PORT ANGELES — Talk about putting up a house. The 700-plus-square-foot structure on Lauridsen Boulevard at Fairmont Avenue will be lifted off the ground while a contractor constructs a first floor beneath it.
Then it will be gently set back down to become the new home’s second story.
And that won’t be the building’s first gymnastic routine.
Monroe House Moving & Raising of Quilcene plucked the house from Rivers End Drive in the Dungeness River estuary, hauled it along Old Olympic Highway and U.S. Highway 101, shepherded it through downtown Port Angeles and squeezed beneath the Eighth Street Bridge and up the Tumwater Truck Route to its new location.
The move went without a hitch in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday.
The house — or, rather, what it will become — will go on the market for around $200,000 early next month.
If this sounds like extreme exertion for what will be a rather modest dwelling, consider that it cost less money to move it — between $8,000 and $14,000 — than Clallam County would have paid to tear it down and haul its remains to a landfill.
Threatened by flooding
As for why it couldn’t stay at Rivers End, the home and its failing septic system were in the way of an estuary restoration project that calls for removing dikes at the mouth of the Dungeness and letting the river re-establish its flood plain.
Three more Rivers End homes will follow this house’s route to new lots on Port Angeles’ west side.
All of them will be sold to first-time home buyers seeking affordable housing.
The project is funded by $67,000 from surcharge fees the county auditor charges to record documents.
Money from selling this house will pay for moving, rehabilitating and marketing the others, one after another, until the county is repaid.
The program is the brainchild of the North Olympic Regional Housing Network, to which Clallam County commissioners deeded the structures after they bought them from willing buyers.
The purchases were paid with federal funds funneled through the state Department of Fish and Wildlife to support salmon restoration projects.
Whoever buys the Lauridsen Boulevard home will own it and the slender triangular lot it occupies.