Thread: Two Warnings: never buy a house that’s been moved, and if you do, make sure you.....

….finish any subsequent renovations while you’re still young.


Over the years, I’ve seen enough of what can go wrong when a house is moved from one location to another, to decide I’d never become involved in such antics.

You need only think about the physics involved in all this, to be aware of the problems. When a house is first built, it goes together with reasonably fine tolerances. Doors hang properly in their frames, windows are square, walls are vertical, and so on. Now uproot that house off its foundations, drop it on a low-loader trailer and drag it 50 or 100 miles across-country, and then slide it onto its new foundations.

With all the forces working on that house frame as it’s dragged from one place to another, what hope is there that everything will still be square?

Ha!

So, we got caught, eight years ago, didn’t we? We bought a house solely because of its location. Only later did we learn it had been a “removal house”.

At first, mostly it was okay.

But just a few days ago, we became involved in a complex process to redecorate a final room. All the previous rooms, we went through a more normal process - strip the old paint off the woodwork, sand everything, rub down the walls, plug up any gaps, and repaint. This time, because of previous breathing difficulties caused by fumes from heat-stripping the old paint and with our age-related bad backs, we decided to pull up the skirting boards, take them outside, strip the old paint, refix them, and repaint.

Ha. What a joke.

This corner of the house must have twisted beyond belief during removal. We found one exterior wall had moved out, away from the basic framing, by about half an inch. The skirting board, which should sit on the floorboards and be attached, through the wall lining, to the bottom plate of the frame, had been instead dropped into the gap and was sitting directly on the joists. And the entire wall had been held in place with oversize nails, gap filler and paint.

Not only that, but when you pull something out that previously had unnatural stresses applied to it, i.e., the stresses caused by moving, and then attempt to put it back, it never fits. The skirting boards on the other three walls are, in their own way, just as bad. We discovered they’d all been held in place with oversize nails and couldn’t understand why. Now we know. The house-removers had done this to force them back against the walls. I did get them off, eventually.

But now, here’s me, with my 74-year-old back, stretched out on the f*cking floor hammering and kicking these f*cking boards back in place. Last night, I was completely stuffed. This morning, I’m not much better. And I’m only a quarter done.

If any of my crits in the near future become a trifle acerbic, you’ll know why.


Bottom line: avoid removal houses like the plague. And stay young.

Ouch, best of luck Ox.

It's too bad you couldn't get my son down there to help you. If there's anything he loves better than building, it's rebuilding.

When David and Reba were married her grandparents gave them the 25 acres that was left of what at one time been a 640 acre farm. There was a house on the property, probably 80 to a hundred years old. It had been framed on top of wooden foundation blocks and over the years all the blocks had sunk into the ground a couple of inches. No two had sunk the same amount, so everything about the house was out of alignment.

I suggested to David that he tear it down and salvage the old heart pine and oak lumber, but he said he would fix it. And he did. He jacked the whole house up, leveled it, and set it back down on concrete piers. He went through the house, tearing out and rebuilding, so when he was finished the house still had all its original wood, but also had everything straight, along with a new kitchen built on a concrete slab at the back.

When he did all that he would have been about 52 years younger than you are now. That might make a difference.

OK, the first thing that went through my mind was that I'd never have put the two ideas together, OX and redecorating.

Then I was reminded of the fact that when we bought our house, nobody bothered to tell us we'd be able to feel the military bombing through our floorboards. Location, location. But then location was what got you into your present fix.

So, what color do you like your walls?

garza - I wonder how many of today's bright young people realise the significance of 640 acres.

Originally Posted by Eluixa

OK, the first thing that went through my mind was that I'd never have put the two ideas together, OX and redecorating.

Then I was reminded of the fact that when we bought our house, nobody bothered to tell us we'd be able to feel the military bombing through our floorboards. Location, location. But then location was what got you into your present fix.

So, what color do you like your walls?

You know paint manufacturers. When I was a kid we had six or eight basic colours. Now there's thousands. It's a sort of an apricoty-cream.

David understands because I explained it to him when he told me about the wedding present from Reba's grandparents. Reba does because the story of how her ancestors came into possession of a full section is part of family lore.

