Kevin: Today on "This Old House"...

The builder and the engineer decided the best thing for this house was a new foundation.

And to get that, they decided that the house should be moved.

Man: Go ahead.

Tom: Alright, it's moving.

Adam: I did not know this was possible until a few days ago.

Kevin: That's cool.

♪♪ Man: Ahh.

That's it.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Kevin: Hey, there.

I'm Kevin O'Connor, and welcome back to "This Old House" and to our project here in Nashville, Tennessee.

We've got ourselves a 1929 brick 1 1/2-story cottage, I guess I'm going to call it.

Got a family of four who's been living here for the past two years, and they've decided to stay in the neighborhood.

And so they're going to make some major updates to the house.

Let's go inside and have a look.

All of the living space in this house is down here on the first floor.

You can see that the homeowners have moved out a couple weeks ago.

This is the front living room with the original fireplace, we presume.

A new gas insert and some updates have been made over the years.

The house right now has got about 1,900 square foot of living space, just two bedrooms and one bathroom.

This is the first bedroom.

Mom and Dad were in here.

Probably a converted sun porch at one time.

And then the two young children were sharing this room back here, and the entire family was sharing this single bathroom right here.

A couple updates have been made over the years to this but really not that much.

There is a little bit of an attic upstairs and a basement with a laundry downstairs.

Now, the plan is to go from the two bedrooms and one bath to three bedrooms, two bath, and two half bath.

And that's because we're gonna put a dormer on upstairs and make that a proper living space up there, as well as recapture some of the basement.

So places like this, which was a guest bedroom and office, now they can become part of the new kitchen, which, as you can see, is dated and could be a little bit bigger.

So, because of the condition of the foundation, the new dormer up top, the extra space, the builder and the engineer decided the best thing for this house was a new foundation, and to get that, they decided that the house should be moved.

So the home is gonna be picked up, and it's actually gonna be pushed right there into the backyard while they fly in a new foundation.

And preparation for that has already been done.

You can see that this back porch that used to be here, that has been removed by our builders.

And then right here we've got a pantry area.

That was taken off, as well.

And with those gone, it gave us some room to move the fence out of the way right there.

And as you can see, there's a lot of steel that's already been brought in.

Our house mover is Don Toothman, and you can see that his crew has been busy.

They started off by punching holes into the foundation so they can get the steel in.

And the first pieces to go in are what they call the main beams.

This is one of them right here -- 50 feet long.

I'm told it's 132 pounds a foot.

So that means that this beam right here is about 6,600 pounds.

And then on top of the main beams, they've got these crossbeams which run from the front of the house to the back.

And then they are laid out all the way left to right.

There are 11 of those going in.

And then these little wooden ones right here, these are called the needle beams, so that when this frame comes up, they will actually grab the edge of the house right there to help lift it.

Now, remember, there are two main beams.

So here's the second one -- 50 feet long, which is not easy to get in here when you consider that the space from this house to that house right there is about 30 feet.

So that's quite a challenge.

And it explains why this fencing had to come down so they could sweep it in there.

We've got the crossbeams right here.

Some of them are already in.

11 in total.

Hey, Don.

Don: How are you?

Kevin: I'm doing alright.

You're a busy man.

Don: Yeah.

Kevin: [ Laughs ] Not your first move, right?

Don: No.

We move about one a week.

Kevin: One a week?

Holy smokes.

That's -- That's 50 a year.

Don: Yeah.

Kevin: That's a lot of houses.

Don: Got to keep the banker happy.

Kevin: Alright.

Um, so what is the process for today?

What are we doing?

Don: We're putting in cross steel right now.

Kevin: Yeah.

Don: They put the needle beams in the fireplace so the fireplace comes up when the house comes up, and then we'll -- we'll pick up a little bit and shim off everything and take the deflection out of the front of these beams so the brick comes up with the house.

Kevin: Gotcha, and I know it's a two-day move, right?

Don: Yes.

Kevin: Where do you want to get to by the end of today?

Don: Today I hope to be up two to three higher... Kevin: Yeah.

Don: ...so we can get our steel in to skate it back in the backyard.

