of the decking. I will not begin replacing any insulation or wall sheathing until I know the place is adequately dried in. If I have time this weekend I plan to run romex for additional lighting, a few receptacles, and an exterior 30A RV receptacle so I can park my travel trailer next to it while I am getting it habitable.

A friend went out this past weekend to help me clear around the cabin by taking some trees down.


A bunch of my time will be spent picking up the pieces of the downed trees and hauling them to the firepit.

The big pieces of the project will be:

• New metal roof
• Replacing interior and exterior walls and insulation
• Install LVP flooring
• Replace in-wall AC unit with a mini split
• Building a 4' deck in front and a 5' deck in back
• Install additional lighting and receptacles
• Install cabinetry and a sink
• Adding a propane tankless WH
• Adding an outdoor shower
• Adding a window to the loft and two windows above the bed

i have to ask...for something so small that needs so much work why not just drag that away and put something in premade?

sts7049 said:

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i have to ask...for something so small that needs so much work why not just drag that away and put something in premade?

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I was thinking the same thing.

sts7049 said:

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i have to ask...for something so small that needs so much work why not just drag that away and put something in premade?

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1.) The total cost is about $4,000 more for a new building and the structure would either require a custom build or modification; and
2.) I love a good project

A buddy got going on the tree removal today. I'm a little annoyed he didn't cut the one stump off closer to the ground, but I can't complain since he took the trees down for me. That's what I have a barrel for. Cleaning this up should keep me busy for a bit this weekend.



I did have a bit of a hiccup today when some folks on the committee that has to approve the transfer of the cabin to me got a wild hair up their ass and decided transferring the cabin to me was me getting something for nothing, so they figured I should have to pay an amount equivalent to two years' worth of rental revenue (about $2,000) if I really want it. My best friend happens to be the chairman and broke the news to me, so I told him there is nothing stopping me from walking away from the deal and if I do that, it won't get rented at all for the foreseeable future and they won't get long-term site fee revenue from me. It won't break my heart to not spend $10K of my money rehabbing this thing. I told him he needed to find out what the committee's number was for how much they wanted me to pay for it and let me know before I leave town for the landsite so I could decide if I was going to walk or not.

Their number after he talked to them? $10.

He basically told them I'm doing them a favor by taking this cabin off their hands. I'm hoping they don't try to ambush me this weekend.

give them 10 dollars in pennies

Before I get into the pics from this weekend, I'll mention the project is on hold until I can find a roofer who will come in with a price that is actually lower than the cost of completely replacing the building. If I can't, then I will seriously consider replacing the building, but the biggest challenge with that is the ability to get a new building on site.

The road to the cabin's location looks like this:

There is no way a 12' wide building comes up that road without removing numerous trees, most of which are living.

Now for what I did this weekend ...

This was the scene when I arrived with two big cedars taken down:



This was just before I finished the rest of the cleanup:


And this is what I hauled down to the firepit:


After dealing with trees for a day, I started demo on the interior of the building. The biggest thing we had to diagnose was a horrid sour milk-like stench in the building. The ceiling was sagging badly in a way that looked like water damage, and the roof has obviously reached the end of its life, so we naturally assumed there was water infiltration and the ceiling was filled with mold (moldy insulation can smell like sour milk). The really fun part was the previous owner had sheathed the ceiling with hardboard and covered it with stick on vinyl flooring planks, which were attached using generous quantities of liquid nails and some other adhesives ...




Thankfully once I found the hardboard seams, I was able to rip the ceiling down in larger sections instead of peeling every plank one by one.



I was elated to find the section of the ceiling we expected to be filled with water damage and mold was just fine:

Further inspection of that black spot reveled it was something that got on the insulation prior to installation.

Next up I started removing the walls, which were OSB stapled to the studs.


There was noticeable water damage in a couple of areas, which was expected: The front corner where the siding was failing, and around the back door.




I will have to replace a section of the subfloor and part of the bottom plate to repair the damage, so this gives me an opportunity to move the door over one stud bay to help the layout.

Finally I started removing the floor. Stick on floor tiles should really be banned just because they suck so bad.



Oh ... and there was this hot mess:

They didn't even connect the second 30A leg for the service. not to mention the ground being dangerously close to the hot lug.

