Foundations & Preparations
There was a lot of work that needed to be done before we could move our house to our land. At the time that we agreed to move the house, we still didn’t have a driveway! We worked quickly to secure a construction loan, but we didn’t close on our loan until the end of June. Thankfully we had enough in our savings to get started in order to meet the timeline our mover set for us (he had a job that would take him out of our area, so we needed to move the house before that, or wait until the Fall).
Foundations
It’s not a typo, foundations plural is what I meant. Because we had to construct two foundations, or our foundation in two parts—the slab that distributes the weight of the house over the ground, and the basement walls that connect that weight from the top plates of the basement to the slab. However, before we could start on either of those, we needed a driveway. We had a local contractor build up our driveway for us, and sometime this Fall he’ll come back and top it off with some road-grade gravel.
Then, he cored out where our slab would go and brought in some gravel so that our slab is on grade. Our land is boggy, and in order to keep our basement dry, we needed to build up. The image above is where our house will go, ready to have the slab formed and poured.
Seth and I decided to go with a looped driveway to make it easier to get the camper in and out, as we are still planning on traveling quite a bit every year. I can’t remember if this was the end of May or if we were already into June. But the next step was to have the concrete formed and then Seth could put the plumbing in where we needed it. We needed to have the water intake line, the drain, and any basement plumbing (like shower or toilet) suspended in the slab. Neither of us have plumbing experience outside of our camper, so my uncle helped Seth. You can see our land progression to plumbing in our poured slab on my Instagram page (@alexmaxwrites) along with more images to come of our home renovation!
Nothing ever goes as planned, though. Even though this year has been extremely dry, our contractor had some equipment get stuck on our land, and that pushed our timeline out of alignment. Instead of putting the plumbing in on a weekend off, Seth ended up making a special trip from Lake Bronson to get it done.
Yes, that is Seth wearing stilts at an event 4th of July weekend! For those of you new to the blog, Seth is a magicianary and we started our own non-profit, Engage Outreach Ministries, in 2019. My parents were up for the 4th of July, so my dad and uncle built our basement walls with Seth. And yes, it was a lot to juggle (pun intended!) that weekend. But the walls got built, Seth did his events, and we spent some much-needed time with family. We couldn’t put the walls in place on the slab until the house was in place, and that was quite the experience, building a basement under the house while it was up on cribbing and jacks! But that’s a post for another time. The last photo in the set above is of the finished walls laid out where they’ll be going once the house is in place.
Here’s our slab with the bottom plates over the bolts, so that when we put the walls up, they fit like a glove.
After the driveway, slab, and basement walls were ready, our land was prepped for the house move! Eventually, we will need to drill a well, put in septic, and bring in electricity, but that will just have to wait. I think I said this before, but we have a safe place to live while we finish the house. Our priority is finishing it 100% before moving in, just because trying to do projects with two littles running around is pretty difficult. And while Elwood isn’t quite running yet, he’s getting to be very mobile!
Preparations
Just as there was work needed on the land before the house could arrive, there was work needed in and around the house before it could take its four mile journey down the road. The chimney (pictured below), antenna, and duct-work needed to be taken down, or out completely.
A lot of the work of getting the house ready actually was done by our mover. Seth and my dad took care of a few little projects. It was amazing to see the move from the basement onto some I-beams, and then onto the trailer to be taken down the road. There’s no way we could have done this without our mover, and we are so thankful that he took the job.
The next blog post is the actual day we moved the house. We moved it mid-July, and right now it’s standing on the basement walls Seth made with my dad and uncle. Even though this is now slightly after the fact, I thought it would be fun to still keep everything in order. Plus, if we get new readers toward the end of our project, they’ll be able to binge-read these previous posts.
It still feels unreal that we have a house. It’s also been interesting to try and fit this work around Seth’s events, the camp, and my writing, but we’ve decided this is a good problem to have this summer. Mostly because this is going to end with us in a house that we own. I can tell you that saying it over and over again doesn’t help make it feel any more real. I think it’s going to take living in it for a few years before that reality sets in.
A small part of me still wishes we could have done this without a loan, because we’ve been trying to become debt-free for what feels like forever, but turning down an opportunity like this because it meant a loan would have been foolish for us. I don’t know if I said it in the last post, but we were given this house for free, as long as we paid for the move. But the family who gave us the house saved that amount of money, as either having it moved or taking it down and bringing it to the dump would have cost them a lot. So it was a win-win-win, they got rid of a house they didn’t need, we gained a house we very much needed, and our mover was paid to do a job.
The fact that this house was just the cost of moving it means that although we did end up with a loan, it is significantly smaller than if we bought a house this size, and we definitely couldn’t have built something this big new for that same amount of money. I absolutely love buying used and recycling, so this was right up my alley that way. I guess my father-in-law just happened to be at the right place at the right time and we got to reap the benefits of that.
I’m excited to see how this house progresses, and I’m holding our plans pretty loosely. Seth and I are pretty content, and can be in a number of different situations, so whatever challenges this renovation presents us are going to be fun to tackle together. I think that’ the biggest lesson we’ve been learning lately, is to hold our plans loosely. Nothing last year went the way we expected it to, and I think just about everyone can say that.
I’ll have to tell you more about 2020 another time, because that will be more than this post can comfortably contain. So, back to getting the house ready for the move.
The antenna coming down was cool to watch from the ground. I don’t know what Seth thought but I know my dad didn’t enjoy being up on the roof with him when it came down. I actually that got on video, and we’ve been toying with the idea of making some YouTube videos of the house move, so I’ll save that for later.
I will tell you how it happened, though. Seth and my dad had to use a ladder to get onto the roof, and then pull the ladder up so Seth could sit on the higher peak. He sawed the antenna off at the base, leaving the brackets on. He’ll have to go back later to take those out and patch the roof, but it’s fine for now. After pushing the antenna off onto the ground below, they then reversed the process to get off. Metal roofs are slippery and I’m terrified of heights, so I didn’t envy either of them.
And with the antenna off, our responsibilities to get the house ready were over and our mover took over.
Our house ready to go down the road!
Unfortunately, Seth wasn’t here to watch the progress on that, but he did get to see the house on the trailer ready to go down the road. Check back next week for the latest on our sagas from the myrr! (which is, incidentally, the title of the forthcoming full-length poetry book from this latest adventure!)