Copyright ©2000 By Katie Waggoner
I awoke to sounds of heavy machinery bright and early on the morning of the big move. Not that that was unusual because, although we live on the main street in town, we are so rural that there are more combines and farm semi trucks than cars on some days. But this was different. It didn't drive past, and as I shook myself awake I remembered what that meant: garage moving day!
Although I really had nothing to do with the actual move, I wanted to be out there to watch and capture it for posterity on film and video. I also thought it would be something for my young children to see. (In my mind's eye I could see my two-year-old, in her eighties, telling some youngsters, "Yup, I remember when they moved that garage from across the street waaaay back in 1999.")
By the time I got myself and all three kids dressed and outside, our garage mover, Jim Dusa, with help from Mike Gilson, our neighbor and the current garage owner, had a semi-truck with a relatively small (in semi-truck terms) trailer in the garage, with house jacks and beams on it. These were set up to lift the load of the garage off of its foundation by large pieces of lumber which were nailed horizontally across the garage studs. Jim mentioned how sore his arm was from pounding the nails into the studs, because the old wood was so hard it was like nailing into rock. Great! That was just what I wanted to hear: The garage, and especially the wood, was solid. I had had nightmares of the garage having hidden insect or rot damage, which would foul up our dreams of a great new (old!) garage. Jim started jacking up the garage with the house jacks on the trailer as I held my breath. So far so good. Whoa! It appears that the right side is stuck. Hmm, my garage doesn't seem to want to move willingly from where it rested so comfortably for 70-odd years. Crowbar to the rescue! Jim banged on the few cinderblocks that were stuck and they popped loose. The garage was free!
Jim finished jacking up the garage and he and soon-to-be-former garage owner Mike discussed the logistics. Mike was going to help Jim with his spotting, since Jim's helper couldn't be there that day. The big trick was going to be making a sharp curve to the left to miss the corner of Mike's house and then a quick curve back to the right to avoid a huge flowering bush near the end of the drive. It took a little maneuvering, but they cleared both obstacles effortlessly.
The next trick would be at the end of the driveways. Mike's driveway is directly across from ours, but our driveway is very steep from the street to the sidewalk. Jim had put hefty boards from the sidewalk to the middle of the street to smooth out the angle for the truck and trailer to go up. Jim still had to jack up the garage even further to clear the steep end of the driveway. Hurdle two cleared.
Now on to hurdle three, which was probably the most difficult. We share our driveway with our next-door neighbor, who has lived in her house for about 40 years. Near the end of the driveway, her drive goes more or less straight and ours curves off to the left behind our house. Pulling the garage out of Mike's driveway it came out the way it sat with the door facing our house and the street. To go where it belonged it needed to be turned 90 degrees so that the door faced the next door neighbor's. This was done by pulling straight into our neighbor's drive and then right into her backyard and backing the garage into our driveway. It took a couple of back-and-forths to get it just right, but Jim Dusa maneuvered our garage on the trailer a thousand times better than my husband or I move our little pop-up camper behind our minivan.
Since we had not poured our cement foundation for the garage yet (Mike Gilson had to have the garage moved so he could start building his new garage), it was left in our driveway just in front of its new permanent home. I was amazed. I figured that my husband, Scott, would be home to see the end of the move (he gets home from work about 2:30 in the afternoon). No way, not even close. Jim had the garage prepared, jacked up, moved across the street, turned 90 degrees into the correct position, unhitched and stabilized into its temporary position before noon. I think I broke out the beer for a job well done about 11:30 am and we drank them inside of the still-jacked-up garage.
While the men were moving the garage I got to talk with Mike's wife. She told me that they had lived in our house when it was a rental, before they bought their house across the street. Apparently the renters before them repaired motorcycles in the first floor bedroom. I had heard elsewhere that, back in the '60's and '70's, ours was the psychedelic party house; we had even heard rumors of that same bedroom being painted all black with black lights. We have since seen evidence of this as we stripped the paint from the woodwork in that room.
Now that we had the garage on our property it was time to concentrate on getting the cement foundation poured and finished so that it could cure and our garage could be moved to its permanent home. The very next Saturday Scott had the day off and we were up bright and early to meet our cement finishers and the cement truck.
The first order of the day was figuring out where the cement truck would go to offload the cement (remember there is a garage in our driveway blocking the path to the foundation). We could have used our neighbor's driveway, which went right behind the foundation, but she has a pretty new asphalt driveway. Full cement trucks are very, very heavy and we didn't want to be responsible for damaging her driveway. Our driveway is gravel so we decided to have the cement truck go into our driveway and then pull into our backyard alongside the driveway. This was a good choice although it left about two-foot-deep divots in the yard.
The running joke of the day was that the finishing guys would charge $600 or if we helped they would charge $1200. Needless to say we were happy observers. I had to leave and I left my dear hubby to supervise (well, really, eat doughnuts, drink coffee and shoot the breeze while the guys were working). When I returned a few hours later the cement work was all finished and we were left to hose it down every hour or so to help it as it cured.
It was really nice to have them bring all the proper tools, do the job, and go home. It is very contrary to my nature to NOT do a job myself or have friends or family help. I suppose I am fortunate to have come from a rather handy family. My dad could fix anything -- usually with the help of a few choice words inserted in the appropriate spots. He built a two-story addition onto our house with help from friends and family and I was in college before I realized that people actually used mechanics and plumbers and electricians. My mom handled the "domestic" fix-its: wallpapering, sewing clothes and curtains, painting and about any crafty thing known to man. So to pay someone else to do the cement work and move the garage was contrary to my nature, but I must say I was very happy with their work and professionalism. It cut way down on our difficulties and, in retrospect, I wish we had had the budget to pay someone to dig the foundation and set the forms, although we learned a lot from the process.
A few weeks later, as we were leaving for vacation, Jim called and told us he needed his trailer (and thus needed to finish our job up); he assured us that it would be no problem to do while we were on vacation. I was a little uneasy about it being done while we were gone, but I trusted him completely and, for him, this was an easy little job. So I gave the okay. I shouldn't have worried. We came home from our vacation and the garage was in its new permanent home. It was so exciting! He had lifted the power line which fed into the house, slid the garage in under it and set the line back down. He had put some Styrofoam down under the line so it wouldn't rub against the garage roof. (We have since had two different electricians come and look at the job of moving where the power comes into our house higher up, so it can clear the garage. Both were supposed to send me a quote on the job, which they assured me was no big deal, but here it is almost a year and many phone calls later and we're still waiting. What was it I said about how great it is to work with professionals?)
After almost a year I think our cars have been in the garage exactly once. It is packed full of a plethora of pint-sized multicolored plastic cars, both motorized and kid-powered, bikes, a bike trailer/stroller, wagons, the lumber for building the fort on the kids' swing set, gardening tools, lawn mower, snow blower, rototiller, kiddie pool, and various large old house parts from the architectural salvage place. Not that I'm complaining. I'm just wondering where we kept all of this stuff before we had a garage.
Would I do it again? You bet! I think this great old garage is a thousand times better than a lumberyard special and was quite a bit cheaper. I think the grand 120-year-old lady that is our house is much happier with an 80-year-old garage alongside her than she would have been with some young, vinyl-sided garage. Sure, a 120-year-old carriage house would have been better, but I think a garage that sheltered Model T's is nearly as good.
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