We’re Moving a House!

We’re moving a house!

Yes, you read that right. We are picking up a house from one location and having it moved 15 miles across the county to our Fallen Oak Cottage property. Once it’s been relocated, we plan to renovate it.

To say we’re excited feels a bit understated. Rob keeps reminding me that we will probably never come across another opportunity like this again.

But this isn’t just any house. This is a 93-year-old historic home from my hometown, a place six generations of my family members before me have called home. I’m already so emotionally invested in this project. While none of my family members called this particular cottage home, by rescuing this house, it feels like like I’m honoring the legacy of those who poured themselves into building and sustaining the little town we’ve held dear for so many years.

Ultimately, this is a passion project. A rescue mission. We feel old homes are worth saving, especially when they have incredible bones. Our communities are richer for having unique buildings that tell a story. And once this structure is moved, it will not only tell a story of the town where it originated, but we hope it will play a sweet role in the town we now live in and are committed to helping make beautiful.

What makes this project particularly special is that moving an entire structure (especially that distance) is something that has been done only two other documented times in our county. We’re suckers for being trailblazers!

This process started back in February when we got wind of the owner looking to have the home moved from his property or be demolished. Rob and I joked about the possibility of moving a whole house for all of about sixty seconds before he actually started the ball rolling.

We made an appointment with the owner to walk through the home and talk specifics. While I wandered from room to room, completely enchanted by the potential I could already see here, Rob was more practical. He crawled underneath, climbed into the attic, and studied the actual structure of the home to be sure this wasn’t an overly romanticized (me, guilty) pipe dream.

It’s taken many months of Rob making phone calls, arranging inspections, and following up on any number of small details to get to this place. We are officially contracted with a moving company, and we’ve pulled the first set of permits needed to begin the process.

Without him, we wouldn’t be where we are today.

The home has so many incredible features that make the pursuit of this project a worthwhile economic venture.

• Nearly 200 additional square feet to work with
• A front and back porch
• Two full bathrooms
• Original horizontal beadboard hiding behind all of the drywall (this might be the coolest part of all)
• Original wood flooring throughout the house (in need of some TLC)
• Updated electrical wiring and plumbing (if you can believe it)

We plan to stay true to the character of the home, keeping as much of the original structure as possible. I can’t wait to expose every square inch of beadboard and original flooring! For now, I’m in the very early stages of collecting inspiration so that I can start putting together mood boards for each room.

What this means is that the current structure on our Fallen Oak Cottage property is slated for demolition.

When we first purchased the property, our plan was to work with what was on the property, knowing fully that it was almost entirely a gut job. There are no original “features” to speak of inside the current structure that are worth attempting to save. The house sat empty and exposed to the elements for years before our purchase of it; it’s in worse shape for being only 50 years old than the home we’re moving that’s almost a century old.

Rob will salvage what he can, practically, from that demolition to use in other projects. But we feel no guilt in removing the current Fallen Oak Cottage to make way for something much more historically and architecturally significant.

We hope you’ll love the new Fallen Oak Cottage just as much as we do. There is quite a bit of work to do and steps still to take before the move actually takes place. We plan to bring you along for the entire journey!

In the meantime, I hope you’ll pop over to one of our social media channels later today (Instagram or Facebook) to check out some behind-the-scenes videos of the interior of the cottage in our stories.