But few young people today, piled up in urban centres, would understand the concept of parceling out land in such a way as to discourage the growth of cities and encourage the spread of new generations across wider areas of land.

Did you have a similar philosophy officially in place in Australia, or was everyone so in a hurry to get away from Botany Bay that the population dispersed itself without official encouragement?

I saw the process once, and it was pretty interesting. A new road was coming through the property, so the owner moved the house back a few hundred feet and turned it in the opposite direction, so they could get to it from another street. It was only a short distance and it all seemed to go well. But considering how a house is built, with nails and a wood frame, it seems like it would be almost impossible to move it any distance without something going out of whack.

garza - No to the first - at least as far as I’m aware - and a resounding Yes to the second. We had (have) a ruling class known as the Squattocracy.

The term ‘squatter’ derives from its English usage as a term of contempt for a person who had taken up residence at a place without having legal claim. The use of ‘squatter’ in the early years of European settlement of Australia had a similar connotation, referring primarily to a person who had ‘squatted’ on unoccupied land for pastoral or other purposes. In its early derogatory context the term was often applied to the illegitimate occupation of land by ticket-of-leave convicts or ex-convicts (emancipists).

From the mid-1820s, however, the occupation of Crown land without legal title became more widespread, often carried out by those from the upper echelons of colonial society. As wool began to be exported to England and the colonial population increased, the occupation of pastoral land for raising cattle and sheep progressively became a more lucrative enterprise. ‘Squatting’ had become so widespread by the mid-1830s that Government policy in New South Wales (original name of the colony) towards the practice shifted from opposition to regulation and control. By that stage the term ‘squatter’ was applied to those who occupied Crown land under a lease or license, without the negative connotation of earlier times.

The term soon developed a class association, suggesting an elevated socio-economic status and entrepreneurial attitude. By 1840 squatters were recognized as being amongst the wealthiest men in the colony of New South Wales, many of them from upper and middle-class English and Scottish families. As unoccupied land with frontage to permanent water became more scarce, the acquisition of runs (what you might call a ranch) increasingly required larger capital outlays.

Eventually the term ‘squatter’ came to refer to a person of high social prestige who grazes livestock on a large scale (whether the station [ranch, again] was held by leasehold or freehold title). In Australia the term is still used to describe large landowners, especially in rural areas with a history of pastoral occupation. Hence the term, Squattocracy, a play on Aristocracy

This is a good example of how language develops. Here you have a term that started as one of utter contempt, and has evolved over the generations to a term denoting wealth and respectability.

We have a problem here with lease-hold land. Every time the government changes hands, many of those who acquired leases under the previous government and who are discovered, or even suspected, of supporting the party now in opposition are dispossessed. The Leader of the Opposition will rise in righteous anger in the House to denounce the 'victimisation', knowing full well his party did the same when they sat at the right hand of the Speaker.

Funny, isn’t it, that the Opposition sit on the Speaker’s sinister side? I bet there's some historical antecedent involved in that, if anyone was of a mind to look it up.

I think you see exactly why Government sit to the right, dexter, and Opposition to the left, sinister. That is deliberate. Once the mace is set on the table, the Speaker has the authority of the monarch to conduct the business of the 'Honourable House' in an orderly and seemly fashion. Thus the Prime Minister, sitting in the first seat on the Government side, is literally the 'right hand' of the monarch. The Leader of the Opposition faces near-divine power, and the faithful followers of the party in power see his efforts and the efforts of his colleagues as defying the will of God.

Now a trivia question. As far as written records are available to tell us, where was the expression 'this Honourable House' first used?

And for an extra ten points, why is the table there?

So many people these days will just cover up problems instead of fixing it right the first time. I just hope you don't find any OTHER little patch jobs gone wrong.

There was a show here a while back called Heavy Haulers. It followed the exploits of Jeremy Patterson, an expert at moving houses, and the sheer amount of problems he had with seemingly innocuous things was unbelievable. The PSI (pounds per square inch, for the uninformed) required to remove a house from its original foundation is staggering. No wonder there are cracks and problems!

I wish you the best of luck with it, OX.