Workers prepare to launch floating home by rolling it into bay today

PORT TOWNSEND — Carlsborg-based Monroe House Moving on Monday was preparing a launch that will be used today to roll a 600,000-pound floating home from the edge of the Port of Port Town-send boatyard into Port Townsend Bay.

The two-story home has been going up on a huge concrete float since last fall.

Bob Little — president of the company that built it, Port Townsend’s Little & Little Construction — said it will be rolled down the beach into the bay the way yachts were launched before the Port of Port Townsend bought boat-lifts.

“We’ll launch it just like a boat,” Little has said.

A crew of about 10 built the floating home, the first Little’s company has erected.

It was constructed on a concrete slab poured around 500-pound Styrofoam blocks.

Once the unpredictable winter weather clears, Little said the home will be towed slowly to Lake Union in Seattle for a family that outgrew its boathouse there.

The home will be moved by Jeff Monroe, president of Monroe House Moving, a third-generation business that started in Quilcene and relocated to Carlsborg.

Monroe most recently moved the former Coast Guard station at Boat Haven marina for the Port of Port Townsend.

The well-insulated luxury home has a cinder-block fireplace in a spacious living room that will have a wall of folding glass doors that can open out to a deck on warm days.

Upstairs is a family room, master bedroom, office space and a master bath.

It will have radiant heating in a heavily reinforced floors, and the exterior walls are specially designed with cedar planks atop hollow panels that allow for maximum drainage when the wind whips up rain or Lake Union’s waters.

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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@

peninsuladailynews.com.

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