DIY Network

Prefab Cabin: Colorado Build From "Assembly Required" episode DASR-209

Barring and Anne Coughlin live in picturesque Beulah, Colo. and are tired of their hour-and-a-half commute to Colorado Springs. They want to bring the office closer to home by building a cabin a few yards from their main residence. The couple hired the best traditional framers in town to get the job done. Just one catch, framer Curtis Brown and his crew are not putting together a traditional post-and-beam style cabin.

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	Figure A
	Figure B

Prefab Cabin

This cabin comes in a kit. All the components needed to build the home shell are labeled and shipped out from the Greystokes factory in Canada. The package even arrives with an assembly manual. It's supposed to be fool proof, but the construction crew isn't too thrilled. They're used to building everything their way from scratch.

The framers start taking inventory of all the materials and find a big piece of the puzzle is missing...the beam that will hold up the floor system. Apparently, if they had read the directions, they would have found out that the floor support beam does not come with the kit.

Curtis calls in a favor to the local lumber yard and the crew gets three pieces of lumber to construct their own beam. With the floor system in place, the crew assembles the wall frame. The crew then muscles in the 200-pound ridge beam to keep the structure in tact. Curtis is satisfied the building will stay up during windy nights, and the crew goes home (figure A).

On day two, framer Curtis Brown and his crew only have four days to assemble the kit and the high winds have them worried. The crew manages to nail the oriented strand board to the wall frame, sheath the roof and nail in the barges that will keep the rain away from the foundation. They cut the windows, and the crew is done for the day...ahead of schedule (figure B).

Day three, however, they're not so lucky. 40 mile-an-hour winds have taken over the job site. The crew is supposed to erect the cedar porch, but that requires being up on the roof for construction. The wind is way too strong for the crew to work safely. Curtis shuts down the job site and the crew will have to cram everything in to the last day.

Figure C

On the final day, the crew splits up into teams to make the work go by faster. They construct the interior walls, install the soffit and assemble the porch. Just when everything is going along smoothly, there's another bump in the road. The square barge on the roofline is hanging right where the final rafter of the porch should be. The crew cuts off a part of the roofline, rebuilds the barge and reattaches the soffit.

In only four days, the traditional framers finished constructing the prefab cabin (figure C). In the next few months, subcontractors will complete the "finish work" so that Barring and Anne can move in and enjoy the comforts of their new home office.

RESOURCES :
Vi-tal Construction
Curtis Brown
129 East Beshoar
Pueblo West, CO 81007
E-mail: veeraye@comcast.net

Greystokes International
Chris Bonten
230 Carion Rd.
Kelowna BC, Canada V4V 2K5
Telephone: 1-888-891-3111
E-mail: chris@wildernesscabin.com