Anyone ever take apart a cabinet to move it?

[Zippy3000]

Hi there ...

Forgive my noobishness ... I am less than a week old into this hobby. My first purchase is an Asteroids Deluxe in very good condition.

However, i ran into a problem when I got it home. I thought it was 25 inches wide ... it's actually 25 and 1/4 inches wide ... and our apartment (which we rent) has only one door ... and it's a very odd one. It's on an angle, and as such, it's very hard to get anything inside. Still, I thought it could be done, and this past weekend, two of my friends and I tried for 3 hours to get it through the door ... no dice. We took the door off, tried many angles, but it just isn't going through.

Any chance anyone here has heard of taking a cabinet apart to move it? I know it's not ideal, but at the moment, it's the only way I can think of to get this thing in my house! I don't want to leave it in our garage ... it's too cold in there. At the same time, i don't want to destroy the cabinet, and if we every move out of here (not happening any time soon) I'd like to be able to get it out again.

Any help or advice is greatly appreciated.

[jasonec]

All cabinets easily disassemble for moving:

[Zippy3000]

Yeah, i was hoping for an option that's a bit less destructive than that.

[Gameguy]

Do you have any appliances in your apartment? Fridges and stoves are usually 30 inches so there has to be a way to get them inside.

[Zippy3000]

We had a stove that had to come in once ... they had to disassemble it into pieces to get it in ... and the base is EXACTLY 25 inches wide. When it came to getting rid of the old one, they had to bend and mangle the sh*t out of it to get it out. It looked like a pile of scrap metal by the time they were done with it.

When we had to get the fridge replaced, our landlord ordered a small one that he KNEW would fit. And when the time came to get the old one out he had to hire a guy to SAW IT IN HALF. Not kidding! Our place smelled like burned metal for months afterward.

The last option for moving it in that I can think of is to remove the door frame. Unfortunately, it's a metal security frame, and i think it would get wrecked during the removal process. If that gave me even one more inch I think i'd have a good chance of getting the game through the door ... but i'd have to re-build the door frame and I'm not sure I'm ready to risk it unless it works out.

I've been trying to remain hopeful, but it seems like there's no way to disassemble the cabinets without wrecking them.

[jasonec]

With those limitations, you should really look into getting a cabaret arcade cabinet instead of a full-sized one....

[brad808]

Candy cabinets!

[Zippy3000]

Yeah, but my game is Asteroids Deluxe ... and as you may know, it's all about the cabinet.

I would do a cabaret maybe for Battlezone ... or a regular Asteroids ... but not for deluxe. There'd be no point ... I could just play it on Mame

[egg_sanwich]

Might as well just rent a storage unit. Now that you have one cab it’s only a matter of time before you pick up another, then another, then another...

That’s just how it works

[scogon]

sounds like it's time to move....

[Zippy3000]

Not moving any time soon.

I thought that there would be some people who have done this (taken apart cabinets and reassembled them) successfully ... to be honest I'm surprised that it doesn't happen more often... But everything I'm learning is that taking apart the cab will likely damage it beyond reassembly. I guess since they had to hold (sometimes) thousands of dollars, they made them tough ... not easy to take apart.

I think my best bet at the moment is to remove the door frame ... and get that extra 3/4 of an inch. The damn thing ALMOST went in the way it was ... I think getting the door frame off may make the difference.

[amplibax]

Just get a wider door installed. I had to do that to get my Neo Geo 6 slot in the house.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

[Zippy3000]

Can't do that either. It's not my house ... It's the landlord's ... I don't think he's too keen on spending money to get a wider door put in just to satisfy my need to get an arcade machine into my apartment. It's also an annoying situation because the door frame is built on an angle... So in actual fact, the with the door on, it only opens about 45 degrees.

If the door wasn't on an angle, and I could go striaght in, i bet it would fit no problem. But that would involve reconstructing part of the wall, and getting a new door and frame.

You can see i'm in quite a bind here ... This is why I was considering taking the cabinet apart.

[theyangman]

Those cabinets were all glued, nailed, and stapled together good luck getting it apart and then back together again without destroying something. Not to mention you're going to have to reverse the process again if you ever do move.

Your best bet is to either store it till you eventually move or find a slightly smaller hobby for the time being. That cabinet isn't huge by any means and if you're stuck with that one getting inside, there aren't many other cabinet other than cabarets that will be smaller.

[menace]

Yup, I would never say impossible, but incredibly difficult with a high risk of absolute failure--if the glue is really dried out and the wood dried out it might squeak apart. The big piss off will be when one side comes off but the other side splits after you get cocky over your initial success--ask me how I know this LOL