At the end of my work, this is what the place looks like:



One challenge is finding a home for all the crap that was left in the place. Some I will keep, some I won't, but there is no place to store it to get it out of the way. I didn't feel like shuffling it all around today, so I will finish the remainder of the walls and floor next time I go out (probably this Friday).

ETA: I did find the source of the stench. It was the combination of a bunch of pesticides inside a cabinet, the water damage in the corner, and an old non-functional air conditioner that looked to have been a domicile for rodents, but 99% the pesticides.

I didn't get the remainder of the interior demo done this weekend because I had to do some clearing to make way for roofers and worked on setting up the new pool and gathering up trash around the landsite, since we had a 30-yard dumpster for the weekend.

I spent too many hours pulling out yaupon by hand. I wanted to make sure I could yank as much of the roots as possible. For the bigger stuff, I cut it with a saw and treated the cut stump with 61.5% triclopyr. Hopefully getting that into these big root systems will kill back the grove. I also limbed the cedar tree behind the cabin up about 20 feet until it can be removed. I have another big swath of yaupon to remove in the area it needs to be felled.




I'll try to do more before/after shots like this to show the progress without you folks having to scroll all the way back to the original pics.

Thanks for sharing a good rebuild thread. Always enjoyable.

Two questions though.
-I'm not following the whole committee thing. Are you going to own a rental on state land? Did you buy the property. Who is renting this thing?
-A roof that small you're not going to find a guy who wants to do it for the price you're willing to pay. I'd just fire up youtube, open a Home Depot Pro account and knock it out yourself in a weekend.

one MEEN Ag said:

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Thanks for sharing a good rebuild thread. Always enjoyable.

Two questions though.
-I'm not following the whole committee thing. Are you going to own a rental on state land? Did you buy the property. Who is renting this thing?

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The land is a campground privately owned by an organization of which I am a member. There are 21 or 22 voting delegates who make decisions like approving long-term site holders and the sale/purchase of assets.

This cabin is an organization asset that was taken into inventory to satisfy unpaid long-term site fees by the previous owner. It was used as a rental cabin for several years after that for people who visited the campground. It hasn't been rented out in almost two years due to needed repairs. Basically I am going to fund the repairs and improvements and in return, the organization is going to sell the cabin to me. I have agreed to make it available as a rental for certain events for a period of time. When I'm done it should be the nicest cabin on property.

Think of it like a ground lease. As long as I am an approved long-term site holder I can use the 1500 SF they allocate to me. At some point I could leave and take the building with me if I wanted to, I could sell the building to someone else, or I can donate it back to the organization.

Quote:

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-A roof that small you're not going to find a guy who wants to do it for the price you're willing to pay. I'd just fire up youtube, open a Home Depot Pro account and knock it out yourself in a weekend.

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I spent a LOT of time on YouTube and did complete takeoffs for the proper installation of a metal roof. It would cost me north of $1500 for materials alone (with my vet discount). For less than $1500 more I can have someone else come remove and dispose of the old shingles and install the new roof all in a single day while I hang out in the pool.

That thing is dying for a garage apartment above it!

I have no doubt I could do it myself and do a good job, even if it is my first time installing a metal roof. However, I don't want to deal with the hassle of removing the old roof and everything that comes with it, including having to load all the debris into my truck and take it to a disposal facility, which I think the closest one is in Temple or Killeen (or alternatively spending hundreds to rent a dumpster, since the Milam County Transfer Station is not open on Sundays), and having to complete the entire job by myself in a day and a half.

Yes, that's worth the money to me.

Marvin_Zindler said:

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That roof is not terribly complicated and would only use a few squares of shingles. Why not just DIY it.

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Knowing what to do and doing it are two different things. Funny story...I did this once with my buddy's gambrel roof on his wellhouse. We were both slow with work and figured, why the hell not. Being in the industry I KNEW what to do. It was MAYBE 1/2 the size of the one in the OP or smaller. Took both of all literally all day long to do. I kept all of my partial bundles for a few jobs until I had enough. It's been a funny story ever since, and the memory of it is still something I actually cherish a lot. Both of us have Master's degrees so there was continuous s--- talking during the entire process.

