Ever see a house fly? No, but we’ve seen one roll! Seriously! Our team was brought in by South Shore architecture firm, Designs by Marshall to document the rare – and ingeniously engineered – relocation of an entire home! Heather, Owner of Designs by Marshall, hired one of the most trusted companies in building moving, Gary Silvester’s Building Movers to get the job done.

“Why go through the trouble?” you may ask. There are many reasons a homeowner may decide to move their residence. For example, they could be dealing with a failing foundation on their existing lot and need to move the home to a new, more secure one. Or perhaps when the house was built, they didn’t account for the rising sea level and is now in a dangerous flood plain and needs to move. Some people will go their entire life without witnessing such an amazing engineering feat! We were lucky enough to capture the intricacies of this marvel last week, just before the COVID19 introduced us to social distancing and locked everyone at home.

The pre-dawn light glowed against the bricks of our building as the production crew assembled at the Focus Forward Media studio. It was 6:15am. The air was particularly cold that morning. We had been treated to a few warm, pre-Spring days in a row, but Wednesday morning certainly felt brisk. Once in the office, we huddled up to review some last-minute details and pack up our equipment needed for the job.

All our gear packed up, we hopped into the van and sped off to…get coffee first, of course…then to the site.

We arrived in sunny-but-cold Scituate, MA just before 8:30am. Stepping out of the car, our team met with Heather Marshall, the owner of Designs by Marshall. Heather filled us in on expectations for the day and specifically where NOT to stand when the house is rolling.

The moving crew had worked for weeks leading up to the move to disconnect all of the utilities, cut away the home from its existing foundation, jack the structure up and put large pistons, steel I-beams and wheels under the house. By 9:15am, the house was on the move.

By 10:00am the house had moved about 40 feet. Moving these massive structures not only takes heavy machinery, hours of calculations, but also TIME.

Our team knew that this wasn’t going to be the most action-packed shoot, so we got creative. For this shoot we decided to incorporate the use of:

·      Two GoPros

·      Three Sony Alpha cameras

·      One Drone

·      18 Batteries (told you it was cold)

While the house inched toward its future home, it appeared there was a glaring problem. As the massively oversized load crawled its way down the street, an electrical wire stretched right across its path. That’s where the guys at Gary’s Silvester’s Building Movers had the foresight during the planning process to take the behemoth OFF-ROAD and drive around the entire electrical pole altogether. They had already perfectly measured and cleared out a path for the 10-ton titan.

Inch by inch, the house closed in on its permanent home until finally she stopped; resting on the new property right next to the new foundation. It was 11:30am. The final steps of permanently securing the home atop its new foundation will take place over the next few days. A platform will need to be custom built using absolute precision to marry the bottom structure of the home to the top of the foundation. We can’t express enough how precise every last movement needed to be.

The amazing team of movers were able to pull off this amazing job without a hitch. Now the homeowner and architect will get to work designing the home that will be on the now-vacated property. We wish all the best and can’t wait to see the new home! Take a look below at this timelapse video from the day, and check back soon for the full video of the move!