Athens/house-moving
In 1999, L and I moved two houses from downtown Athens out to Danielsville Road. They were being given away to anyone who could propose a credible plan for moving them (because a developer had other plans for the lots), and apparently nobody else applied -- so we got them.
The houses ended up as:
- 2785 Danielsville Rd. (Journey of the Blue-Gray House has photos of the move)
- 2795 Danielsville Rd., aka The Grey-Green House (not sure if it's still the same color)
- I did a little bit of carpentry on this one, mainly rebuilding a wobbly contractor-built railing on the back steps, and also some interior painting and such. I may also have done some plumbing; I don't remember.
See also House-Moving for Dummies (I really should combine these two pages somehow...).
L did all the negotiating and paperwork and contractor-arranging, as well as a fair amount of interior work.
Mubbie (L's grandmother, on whose property we were living) provided the 5-acre lots for each house, finally making good on a promise made back before we moved down – and L's mother was going to pay for the move and subsequent renovation but it ended up costing more than she expected, so I ended up filling the gap with what I was making at Carrier (or possibly it was still Pierce at that point).
Despite that investment, I ended up not owning any interest in them after the divorce. It was a stupid settlement which I should never have agreed to, but I didn't want to hire a lawyer because for Anna's sake I didn't want to start a big fight, so I just agreed to the first thing they proposed -- which was basically that I had no ownership of the properties, but was nonetheless responsible for covering any missing months of rent as part of the child support agreement.
In retrospect, I think this was supposed to be an "opening position" which we would then have negotiated towards something more reasonable.
Fortunately, L never made a point of enforcing it.