Prepping to move

In order to move a house all the wires need to be cut and water needs to be capped off, duct work under the house needs to be removed and the plumbing needed to be removed. Not to mention cutting off stairs and then ripping the house off of its foundation!

We have Air!!

Kinda amazing

The remains of the house...including my stairs :( A crew of about 8 men took a week to prep the house in order to move it. Then came state and federal permits to use the roads between point A & B. (It really helped it was a DOT auction ..approval flew through) But in the end she was loaded on a house moving dolly hooked to a truck with a massive concrete slab on the back.

And there she is all wrapped up! Merry Christmas to me :)

Dilemma

In moving a house there are many factors you have to consider and one of them is whether the fireplace and brick facade stay or go. The house's front was completely brick and while it wasn't my first choice of style it was ok and if we kept it we wouldn't have to figure out something to replace it. Then the fireplace issue. It was an extra $2500 to move the fireplace because of the weight and trying to balance the load. And while I like fireplaces and the ambiance of sitting in front of a nice little fire while it is cold outside I wasn't sure it was worth the extra cost of moving it. So we debated and decided to keep the facade and lose the fireplace. It was a nasty thing anyways!! and once it was off we saw the damage the fireplace had done.

Well somehow our wires got crossed and and BOTH the brick facade and the fireplace were ripped off. Leaving a gaping hole in the front of the house.

Our poor little sad house. Now to decide what to decorate her front with????

The House!!

Ok so this post is dedicated to the inside of my house. At least the upstairs. Since we are moving it to our lot and putting it on a new basement I will spare you the dark creepy pictures of the downstairs.. The smell down there was gut wrenching to say the least and several workers gagged! The previous owners had a cat which crawled on the underside rafters??? whatever they are called...they had large plastic sheets stapled to the bottom/ceiling of the basement that created kind of a hammock and the cats...well you know! Ok I will spare you further details...On to the house pictures!!

My kitchen which I absolutely love.. all the cupboard space and counter space and not to mention those amazing windows...We are on a hill so the view will be spectacular. The living room is HUGE! Love all the windows and light and happiness is the wood floors. The house was built in 1956 so these are real wood planks - happiness and joy joy!

The three upstairs bedrooms are all the same size and pretty roomy... Eventually though we will add on the end to create a separate dining room and a master bedroom that fits more than just our bed ;)

The mud room...sooooo happy for this feature. a place for muddy dirty shoes to have a home! to the right of the door is the opening for the downstairs.

The Horrible tiny bathroom with the door that can't open all the way...Really what were they thinking??

There are floor to ceiling closets on the one side of the entire hall..Love the storage space

So there is our happy home! eventually :/ The basement will be to rack and stack our remaining kids at home...The house is 1500 sq feet so when it is finished on the basement it will be 3000 total sq feet. I can't wait to paint and rip out that blue atrocity called a counter top...pictures don't show it but it is pretty nasty. And there you have it my Craft project I bought on Craigslist...(my hubby has since banned me from anymore purchases on CL..lol)

The Purchase!

So when I found that ad in Craigslist for a 1,500 sq foot stick built house for sale to be moved to your lot. I seriously thought it was a joke. You see we live in the same neighborhood I grew up in ...to be exact I live in the house I grew up in! Back in the day it was a nice quiet area where we roamed freely on the streets and ended up playing cowboys and indians or kick the can until dark. Fast forward a few years decades and now we are two doors down to the head of a nasty gang and have had multiple shootings at that house. We own several acres in the country so we began to immediately look for options to move out there. Our first thought was a manufactured home we could put at the side of the land then eventually build our dream home. WRONG!! Covenants say it must be stick built. Back to the drawing board and since we didn't have enough monies to build yet we just sat tight and prayed every night us & our home would be safe. So that brings me to my excitement over the house. I immediately called and found the address to the house and went to look. It was a DOT sale and he said it had failed auction twice but for $1700 it could be mine. I immediately drove the 2 hours to the office and paid him and bought a house sight unseen! Yep I had never actually been in the house just peeked in a few windows. We waited almost 2 weeks for the key to come...and when it did I made the trip out to see my house. I loved it!! everything about it..yes it isn't fancy with vaulted ceiling or a master suite or even a bathroom you can open the door...oh wait you can't open the door you say?? nope it hits the toilet.. ok so that was the worst thing about the entire house...the rest I love and can see our family living there for a long time :)