A tentative date, a discovery, and a peek inside

Two days ago, I had a phone call with Justin the house mover, and he suggested that they could do the ‘roll-off’ NEXT WEEK, if conditions onsite are dry and stable. So yesterday, I drove up to find that the lake had subsided quite a lot, but there was still plenty of standing water, even after nearly a week without any new rain.

So I tromped around in rubber boots digging little ditches, trying to coax the water from the corner where it was still collected over to the ‘open’ corner (which had also drained much better). Sinking up to my ankles in greasy clay mud, and trying not to conjure memories of bogus jungle movies with Our Hero waist-deep in quicksand.

Dragging the mud around was hard enough, but underneath it, I kept hitting a hard layer that I could barely hack chips out of. Notably, it was dry. And very hard… Might be time for a quick English-major digression:

Well, all right then. If under 6 inches of mud, there’s essentially a layer of concrete, maybe they (house movers and the foundation builder) can work with that.

Aside from shoveling and groveling those trenches, I spent time inside the house. A top remodeling priority is to reconfigure the U-shaped kitchen (a dark little cave), so —

— I took off the overhead cabinet doors from the 9-foot peninsula, et voila! much easier to envision the next steps.

By now you’re probably wondering what the rest of the house looks like — guess it’s time for one of my favorite “Before” pictures:

Panoramic view of the living room: the split-entry stairwell on the left, panning right, to Justin the House Mover looking off into the kitchen. The big windows at left will face south, viewing the backyard and the riverbank.

(This photo was taken waaay long time ago, during my first walkthrough. Justin’s busy moving somebody else’s building this week.)

— and the floor plan, so y’all can see how the place is laid out:

More to come, rain or shine!