Image: https://www.instagram.com/jasondra_schmidt/
Now imagine that the building is 112 years old, belongs to your family’s history and is being moved not a few metres, but nearly 9 km to a new home. Schmidt and her husband, Jason, took on the costly task of relocating the 1914 home in North Dakota, US, to farmland where they planned to restore it and live in it. The North Dakota home measured approximately 30 feet wide and 60 feet long.
Because of its location, design or potential resale price, for many people, an old house is valuable. Imagine seeing a two-storey house lifted off its foundation and carried down a road, with its walls, windows and roof still intact. For JaSondra Schmidt, this was not just an unusual construction project. It was a chance to save a house connected to her great-great-grandfather rather than let it slip away from the family. For Schmidt, the value was also personal. The couple also had a meaningful destination in mind. Jason’s grandparents had purchased the farmland in the early 1940s. Moving Schmidt’s ancestral house there would bring together two sides of the family’s history: her great-great-grandfather’s home and land associated with Jason’s grandparents. Moving a century-old house intact is a specialised engineering operation. The building must be supported, lifted and transported in a way that minimises stress on its structure. Rather than demolish it and transport the materials separately, specialist house movers prepared the structure for relocation as a single unit. Once the house reached its destination, it needed a new basement and foundation. The building remained elevated on the moving equipment for nearly two months while the basement work was completed.