Skip to main content

Moving house!

Back in December we bought a house.  Not a house and land, just a house that someone didn't want on their land any more.  The house is a "Queenslander" style, which means its up on stumps to keep out the snakes, termites and flood waters, and it once had a wrap-around veranda, which is now half built-in, but still very generous.  The original parts of the house are probably nearly 100 years old, with some parts added in the 1980s (and already tested negative for asbestos, phew!).

It has taken SEVEN months to organise all the council paperwork and for the removalists to be ready, but our house finally moved this week!

Half of the house on the truck ready to move

The first half coming down our road around 3am

The first half in the house yard

The second half still on the truck
The removalist just has to put the roof back on and stump the house.  Then all we have to do is connect power, install rainwater tanks and septic system, replace the roof, install insulation and ceiling fans, paint the interior...... its fun to have a project!  I will show you around the inside as soon as the removalists have finished and its all settled on our property.

Have you ever moved a house?  Or renovated an old house?  Tell me it won't be too much work....

From The Farm Blog HopHomegrown on the Hill  Small Footprint Fridays - A sustainable living link-up

Comments

  1. Wow what an amazing project. We are constantly working on our 200+ year old farm house and I will tell you that doing it your way is much easier than working on one that you live in. You can go to town on it and it will be easier to bring it up to 21st century standards. Good idea!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I hope we will have time and money to work on it before we have to move in, that is the plan! I know how difficult it is to work on a house once its full of furniture...

      Delete
  2. wow! that is huge! You must have had to clear both sides of the road - it looks like there is no room! How far did you move it? Is this on Cheslyn Rise? Did they cut the house in half?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Its not so huge, our road is really narrow, its actually 16 x 13 m in total, the cut it into one 10 x 13 m piece and one 6 x 13 piece. It moved 14 km, most of that on the highway, but coming down our road was the hardest part as it has washed out to one lane since the rain in Jan/Feb this year and not been fixed at all since then. The removalist was very tense about coming up the road!

      Delete
  3. I sold our house in the weekend shopper for $10,000 to someone and it did take months for the person to get all the papers in order and we were building on it so he ended up paying a penalty per week but from what I'm told these things take way longer than one would think. All the professional house movers who came to see the house all said it would take at least 5 months to get the paper work in order and they wouldn't pay me for the house however they would take it away for fee (yes, very generous of them to make money off me). Anyway I put it in the weekend shopper and could have sold it 15 times over. Very excited for your project look forward to seeing the monthly improvements. Regards Kathy A, Brisbane, Australia
    www.oursimpleandmeaningfullife.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. that's funny to hear it from the other perspective. It does take a LONG time to organise!

      Delete
  4. I've never relocated a home, but my over 50 mum (then) did, about eight years ago. She and her partner did all the work, only having to employ the removalists, electricians and plumbers. They laid a lot of the electrical cables themselves and plumbing (without gluing) to save money when the professionals came on site. As an owner builder you're allowed to do this, so long as the qualified trades person approves after inspection, as they know all the regulations and safety protocols.

    It does take a while to complete however, and they were working pretty much full time on it. They were able to get it to lock up and were given their occupancy certificate by the council. Which really helped cut costs on having to live in double locations and put them right on site to get stuff done in their spare time.

    I always wanted to relocate a house, but probably won't - unless something happens to our present dwelling. Fingers crossed, it doesn't, LOL. I think you guys have your work cut out for you though. If hard work is your thing though, then you'll get through the workload eventually. Good luck and hope the rest of it goes well for you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Fortunately the house is in pretty good condition. We will be doing as much of the work as we legally are allowed to :)

      Delete
  5. I haven't fully renovated a house, but we're in the process of ever so slowly updating the one that we live in. New circuit breakers, lots of paint, new blinds and curtains, gardens, and some small alterations. I've found that 180mm long foam roller covers seem to give the best paint coverage and they're much lighter.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I will be very pleased to get to the painting stage!

      Delete
  6. We have in 41 years of married life: built a 40 foot addition on a farmhouse, torn down a couple of houses, completely upgraded a couple more houses, and the last one (my husbands says never again) we tore back to bare studs, both sides, and completely replumbed, rewired, rebuilt, and sold too cheap! I'm blest with a husband who can do literally everything in the housing trade, and the only thing he hasn't done is build a house completely from scratch! I'm game - we'll see if it happens=D

    ReplyDelete
  7. How exciting, we built our last house ourselves, and everything on this property so far as well. We will be looking at the removal home option in another 12 months or so, if this farm starts to show us some love soon ;)

    ReplyDelete
  8. It must be a bit of a strange feeling, seeing your house turn up on a truck at 3am! Looks great :)
    That's definitely a project you have on your hands. Have fun!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Now that is what I call moving house!!

