We got up early and out to the site by 7:30 a.m. and found the moving crew already hard at work! Actually, it was POURING down rain, and they were all standing UNDER the house, drinking coffee and some, having a smoke! When I wandered up and asked why they were standing UNDER the house, I got a collective "Are you kidding?" look and an answer...."'Cause it's dry under here!" Of course, I was standing in the pouring rain when I asked this silly question!
I heard a snicker behind me at my comment, and a woman wearing an Emmert (the house moving company) jacket introduced herself as Nicole, from Accounting. She explained to me that everyone in the office got to go out to a move, and today was her turn! Then she asked me if I wanted my picture taken in her bunny-eared hard hat! I took her up on the offer, of course, even though it didn't really go with my outfit!
In the meantime, the Comcast and PUD crews had arrived and were starting the process of taking there lines down so the neighbors would be annoyed with us and so the house could move down the road, unobstructed.
Our youngest daughter, Brynn Lovingfoss and son Myles had also arrived to watch the spectacle. Grandpa Dwain provided a hardhat for the little guy to wear while he supervised the move :)
FINALLY, the lines were down and the harebrained scheme inched slowly out of the driveway, headed toward its new home! Those first few feet were nail biters---I could hardly believe what I was seeing!
Out of the driveway and turned onto Hazel Dell Road:
First obstacle was a little one--a sign needed to be temporarily removed.
And moving down the road, once more....
But not for long! Seems that the house was just a hair too wide to fit between the pole (one that couldn't be moved, according to the utility crews) and a tree that leaned WAY over from the hillside. Nicole had to talk me down a bit at this point! It took them a while to get it figured out. They moved around the dollies under the house and leaned it up a bit and FINALLY scooted by with just inches to spare! Don't get me wrong, it took a while. Since Hazel Dell Road was closed and there were a few cars waiting, we were sweating it a bit. I imagined having to abandon it in the middle of the road, or even putting it back!
Almost....
And by a whisker!!! You can see how tilted the house was in this picture. I was imagining it sliding off the beams, and into the ditch!
Past the obstacles (or so we thought) and ready to turn off Hazel Dell Road and block traffic on Leckler Creek Road for a while!
Turning onto Leckler Creek Road.
And finally, traffic is freed up on Hazel Dell and the utility crews set about putting the power and cable lines back in place. They just jacked the dollies up a bit to go over the mailboxes on the right.
Getting ready to come over the Leckler Creek bridge.
Then, they actually let it sit on the bridge a bit while they unhooked the truck and repositioned it behind the house. Then they hooked up a backhoe for the turn into our driveway. I think I will have this photo enlarged and made into a canvas to hang in our entry way when this is all said and done!
What you can't see here is the truck, attached by cable to the other side of the house. It acted as the "brakes" while they made this tight turn and headed down a slight incline onto our property.
OOPS! The front fascia board on the garage bumped into a BIG knot on that tree on the right. Again, the house wasn't going any further without the ingenious intervention of the Emmert crew.
The freshly cleared ground on the left was clay mud muck and they didn't want to head down that way if they could avoid it, SOOOO, I think they bent a few safety rules here. This guy (and a big ol' chainsaw) got a ride to the rooftop via the bucket of the backhoe.
Before we knew it, the knot on the tree was gone and it was smooth sailing again! (See the sawdust on the roof?)
Back of the house from the new site...they wanted me over there to make sure it was placed where I wanted it. There are a lot of things you can change easily....location is NOT one of them!
The muck we were contending with.
Now ready to turn it around and set into place.
Finally there!
Finally in place after a long, stressful and wet day! Things were settling down, the crew was unhooking equipment and getting ready to wrap up. Dwain had to run into town to attend to paychecks for OUR employees, and who drives up, but the building inspector! I saw the county car and thought it might be someone from Public Works just checking in to see if we had done the deed, but NOPE....Guy gets out and asks me if we have a building permit. I look at him with my best dumb blonde look and say, "We're not building anything, we just moved it." Apparently, he thought I was being a smart ass (Yeah, I know, but I really WASN'T this time!). He was back the next day and slapped a stop work order on the house. Apparently, Building and Planning don't have a lot of experience with house moving. We got a letter that said we moved a mobile home without a permit and if we continued work on it the fine could be up to $2000 a day! So, it took a couple of weeks to get the permit thing straightened out before we could proceed with pouring the foundation. We poured the foundation on June 14 (Shout out to Dave Brown and crew from North County Concrete! Thanks guys!!) and will be "dropping" the house on July 15.
Hopefully, we'll have a little better weather than we did on move day, so we're planning on a little BBQ. Nothing fancy. Come on out and see, we'd love to see you!! Also, there may be a video in the works. Due to a number of things, my video wasn't the greatest, so I have someone who is a master of all things video working on it. Can't make any promises, 'cause he only had so much to work with, but I hope to get some video on this site before long.
This is the wonderful crew from Emmert International that made moving a 2500 square foot house look easy! They worked hard for several days prepping the house for the move, and in really nasty conditions the day of the move! Thank you, guys! You are the greatest and real professionals. Your worked awed me! I still think your work is reality show worthy!
