FREELAND — Wise King Solomon might have been a little proud of Brad Rice.

Rice, the owner of The Boatwright in Freeland, launched a new houseboat he finished building this week.

But before the newborn boat was delivered to its Seattle owner, the 40-foot-long vessel was divided in two so it could be squeezed out of Rice’s South End shop.

The houseboat is the third, and the biggest, that Rice has built. He spent part of Thursday morning taking the top half of the double-decker houseboat onto one semi-trailer truck, and the bottom half on another, so it could be taken to Lake Union in Seattle and reassembled.

The houseboat took almost 3,000 man hours to build, and it features living standards such as a refrigerator, washing machine and dryer, but special touches such as a Murphy bed, a composting toilet and all-marine wiring.

“It’s been hectic,” Rice said as he summed up the effort.

The boat, commissioned by a Seattle woman, has been under construction since September. Rice designed the boat himself, and was assisted on the houseboat building project by Camille LaTray, Adam Karpenske, Vern Brisley, Amy Johnson, John Shinneman and Garrick Plumbing.

Many houseboats are considered barges, Rice said, because they can’t move under their own power. Not so with the houseboat he built, he noted, which comes equipped with an outboard.

Despite the completion of the project, there won’t be a work break for Rice in the near future.

“We have a 20-foot fishing boat in progress and a 30-foot motorboat,” he said.