We’ve been down with the flu and pneumonia so this post is a big delayed. On January 19th, 2019, all 600 tons of Meadow House was moved 100 feet over to higher ground. Additionally, it was lifted 5 feet higher to ensure that sweet little Lorraine Run doesn’t wander into our new basement. After 268 years, the home will finally not have to worry about getting its feet wet.

Two Arlo cameras were installed on the property the day before the move so that we could watch the move from indoors if needed. These cameras are set to take a photo each day to keep a year long record of the project.

Throughout the week leading up to the big day, many obstacles presented themselves and the movers were unable to pinpoint on which day they would be completing the move. As a snow/ice storm was looming to begin on the 20th, the decision was made to get the move completed in case this storm made it impossible to work for the whole week.

On the morning of the move, it was cold, really cold so we didn’t rush over to the house. Instead, we tuned into Arlo and watched a whole bunch of pacing and head scratching on the parts of the movers and our builder. Mike got a text moments later that the move may be postponed because they didn’t have the correct hydraulic fittings. Fortunately, they were able to swap out fittings from other hydraulic tools that they had on site and within a half hour, we noticed the house looked to be in a different spot than it had been before. We screamed for the kids to get dressed, threw all of our snow and cold weather gear, folding chairs, blankets, handwarmers and those kids in the car and raced to the site. Because of the cold weather, we didn’t plan to stay long. Instead, we were going to watch the beginning, go get some pizza at Palermos and then head back to see it later before the snow hit.

When we arrived, we were greeted by some friendly faces. Across the street, leaning on the fence at the Cricket Club we noticed a bundled up couple (not in golf gear). They waved when they saw us and Mike walked over to invite them to come over the fence to check out the move. This couple, Joe and Alison Rudolph, had been begging Mike to tell them when the move would be so they could watch. On the morning of he realized that he didn’t have their contact info and felt bad that he wouldn’t be alerting them. He was relieved when they came on over and they couldn’t have been more excited or happy for us. As we walked up the driveway, we saw Brandon and Harry Miller, Mark Greisinger and Luky Horgan, our concrete contractor. Our architect, Doug Rotondo and his father (who was a bricklayer for the Sabias) arrived just after us. Moments later, in rolled Ginger and John Sabia and that’s when the party started.

The kids had a BLAST climbing the mountains of mud and soon we forgot how cold it truly was. Fortunately, there was no wind and the sun was shining. GG (Ginger), the kids and I took a trek through the meadow, into the woods and then we found a log to make a bridge so we could cross back over to the house. This scene, for me, was precisely why this property spoke to me. Running in the meadow, climbing trees, playing in the stream, making log bridges and rock damns is precisely the childhood that I wanted for my kids. It’s the childhood that I had and I loved every rock and stick of it.

Cold and famished, GG called John (across the creek) and ask him to order pizzas and moments later they were off to pick them up. Meanwhile, the kiddos pealed their layers off in the warm minivan and settled in to binge watch Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. GG arrived with pizza and hot cocoa and those kids couldn’t have been happier. The rest of us had a tailgate lunch and watched, very carefully, as the house was rolled the last few feet onto its foundation. Phew!

The move is under way!

Last shot before the big move.

Moving on over! Under all that mud are steel plates which create a “road” on which the wheels roll.

On the move.

Brooks exploring in the woods. This is the first time we’ve been able to explore over there as there has been really tall brush. Thankfully the cold weather got rid of all that.

Lorraine Run….Don’t be fooled by her serence and peaceful appearance. She is the reason the house needed to move.

The meadow side of the house.

Our fearless and somewhat frozen friends.

The view of the home (as it’s moving) from the farthest point of the meadow.

Muddy mess and so much fun!

Thanks to the Sabias for saving the day with Nana’s pizzas and hot chocolate from Wawa.

Daddy and Brooks orsing around.

Mike and John Sabia overseeing the move.

Almost there!

FInal shot as the house is being moved into its final position.

More excitement happened while we were on vacation. The house was jacked up 5 feet to the level where it will rest when it is moved to its new foundation. This level will ensure that flooding will never again be a threat to Meadow House. I think it will be relieved to finally be on dry ground. As you can see from the pics, there are steel cables and nylon straps wrapped about the entire home to ensure that it makes it to its destination in one piece.

The next step is the big move which will take about a day and a half. The house will be rolled on a multitude of wheels, along steel plates, to its final destination!

A little historical feature, one of the only ones left intact from previous renovations, are the two Fire Marks on the exterior walls of the second floor of the house. They look kind of like crests.