    I've heard of it overseas but it's completely foreign here.

    Congrats - can't wait to see inside...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. yes, I will do a tour soon, when its all tidy again :)

      Delete
  10. Well done. When we moved to the farm we lived in a cute little cottage but needed to build a bigger home for the farm stay. We loved the little house and transported it to another paddock and built our new home. Trouble is ....we haven't had the money or the time to get back to doing up the little house and putting it on the farm as extra accomodation. So it is just sitting there.... we have thought about selling it ,but we live on a farm behind other farms and it would require cutting our neighbours fences to get it out.
    So having looked into moving the house further, I know just how much work it was to get your house to your new home. It is a beautiful home that you have there, I know you will enjoy fixing it up , plus older homes just have so much more character.

    ReplyDelete
  11. What a gorgeous house! And your half house is bigger than our entire house! It's going to be heaven living in there.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Its really only small, just 3 bedrooms, you will see when I do the inside tour later...

      Delete
  12. Gosh! You don't do things by halves do you?! Actually, I suppose you did.
    Such a gorgeous looking house. I am looking forward to seeing it brought back to life.

    ReplyDelete
  13. what a big job...moving a house...but also very exciting....

    ReplyDelete
  14. that is quite an accomplishment :)

    ReplyDelete
  15. thanks everyone :) I'm looking forward to sharing our progress with you.

    ReplyDelete
  16. That's awesome. Looking forward to reading about this project.

    We've never moved a house, but some of our neighbors did about 2 years ago. The place looks awesome. Funny as a bystander to know that their house used to be in a field a few miles away... it looks like a brand new house now.

    ReplyDelete
  17. What an adventure! I imagine it will be a big project but it'll be wonderful when you're finished. Thank you for sharing this at the HomeAcre Hop; I hope you'll join us again this Thursday.
    ~ Kathi

    ReplyDelete
  18. That's certainly one way of constructing a house. :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks, I appreciate all your comments, suggestions and questions, but I don't always get time to reply right away. If you need me to reply personally to a question, please leave your email address in the comment or in your profile, or email me directly on eight.acres.liz at gmail.com

Popular posts from this blog

Chicken tractor guest post

Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about chickens, soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post!  New soap website and shop opening soon.... Tanya from Lovely Greens invited me to write a guest post on chicken tractors for her blog.  I can't believe how many page views I get for chicken tractors, they seem to be a real area of interest and I hope that the information on my blog has helped people.  I find that when I use something everyday, I forget the details that other people may not be aware of, so in this post for Tanya, I tried to just write everything I could think of that I haven't covered in previous posts.  I tried to explain everything we do and why, so that people in other locations and situations can figure out how best to use chicken tractors with their own chickens. The dogs like to hang out behind the chicken tractors and eat chicken poo.  Dogs are gross! If you want to read more about chicken tractor

The new Eight Acres website is live!

Very soon this blogspot address will automatically redirect to the new Eight Acres site, but in the meantime, you can check it out here .  You will find all my soaps, ebooks and beeswax/honey products there, as well as the blog (needs a tidy up, but its all there!).  I will be gradually updating all my social media links and updating and sharing blog posts over the next few months.  I'm very excited to share this new website with you!

Garden Update - July 2013

This month I'm joining the Garden Share Collective , which was started last month by Lizzie from Strayed from the Table , to allow vege gardeners to share their successes and failures and generally encourage everyone to grow more of their own food organically.  This first month, I'll give a detailed update on everything that's growing in my garden, for anyone who hasn't been following for long.  I'll do my normal farm update on Tuesday as well. If you've just joined me, welcome to my vege garden.  I recently wrote about gardening in our sub-tropical climate , so if you're wondering about the huge shade structure, that's for protecting the garden during our hot, humid summers.  At the moment though, the garden is full of brassicas, which grow best here in winter, and are suitably frost-proof.  The garden is about 12 m long by 5 m wide, and surrounded in chicken mesh to keep out the chickens and the bandicoots.  The garden has spilled out around the edg