The House Move!

Today was the big day--0r one of the big days this autumn, anyway! Our house rolled away the Daentl's farm at 9:00 this morning in a procession of police cars, waaaaay too many cable company and electric linemen, moving company vehicles, and a few interested spectators, friends, and people who had the luck to be taking our route. At one intersection we went through where police had people stopped, a woman jumped out of her car and started taking pictures!
Our house is quite low, so although we had three pricey electrical company escorts, they only had to raise one line with their gigantic sticks. We were really impressed with the men of Egge Movers. At one point the side door came open, and the man you can see above in the reflective vest literally ran back and forth from his vehicle to the house to tie it shut again.
The house moved along at quite a clip--we were going about 25 mph most of the time, and we did not stop for any little old stop signs.
After about half an hour, we arrived at our place, where the Egge driver executed an impressive truck-pulling-a-house-on-i-beams turn into the driveway. The house looks a little unattractive from this side because when we tore off the old mudroom, we did not replace the siding. We are still planning to build a new mudroom this fall. Although it was free and a little grubby, it is not actually a burned-out shell as it appears in this photo!
Unfortunately, our cement crew is not as on top of things as the movers are. They have been taking it a bit easy, and plan to pour cement for the basement tomorrow. So the house has to sit in the driveway for a few days, much to the annoyance of the movers, who, as you can imagine, need their truck back. We're excited to have it here, even if it is blocking our driveway. We climbed onto the roof tonight to cover the hole left from the old chimney, and the view was amazing. A panorama of brilliant colors, the distant windmills, and a lovely sunset that could not be captured with 2 megapixels.

--c