From Wikipedia: Fire Insurance has over 200 years of history in America. The early fire marks of Benjamin Franklin’s time can still be seen on some Philadelphia buildings as well as in other older American cities. Subscribers paid fire fighting companies in advance for fire protection and in exchange would receive a fire mark to attach to their building. The payments for the fire marks supported the fire fighting companies. Volunteer fire departments were also common in the United States, and some fire insurers contributed money to these departments and awarded bonuses to the first fire engine arriving at the scene of a fire.^[3]

While we were relaxing in the sun in Grand Cayman, the excavators were battling 32 degree weather to get the footers poured. Pouring concrete in cold temps is a really bad idea but we are up against the clock to get the house moved so the footers were poured. Concrete blankets have been keeping the concrete cozy against the frigid weather so that the foundation will set properly. Footers should be ready for the house to move onto them by January 18th. The kids asked why this was so exciting. I told them that once the house is moved, the project will change from destruction into construction!

If you’ve been following along you’re probably wondering where those brand new footer pics are. Well….there are no footers yet but boy has there been rain! Leading up to Christmas, the crew from the St. Louis branch of Expert House Movers worked 7 days a week in wind, rain and so, so much mud to get the site and house ready for the move. Out of thankfulness and a bit of fear that they would not return after the Christmas break, I set up a chili buffet in the trailer with a giant cookie tray for the guys. Turns out these guys love chili. Phew! Despite the weather, they successfully installed the I beams under the house. In the North/South direction, there are about 3 super beams and in the East/West, there are approximately 20 beams.

I walked here and my boot suctioned off of my foot. Not cool.

Mud-pit

Check out those I beams! The house is now ready to move.

An earth engineer was contracted to deal with our issues and concerns over the soggy soil that is now worthless as a foundation for any home. We considered bringing in dry soil but with the frequency of rain, that would be pointless. Mike came to the conclusion that the best way to combat the wet weather is with stone, lots of giant stone. We are hogging out the dirt that no longer has any structural integrity and installing in it’s place heavy #4 ballast stone, on which the foundation footers will be built. Many people, including myself, have assumed that the entire basement will be dug and then the house placed on top. Nope. The house will be centered on the footers and then the basement will be built up to meet the bottom of the house. As the basement is built the I beams will be removed and the house will finally rest on it’s new, and much drier foundation.

Stone is being brought in presently, footers will be poured next week and then the house will move. The process of lifting the house 5 feet and then moving the house 100ft will take about a day and a half. Stay tuned for that date as I know many of you will want to witness this with us.

A little delayed posting about this one. Daddoos hadn’t seen the house in awhile so we took him over to check out the interior demo. Shortly after these photos were taken, the movers secured (closed them up!) all windows and doorways on the first floor. We were all shocked at the state of the house. Yikes!

Unfortunately, the house had been “renovated” at some point by previous owners. They replaced the antique doors, windows, and floors with reproductions that just couldn’t hold up to the test of time. So, there wasn’t much to save. Additionally, because of all of the new systems and duct work going in, the house is going to end up a bit smaller than it is now. So, our new addition will be a bit bigger than we anticipated but our architect has been careful to ensure that it doesn’t overwhelm the original house. The conservancy people are insistent upon that as well.

Demo is complete so we spent some time playing in the rubble on sunny Saturday. Brooks still wants to play in the attic but he settled for running in the meadow. On a trek around the property we found a vine taking over a giant pine, but worse that vine was covered with Lantern Flies. Gotta get on that asap. Ugh.

My sweet barn, gone. Sigh. It will be rebuilt in another spot.

What’s left after the kitchen and garage addition was removed.

It’s on! So the plan is to remove the newer additions (barnacles) that were added onto the 1750’s structure. They were functionally obsolete, not well constructed and would make the house harder to move so it was an easy decision.

Mike, Brooksie and I had a picnic lunch with a view of the demolition of the two 1960’s additions, one on each side of the main house.

While the kids thought these additions were the coolest parts of the house, the adults were less than impressed. In fact, when we first visited the home, we had completed the tour and I said, “I thought it said it was supposed to have 4 bedrooms, where’s the 4th?” We followed the realtor back up the steps, through the master bath, then through the closet where he pushed aside some hangers of clothes and low and behold, there was a door. A tiny hobbit door that we each crawled through to find the “guest suite” complete with a teeny, spider web-encased stairway to the garage below. The floor was purple and the ceiling was low but the kids thought it was the best room ever. They insisted that it be their room. Well, on this day, we watched a giant claw take the roof off that hobbit room, unveiling a giant bees nest in the shingles. I promised the kids a better replacement is coming in the new addition.

Meadow House, a historic stone home dating back to 1750, situated on 8 acres of meadow with a lovely stream called Lorraine Run. It is located across the street from the Militia Hill state park and also the Militia Hill course of the Philadelphia Cricket Club. This home is everything we dreamed of and it has a sweet little white barn to cap off the property’s perfection.