I'm happy to have actual progress to report again, although my couple of days at the landsite is much less productive than I had planned because I arrived to find there was no power. I went down to check the main supply to the hill I'm on and found this:

If you've seen my thread about gluing electrical conduit with wires in it, this is the mess I was alluding to:

You see that microwave food container at the top of the pic? That was the waterproofing for this underground junction.

Now up to my cabin ... It was roof week.


Removal of the shingles helped me discover one of the lights was simply glued to the structure:




Final product:


Next up was having the building leveled, which turned into all of the piers being completely reset and the building raised four inches to get the end of one of the skids out of the dirt. The biggest problem was the piers were oriented the wrong direction, which caused most of them to lean. The solution was to turn them all 90 degrees where the downward force is spread perpendicularly, adding stability.

But first, off with the stairs!








I'm still trying to do some work inside, even though I have no power and it's dark. I'll post more if I can get any appreciable amount of inside work done. My next trip out will be in mid-April when the cabin officially becomes mine. Thanks to the stairs being removed, my priority project is to get a deck built in front to make future work more manageable and safer.

Ryan the Temp said:

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Christ on a cracker with all this friggin' duct tape ...


I completed all of the interior demo and found a significant source of water infiltration was the in-wall AC unit.

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That duct tape has to be at least R-2.

More updates. I had a much more ambitious project scheduled, but Lowe's screwed me by not delivering the door I ordered. Had they delivered the door I would have had not one, but two walls and some floor repair to share.

I started off with a small 24x27 window on this wall, which was grossly insufficient. I wanted more light and since the bed will be on this wall under the loft, I figured I would go with high sliders.


First step was to remove the old window, and since it was a hot day and I had AC inside, I opted to frame out the new windows from the inside. One benefit of doing it this way was that I got to restore two stud bays to a full 16", which makes insulation easier.


GO TIME! I removed the exterior T-111 siding.



Next up: Housewrap



I made sure to use flashing tape on the sills before the windows go in for added protection.


Windows



Finally the new LP Smart Side panels, during and after completion.



I took some time to do a little bit of electrical work inside while I was waiting on the door that never came. The place was also getting to be a bit of a disorganized mess because I had some stuff in there I was not able to remove until the cabin officially became mine at 2:00 this afternoon. For my own sanity I took some time to clean up and get organized. I also had to move the siding panels inside for storage.



The next time I go out I will pick up the new door and take it there myself. Once I have the door to replace the old one I have to pull out a large section of rotted subfloor and replace it. I plan to go one stud bay on each side of the new door location. The door will move 16" over (away from the loft) so it will open all the way and not interfere with the bed.

Damn, it was a hot one this weekend. My work mostly involved the electrical being off, or walls completely open to the outdoors, so AC wasn't a luxury I could enjoy.

I got out to the landsite later than I wanted on Friday, so I didn't dive into the big stuff. I started out uncovering the existing conduit and trenching the new location.


My primary goal was to replace the siding on the wall with the electrical. I put the new load center in and then started taking the old siding off.

This required disconnecting the electrical from the old load center.



This is real ugly, but it worked to maintain electrical power. When I removed the insulation, it looked like it was wired in a reasonable way that would allow me to make a direct connection to the new load center ... but no ... They ran the wire for almost everything all the way around the build in the other direction. It was just stupid, so I jumped some cable from the new load center to the old one.




After getting this wall done, I felt confident I could take up the next wall this weekend as well. This was much more involved because it involved replacing a portion of the floor and reframing the wall where it had to go over the floor repair. I also framed the door one stud bay over so the door could open a full 180 degrees without hitting the loft inside.

But before I get into that, I want to say of all the bull**** construction methods used in this building, the duct taped insulation is by far my "favorite." It leads to demo that looks like this:

Back to the wall:




Thanks to the door being a break in the housewrap, I was able to start replacement before all of the siding had been removed. This is a good pic of all phases of the project present at once.






Now lets get into that water damage ...








