Preparing a house to drive down the road.

It's been a while since I blogged last. And there is so much to talk about. We've had such an exciting few weeks, but to be honest, I don't know if there is much that can top watching your house drive off down the road!

To get it to that stage, quite a bit of work is involved. I didn't realise just how much - why would I? So it was incredibly interesting to go by and watch what they were doing.

First they had to smash holes in the base of the house to locate things and start demoing the base so they could jack the house up, and of course take the chimney down.

We happened to walk past just as the demo guy was bashing into the chimney and we saw it all fall down. First a pile of dust came out, then a pile of what looked like insulation, then the bricks and everything fell off. The kids LOVED it (and just quietly so did I).

Once most of the base was dealt to, they could then cut the house in half (through the kitchen), jack it up and prepare it for being loaded onto a truck.

See that bloke up on top of the house?! Amazing what they did. On top, underneath, they scurried everywhere needed to ensure it was moved efficiently and safely. I take my hats off to them as I sure wouldn't like to be under a house when it starts moving (more about that later!).

That pile of rubble, it used to be our front concrete porch. It had a door going off it into the boys room, and was a sun trap. Every sunny Sunday morning you'd find Andy out there with a cup of coffee and/or his guitar.

Can you see how this front part of the house is higher than the back? That's because it's been jacked up on the steel jacks you see on the side of the building. Because our section is narrow, they had to take the house away on two trucks on two different nights. They got this front part away first.

The kids are so involved in the whole process. They love being in the photos and telling anyone who would listen what was happening to their house. It was pretty cool.

At the end of this day, 30th Sept, we were still hoping the truck would arrive, but it didn't. It had got stuck on another site. It had been raining a bit and so grounds were soggy. So we had to wait.

The next morning, nice and early, I got a phone call from our neighbours, the truck is here, thought you'd like to see.... it's going under the house. We all raced around to watch from their deck (and as close as we were allowed)....

It was amazing to see how all the guys worked together to get the truck lined up correctly. See the guy there on the back of the truck? He's using a hydraulic system to move the truck back and forward, up and down until it's in the right position.

Then below, you'll see legs sticking out from under the house. They are there making hand movements which are passed along by the guy at the front of the house so the hydraulic guy knows when/what needs to happen next.

As the truck pulled the front part of it into place, you could see the gap widening between the two halves of the house. It was so strange.

You can really see here the gap between the two halves of the house. And funnily enough the 'new' front door steps we had to put in earlier when we had to destroy our beautiful concrete steps to allow a digger to get past. Andy put those stairs up well as they survived until the site demo occurred!

Final effort to get the house ready to drive down the road, is to get lights on. At this point, we were told it WAS moving that night. They later advised what time and we promptly set our alarm clocks ready to get up. Thank goodness it was the middle of the school holidays so that the kids weren't too affected by lack of sleep that night.

I'll leave it here for now. Next build post will have photos of the house in the middle of the night and what happened then. It was flippin amazing! Anyway, my last photo of today I had to take. Too funny. That not only was a house moving that day, but our neighbours too.