Here’s how it was found and captured: I was driving to my 4th open house at Germantown Academy. This time, I had a whole new mission, to find something really wrong with GA so that we could just put a final nail in the moving coffin and stay put on the Main Line. So I’m driving down Joshua Road, very determined to pick the school apart, but the sun was shining so beautifully that morning and I couldn’t help but notice how gorgeous the golf course looked in that light. Then I looked the left into a meadow and spotted a fabulous white stone home with a stream running right in front of it. The sun was shining through the trees and the meadow was aglow in bright green. It looked amazing against the bright white of the house. I immediately shouted out loud, ***”Those people will NEVER sell, they will NEVER die, and if they do, their family will NEVER sell!” Then I reached the end of the property, feeling pretty sorry for myself and there it was, a shiny new For Sale sign! I hit the brakes and practically backed up in the middle of busy morning traffic, I was shaking so hard, I could barely grab my phone. I went to the next turn and made a u-turn to go back. I paused in front of the sign while willing Mike to answer the phone. He picked up and I said, “Call this number, liquidate all of our assets and give them all of our money! You have to buy this house!!!” He immediately looked it up on Realtor.com and there was the listing. So he called his sister, Nicole (our realtor) and set up a showing for the next morning at 10am. I arrived at GA just in time for the open house and announced to the Admissions Director that I did not have to find something to not like about GA and she welcomed me with open arms. So, I found more things to love about the place and envisioned Brooksie and Hayden growing and learning and having blast within those walls. Win. Win.

So, the next day, we met our builder, Greg, at the house, toured it and made an offer for full price. Of course, the owners thought we must be high since we declined an inspection but had already noticed the lead pipes, asbestos, and water in the basement. Most of the windows wouldn’t shut, the floors were on a slant. Hell, a whole staircase was on a slant. It’s what most would call a money pit, and that would ring pretty true, except that we knew we would be gutting all that nonsense from the house anyway. We also learned that there was a historical conservancy which would govern any changes to the facade and ensure that the meadow not be obstructed in any way. What’s next? Get some pretty drawings done of what we want the house to be and present them to the conservancy and then pray, cross fingers and toes, not walk under any ladders. Oh, and find a company willing to move a 250 year old stone home.

***I said pretty much this same thing just before scoring my first home in Elkton Heights. However, for that one, someone actually died…of old age…..a year before….so I have no guilt whatsoever.

Several weeks late on this entry but we had a nail biting lead up to our meeting with the Heritage Conservancy in early September. In order to fully grasp what we were proposing, our builder spray painted the outline of the floorplan once the house is moved. We got to walk onto each room to get an idea of how everything is going to flow. It was a really exciting day for us all, except for Brooks who upon finding where his room would be, broke down in tears because he doesn’t want to sleep on the grass. We assured him he would have a floor, walls, and even a roof. He did not look or sound convinced.

Our engineers, architect, and builder all went above and beyond to prepare for the meeting. We had over 80 pictures of recent flooding and its effects on the house. Some compelling evidence as to our need to move the house in order to make sure that it lasts another 250 years. Our requests were fairly simple. Remove the two 1960’s additions to the original home, move the original house about 150 feet toward the driveway in order to get it completely out of the FEMA floodplain, and build a complementary addition to include a kitchen, family room, morning room (Hayden’s art studio), tricked out mudroom (the Mess Hall) and powder room. Gobs of porches are also being added on, including a long porch along the meadow side of the home which will mimic the home’s porch that once graced that side in photos from the early 1900’s. Now for the meeting, yikes!

So, the fine folks from the Conservancy arrived and they could not have been nicer or more sympathetic to our needs as well as to the needs of the home. They felt that the move that a no-brainer and were pleased that someone would appreciate the home so much as to take on the cost and task of moving such a beast in order to save it. Their main concern was that the addition not overpower the original home but rather complement it. They will be working with our architect in order to ensure that each detail of the addition be in keeping with the time period. This is sweet news to me as I also want to ensure that we don’t skimp on historic character. Their team was a wealth of knowledge. We learned about how to tell which portion of a historic home was built first. You just check the cornerstone of each wall. If there is no cornerstone, then that section was an addition. There are 4 sections of the original home dating from 1750-1860. It appears as though a summer kitchen was at one end and a living area at the other, however, also with a kitchen which was odd. Then at some point toward the end of that period, the two were joined together by a large formal room that will be our dining room. We also learned about the 2 wooden plaques on the exterior wall of the home, which are called Fire Marks. These Fire Marks would have been provided by the insurance company at the time. You paid for your policy and they provided a Fire Mark. If you had a fire, the company would show up and if you didn’t have their Fire Mark, they would simply watch the house burn. Good incentive to buy insurance!

So, at the end of our meeting, we had a much anticipated verbal approval of our plan which was followed in just 2 days with a written approval. Demo will begin as soon as possible and we very much hope that the house movers still have a November 5th opening available!