STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
Fans of speed will be able to watch cars clock 230 miles an hour this weekend as Sun Valley Tour de Force runs its speed event north of Ketchum.
But on Monday night all eyes were on a moving house that was crawling just over two miles an hour along its four-mile journey on Sun Valley streets.
A few dozen adults and children cheered, all aiming their cellphones at the moving house, as the first half of the 5,500-square-foot house passed Dollar Mountain Lodge, having turned the corner from its original spot along Fairway Road.
Others lined the street of Juniper Road to greet their new neighbor as a Western Star truck hauled the home towards its new resting spot nearly two hours later.
“This is so exciting,” said Al Stevenson, who was sitting in the driveway of Bob and Kate Rosso’s home with his wife Gayle. “I’ve lived here 42 years—since 1982-- and this is the biggest event we’ve ever had in the neighborhood. I think it’s great if they can salvage a house and not tear it down.”
The house moving project, which continued Tuesday night with the second part of the home, large-scale recycling at its best.
The home was built by the Ford family—yes, the ones who made it big with the model T—in 1998. But it was too big for its new owner.
“I moved here in 2020 from Los Angeles and I got a dog during COVID so I needed a place for a dog so I moved here,” said Mary Wilson.
Wilson brainstormed about options for the house with fellow members of the Spur Foundation’s board. And soon she was donating the house to the Building Material Thrift Store, which then sold it to Blair Brown, who purchased a lot for the home to be moved to.
“People talk about recycling paper and cans, but it’s also important to realize you don’t have to tear down a home,” said Tammy Davis, who runs the Building Material Thrift Store to raise money for the Crisis Hotline. “The former owner gets a tax credit for their donation, and the new owner gets a home for less than they would pay to build a new one, and we keep building materials from going to the landfill. So, it’s a win-win.”
Blair Brown, who started a Poplar pop-up wellness apothecary featuring legal cannabis, artisan skincare products and plant medicines a few years ago, was already friends with Wilson, having met her while skiing on Baldy. And she had some experience with moving homes since her family had already recycled one in the Warm Springs neighborhood
“I’m just super excited,” she said. “And it’s good for the environment.”
Moved 40 pallts o ock from the Fairway Road location to the new site.
Pacific Movers of Meridian facilitated the move, which cost about a quarter-million dollars. Workers spent two weeks breaking up the concrete in the foundation with jackhammers so they could jack up the house. And they moved 40 pallets of limestone rock from one site to the other.
“It’s a very big house,” said John Spencer of Pacific Movers.
As Gina, the next door neighbor watched, workers placed the house on rollers and the truck began to haul the house out of the yard. It hit the street with a crunching noise, then listed to one side as it made the turn onto the street.
Several young men jogged alongside as it began moving down the street, just in case something should go wrong.
A small crowd waited at Dollar Mountain Lodge. Brown’s preschool son had invited “everyone” to come out and see his house being moved, and they responded by bringing pizza, barbecuing hot dogs and wetting their whistles with canned margaritas.
Onlookers could see the cabinets and bathroom fixtures as the house rolled by.
“They said you could leave everything as was, including a piano or a glass of water on the piano and it wouldn’t spill,” said an Impressed Harry Huffaker, as he waxed eloquent about the days when Charlotte Ford’s daughter lived in the house.
Workers had no problem lifting a transmission line so the home could move under it. But, alas, the wheels sunk into the dirt as movers turned onto a steep dirt road leading up to the home’s new perch overlooking many of the Elkhorn hills and even Baldy. Workers put rubber mats and boards under the path of the wheels as two trucks winched the home an inch at a time up the hill.
Onlookers drifted away as the sun began to set and a bearing broke and needed to be replaced. The house finally reached its new location about 11 p.m. and workers elected to move the other half on Tuesday, rather than Monday night.
“We hope we can do it in less time or, at worst, no more time,” said one worker.
This isn’t the first house recycled through Building Materials Thrift Store. Homes have been moved to Pine Street in Hailey, and Muldoon Canyon Road and Broadford Road in Bellevue. And Davis donated one home to ARCH to use for affordable housing in Bellevue.
Wilson noted that it will take no more than a year from start to finish for Blair’s family to move into their new recycled home.
“And what was a big house on a crowded lot will look majestic in its new location. It’s an amazing way to repurpose a well-structured house,” she added. “Meanwhile, I will build a smaller contemporary home with lots of glass. And I’ll be able to move into it two from now.”