On the Mark: Slaughterhouse Outhouse Back in "Business" at My House

How I Spent My COVID Staycation

I was sitting at my computer working from home and it popped up online. “For sale: old outhouse. Price: $20.” It immediately caught my eye for three reasons. One, I like old, cool-looking stuff. Two, only 20 bucks?! And three, this just might work.

You see, I was in the process of accumulating pallets in order to build a shed for storing my firewood. I found a couple of photos of pallet sheds and a semi-decent YouTube on how to do it. I gathered six pallets already but the challenge is they come in all sizes and I needed four more of the same height and width to start the job. That was proving to be difficult. But as I looked at this Facebook post I thought, “That’s not your normal outhouse. It looks…wider, bigger. And it looks pretty stout, too. Forget the pallet shed. This could work just fine.”

I responded to the post and turns out I was the first to do so. I struck up a conversation with the owner who later said, “I’m getting inundated with calls on this, LOL. Come and get it.”

I immediately unloaded a car from my son-in-law’s trailer, hooked it up to my truck and drove 45 miles south to the Bitterroot Valley, one of my favorite scenic drives.

The ever-so-romantic "double-seater"

I arrived just south of Stevensville about an hour later. I met the woman’s husband outside who pointed me where to go. Turns out the outhouse was part of a group of very old, still-standing buildings that were part of an original homestead well-known to the entire community back in the day as the local slaughterhouse. The outhouse served as, well, the “facilities” for the operation. And to look at it, it was indeed fairly large for an outhouse. As I opened the door, I could see why it seemed so large. It was a double-seater. Yes, two people could do their “business” at the same time.

All loaded & ready for return trip

We secured a large car-towing strap around the outhouse and the man used his tractor with forks on the front of it to lift it on the trailer and then eventually pushed it back between the wheel wells, the best place for weight of any kind to be supported by the trailer. We solidified its position with four additional straps. The whole process took about 40 minutes or so. When we were done, I was very grateful. I paid him $20 and then emptied the rest of my wallet as well – probably another 17 or 18 dollars. He was just so helpful and went above and beyond to help me out.

I was a little leery on the drive home toting that thing. I was hoping old boards weren’t flying off as I went. My pickup drew a lot of stares in traffic and even some pointed fingers from several people. When I finally got home I did notice one loose board fell off but it was still on the trailer. I’m guessing a bunch of old wooden shake shingles fell off in transit as well.

Getting it off Kenny’s trailer and placed onto a foundation we made out of slender cinder blocks would be a challenge. Kenny and I stood and thought out loud how we could move it what amounted to 10-feet or so without tipping it over or ruining the cinder blocks. My next door neighbor, Bill, has a small front end loader, saw the trailered outhouse and volunteered to lift it into place. The back of the loader came off the ground when he lifted it with his forks but we managed to get it into place. Thanks Bill!

Once in place, I measured it. Sure enough, it was a decent size – more than five feet wide by six and a half feet deep by seven feet tall. Yes indeed, that would work well to hold the wood and in such a scenic setting in the woods just off the side of our house.

Bye bye double-seater

Now it was time for me to get to work. After peeling off the wooden shake shingles, I tore off the roof. Then I demoed the “seating area” and used the best of the old roofing planks to fill out the rest of the floor. I cut a couple of sheets of plywood, nailed them to the roof studs and then shingled the roof. After tearing out some rotten boards below the door and replacing them with leftover rooting planks, it was as structurally sound as I could make it. I gave the exterior one coat of wood finish.