Building through a doorway?

Hello,

Right now I'm renting a 10x10 room, which, try as I might, will not be ok to build an 18' kayak in. My father told me he has a 20' space I can use, and so I've been moving ahead based on that. 

I went over there last night to check it out, and it is 2 10x10 rooms, with a standard doorway between them. The doorway is far up against the side of both rooms, so I have only a few feet to work with. Part of me says "hey, the kayaks only 18" wide, and I can do the pannels one at a time, and store them on the ground under the saw horses untill it's time to put them together.  This is in a mobile home and the only exit this would leave me is a window, which is easily accessable from the inside, but lets out 10' over the ground. 

I think this is doable, and I've half come to understand that it's not that unusual.

Am I being crazy to tackle this in that type of environment, or is this as sane as home boatbuilding gets? 

 Thanks. 

-- James


7 replies:

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RE: Building through a doorway?

Anything is possible.  Q: Is there enough wiggle room to get the boat out, once it's completed?  My current project really fills the space available and it's a pain to get from one side to the other but I have a big double door to roll it out when done.  Good luck!!

RE: Building through a doorway?

The two main things to consider are, once your 18 foot long kayak is built inside the two rooms, will the doorway allow enough room to swivel the boat to get to the window.  Also, you will want to think about how much you will want to crawl on the floor under the kayak to get from one end to another.  

 

The panels can be very fragile once you put them together and getting them out from under the sawhorses might be a little hard.  I would suggest keeping them somewhere else or devising some kind of way to hang them from the ceiling above the sawhorses.  

RE: Building through a doorway?

The window is directly inline with the doorway, so that at least is doable (I checked, I can open it too, wasn't sure with the old mobile home)

 

As far as where to store completed 18' long pannels, I'm not sure what the real answer is. I'm still a few paychecks away, so I'm looking for better places to build, as I save. 

-- James

RE: Building through a doorway?

The interior walls on mobile homes are usually not structural and are often added after the ceilings and floor coverings are installed. You might be able to remove the wall between the rooms without doing much damage.

RE: Building through a doorway?

I'm not too familiar with the windows of mobile homes, but make sure the window can be opened enough to extract the completed boat. 

RE: Building through a doorway?

It sounds like your work area will be "challenging" but like you said, not that unusual. In my own case, I will be building a 17' 8" boat in a 18' shed so I will have more room on the sides than on the ends to maneuver around. My solution is to align the boat with the corners of the room to give me a litle more space to work on the ends. You have the doorway to deal with so this won't help you unless you remove a wall. However, to get my boat out of the shed I will have to open up one wall as the windows are not big enough to get the boat thru. This is OK as I can convert this opening to a doorway that will come in handy later on for moving long items (like lumber) into & out of the shed. So, while I guess it would be nice to have a larger work area, I wouldn't let the lack of one hold you back ... :)

RE: Building through a doorway?

I had a really short area to build and found that I often moved my boat front and back.

If you were to put your boat on supports that have casters or wheels then it would be an easy thing to move your boat 2 feet one way or another to access spots more easily.

This would allow you to move the boat out of the door area either forward or back to access the sides more easily.

Just make sure youre not upsetting the level of your construction. This will matter only at first, later your boat will be rigid enough to move with no problems.

Christine

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