Kevin: The beams that you're gonna actually roll this out on?

Don: Yes.

Kevin: Very cool.

Alright, well, listen, at one a week, get to it.

I don't want to slow you down.

Thank you.

Don: Alrighty.

Thank you.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Tom: So, on this side of the house, you can see how the block foundation meets the brick.

Well, this is a mortar line right here.

Well, that mortar actually holds the brick into place, and it sticks it to the foundation.

To make sure that when the house gets lifted, this brick doesn't crack, Carlos is gonna cut a slot in this joint right here all along this whole side so hopefully the house will come right up.

♪♪ ♪♪ Alright, so here we are in the foundation right here.

I can look in, I can see one of the cribbing that was built.

And the cribbing is built out of 6x6s.

And they come up to the underside of the steel.

At the top, they have mounted two jacks.

The capacity of each jack is 30 ton.

All those jacks are connected with this hydraulic hose right here, and it goes out to the truck.

And Don can control each jack, know exactly how much pressure they're going as he lifts the house.

Man: Go ahead.

Tom: As the house goes up, any of the low points now, the beams will take them, and it'll start to lift it, and you'll start to hear popping, cracking.

[ Cracking ] Don: That's a half inch.

Everything should be separated.

Kevin: There it is.

You can see it, right?

So that just separated from the foundation -- slow but definitely came up.

How you feeling?

Adam: I did not know this was possible.

Kevin: [ Laughs ] Rachel, I think you were the one who said you were nervous, whereas Adam said he was excited.

Are you still nervous seeing it?

Rachel: Not really.

They make it look pretty easy.

Kevin: That's good that it feels like it makes it seem like it's easy.

There's a lot that goes into it.

You guys had to prep a lot.

Lyn: Yes.

Kevin: The moment of truth is here.

You've both admitted that you were a little nervous yourselves.

Your thoughts right now?

Lyn: Feeling pretty good.

Feeling pretty good.

Watching the crew put it together and the confidence that they have, we feel good.

We're ready to see it go up, as well.

Javier: Yeah, there's a lot of knowledge behind what happened today.

So I think -- I think we're in good shape.

Kevin: Yeah.

One lift a week.

I think Don and his team know what they're doing.

It still is a little unsettling when you hear that first pop.

Javier: Yes.

It, uh, gives you the willies.

Kevin: Alright, well, it'll go up slowly, but we'll see it move.

♪♪ Tom: So now what they'll do, when they get it to a certain point, they'll start putting shims in.

They'll then jack it up again, check it, and then continue on to where they have to stop.

Don: Okay, here we go.

[ Popping ] ♪♪ Tom: So, I'm here on the other side of the house.

You can see that the house right now is up off the foundation about six inches.

And you can see how it's broken free across the front.

So if we walk down there... ♪♪ ...you can see our brick veneer right here all the way across the front.

And our foundation is down about six inches.

So it's definitely coming up.

♪♪ So, Don, how'd we do on my guess, how much this sucker weighs?

Don: You was pretty close.

You guessed 60, and it weighed 55 ton.

Tom: 55 ton.

Wow!

So, 55 ton.

If we add the steel, you just lifted about 85,000, 90,000?

Don: 85,000, 90,000 pounds.

Tom: Yeah.

Wow.

So now what are you gonna do?

You got to lift it up another 16, 18 inches?

Don: Yeah, they're resetting the jacks now.

Tom: Yeah.

Don: And once we reset the jacks we'll go 14 inches, reset the jacks, go another 14 inches.

Tom: Oh, so you got to get it up higher than it has to be so you can move it back.

Don: Yes, I got to get it high enough to get my skate rails in.

Tom: Right, right.

Alright.

Well, this is exciting.

Don: The hard part's over.

Tom: Yeah.

You know what you're doing.

♪♪ ♪♪ This little wing wall right here on the front wall of the house is gonna -- was actually a pretty difficult piece to get to come up because there's so little brick to hold the structure together.

And unfortunately, it didn't come up as one piece.

It's gonna have to be patched in, but still, looks pretty good.

♪♪ ♪♪ It's going up for the third time.

