my life my art my journey: moving the house

Thursday, December 8, 2016

Moving Day 1977

Friend Dave asked about the moving of this house way back in 1977. A little background. We were getting ready to ask the bank for a loan to build a house on some land we had purchased, when the house my Mom was renting came up for sale to be moved! So we bought it, and the small one behind it and moved both homes...We hired a house moving company and paid them $3,000 to move the larger house. It was located on a lot in town where

Wendy's Restaurant is now!

What they do is this:

They disconnect all plumbing and electrical. They put large timbers under the house and they start jacking it up! They put long beams under the house....then they lower the jacked up house onto the 2 long steel beams with wheels attached, they hook up a big truck and they tow the house! At the time we purchased the house it was about 60 ft long and 30 ft wide,

Here it is right before they pull it out onto the highway,

Here it goes onto the highway the guy on the roof raises the power lines so the house can go underneath without pulling the wires down.

here it goes down US Hwy 1

Here it is at intersection of East Dekalb and Lyttleton Streets in our town about 10 miles away from the destination on our land. They send a flag car ahead and stop the traffic...to allow the house to go through.

Notice all the old huge cars

The land we had purchased is on this dirt road, here comes the house

then it's coming down the driveway and turning into position

And here they are setting it up leveling it and they leave it sitting on stack of wood they call blocks.

my mom posing with the house after the movers left...

A lot of her furniture was moved in the house! She went to live with my sister in town until her house was ready to be lived in it took about 6 months for that to happen.

Then we had a block foundation put down and when that was finished and level they come back and lower the house onto the new foundation...rebuild the top of the chimney and we had put up the fence for Sundance's pasture...its now a wooden fence. This was about 3 months after the move.

here it is in 2014 we enclosed that open porch on the end, that is now my bar room...

Here is the bar and the 3 windows that look out over the acreage

The we added the screen porch and sunroom to the back of the house if you recall the house is FACING the land not the dirt road, and its still a dirt road!!.....its been sitting here for 40 yrs in a couple of months...and here is why we decided to do it this way...we had a mortgage for 10 yrs of only $110 a month! We borrowed enough money to put the house back together and every year we did something else, like put the new siding on, a new roof, adding the screen porch to the back, putting in central heat and air, and had all the windows replaced with double hung vinyl....and y'all know about the recent things I've done to update it a bit. I need another roof now and the HVAC unit needs to be replaced. Those big ticket items will have to wait for now! Here is the rear of the house as it was in 2017 facing the screen porch.

the cozy screen porch..

Here is the house from the pasture side...

So if you're thinking of building don't... look for a house to move! So far the demo of the old shed is going good...the weather has not been too co-operative and my new job as head wood gatherer is keeping me busy! I will update on the progress next time.

OH and see this old house here well it was also to be demolished to make way for the Wendys' in town back in 1977 so My Mom bought it, we moved it too, a month later, my mom has lived there since 1978/ We added a second bedroom, and a back screen porch and a deck!