Lastly, I'll say heat exhaustion was my biggest enemy this weekend. I think I drank at least 3 gallons of fluids each day, and this was my best friend:

Went back out Monday to Wednesday, but only got one real day of work done on the cabin. I spent my first day cutting and clearing overgrowth on the road to my cabin because I like the paint on my truck. Hopefully treating cut yaupon stumps with triclopyr will help keep a bunch of it from coming back. At some point I need to get my own chainsaw and get after some ashe junipers. I also got to hang out with some friends - a doe and her baby.

The mama does like to hang out on our property because they know it's safe.

The plan for this trip was to complete the electrical (which ultimately did not happen) and start the plumbing. I got farther along on the electrical, but clutter in the space made it difficult. I didn't take pics of any of the electrical because, well, it's not interesting, but I did manage to get 4 of 8 circuits ready to be energized. I went ahead and installed the switches and receptacles instead of waiting until after sheetrock because I will need them to be functional as I continue.

One word of wisdom for you all - sometimes free is not better. I was given a 250' spool of 12/2 romex to use, but it's direct burial wire, which increases the amount of time to strip the ends by about 20x. I was tempted to buy new wire just to make it go faster.

The plumbing piece got rolling along pretty well. The cabin will have a kitchenette, outdoor shower, and hosebib. This means running water and drain lines. To prepare for this, I furred out the kitchenette wall with 2x2s to give me the depth I needed to clear the outer floor joist. The sink base will be above and uphill one of the skids; however, the easiest way to install the drain line was to have it on the downhill side of the skid:

Beyond this skid it gets pretty tight, so this was ideal for installation and later access, but meant I had to 45 the drain line to where it needed to penetrate the interior wall.

The PEX line had to go on the other side of the skid and if you've ever had to deal with coiled PEX, you know how unwieldy it can be. My solution was to take 16' of scrap conduit and run the PEX through it to get it where I needed it.


I was really happy that elbow supports fit above the 2x2 lip that is attached to the outer floor joist. It allowed me to keep the PEX above the bottom of the skids. I used PEX mounting brackets to attach the lines to the floor joists (not pictured) and drop ear elbows for the water supply lines that will feed the sink.

I sacrificed my last day out at the cabin to dedicate to cleanup. My last two trips out I was pressed for time to get home and did not get to do sufficient cleanup. This trip got to the point where I started losing things as soon as I would set them down. Doing a solid cleanup to get everything organized felt great and it will make accessing the other side to finish the electrical much easier, and I think I'll be able to get the electrical and shower plumbing 100% complete in July.

Even though I was unable to get all of the electrical done, the one thing that did make me feel this trip was a success was being able to get insulation back up on parts of the wall. Having the western-facing wall 80% uninsulated made the portable AC lose the battle in the afternoon. Thanks to this wall being furred out, I was able to upgrade from R-13 to R-19.


ETA: Total construction day to date - 15

Spent 4th of July weekend out at the cabin. It was the first of two weekends I'll spend out there this month. I'd say I got a good 1.5 days worth of work done. I had hoped to finish the electrical and plumbing this weekend, but it rained a lot and I wasn't going to crawl around in the mud to get under the building to do plumbing.

Construction Days: 16.5

As I was going through the existing electrical to do abandonments, my dumbass accidentally cut the wrong piece of romex - the piece feeding everything I needed. I had planned to do the new install and make the transition more seamless, but this forced me to kill the power to the entire building to get the completed circuits connected so I could run the AC on an extension cord and plug a shop light in. All said, it took me about two hours to go ahead and connect everything to the new box and get back in business.

I was pleased to learn the existing electrical was running pretty close to the top sill plate, which avoided removing large swaths of insulation.


As I was abandoning things and pulling old appliances, I found this GFCI that was wired ... creatively. There was clear evidence of melting.


This is the only receptacle in the place that is not energized at this time. It is external, and I will replace it once I pull the exterior siding off and install the new siding.


I took the building from 4 circuits (with almost everything on only one) to an fairly even distribution across 8 circuits. I had to double lug 7 & 8 because I bought the wrong tandem breaker. I'll fix it next time. It's nice to have only one box now.



One great addition I made was recessed lights underneath the loft on a dimmer. The wafer lights are just tucked up right now, but will be in tongue & groove that will be installed under the loft. At night these make a world of difference.


The one thing that finally made me feel like I'm making actual progress on this thing was being able to put insulation back up in some areas where no more work is needed.