Probably another 14 inches.

[ Bang ] Something just popped.

Either something popped or something fell.

[ Machine shuts off ] Kevin: A little bit of excitement there, Tommy.

Tom: Yeah, one of the cribbings broke.

So what they had to do is they had to stop right away and build a temporary one right beside it and put wedges in it to stop the building from coming down any more so they can get the jack out and the damaged cribbing out, and now they can rebuild it and put the jack right back where it belongs.

Kevin: And Don, I guess he saw it right away on his gauges that that pressure just went to zero.

Tom: That's right.

It drops right up.

The load's off.

What's going on?

So he just shuts it down.

Kevin: A little disconcerting, but the reality is, barely moved, re-support it, not a big deal.

Tom: Yeah, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of bracing here going on, that's for sure.

And, you know, you got to plan for the worst and hope for the best.

Kevin: His team moved quickly.

Tom: Yeah.

♪♪ ♪♪ Yeah, so it looks pretty good on the outside.

But if you look -- Well, look right here and right here.

See, you can see the end grain of that knot right there.

Kevin: Yep.

Tom: Alright.

So that's a weak point.

But you can't tell from looking at the outside.

You'd think it was nice and strong.

Kevin: Right.

Tom: But a weak point like that makes all the difference in the world.

Yeah, there's a knot on the surface.

Kevin: Basically the same thing, but it's working on the inside.

Tom: Yep.

That's like a limb, and that's a knot in the tree, so another weak point.

♪♪ They're gonna keep going till they get where it wants to stop.

It's gonna be up a ways.

Adam: Little by little, huh?

Tom: Little by little.

I think he told me the highest he's lifted a house is 22 feet.

That's pretty high.

♪♪ Don: This actually shows the jacks traveling.

If we just had one jack in each crib, at 14, it would be 14 inches.

But we have two jacks in each crib, so you only get half.

You get 7 inches every time it goes to 14.

That shows the travel of the actual jacks under the house.

♪♪ Tom: So look at this.

We have the cedar posts in the basement that act like a Lally column.

Well, the top of the post right here was -- That's where the framing sat all the way down here.

So that's how high we've gone.

We have to go 14 more inches, and then we're up where it needs to be.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Don: Okay, make it good and tight.

That's all for tonight.

Kevin: Alright, so, the house is up over 40 inches.

Don has called it for the day.

That means we come back tomorrow.

We slide in the roll beams, and then we can actually get this house pushed into the backyard.

♪♪ So, it's day two here morning in East Nashville, Tommy.

House is up from last night.

Tom: Long day.

Don managed to get the house up.

I can see it measures around 42 1/2 inches he raised it.

Kevin: Alright, well, his crew is back on-site, and they are getting ready to get back to work.

Tom: Yeah, they're getting ready to put it in the backyard.

But the next phase of this job is the most dangerous part, according to Don.

Kevin: Alright, let's let him do his thing.

♪♪ ♪♪ Tom: So you got a lot going on back here with these pilings here.

I see you got steel under them.

Don: Yeah, we put, uh, steel plates 'cause we don't know what kind of soil we got.

Tom: Oh, that makes sense.

Yeah.

You didn't dig it down a lot.

Don: Yeah, so we, uh -- we put the steel plates on first so it's getting a bigger footprint.

Tom: And then your cribbing goes on that.

Don: The cribbing goes on that.

And we're building our cribs three inches higher than the cribs under the house.

Tom: Why three inches higher?

Don: 'Cause we figure there's gonna be compaction.

Tom: Oh, yeah.

Don: Settling.

And we want the house to be level.

Tom: Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

So now you're gonna set the beam in.

And when the house comes in, it's gonna obviously put weight on this thing.

Don: Yes.

Tom: This is gonna be tricky, isn't it?

Don: Yeah, it's kind of tricky, 'cause you're changing your distribution point the whole -- whole time you're coming through.

Tom: I can understand it.

You just don't want it to push over these piers.

Don: Yeah.

Tom: Alright, well, let's see what happens next.

Don: Alright.

♪♪ Kevin: Kaitlyn, nice to meet you.

Kaitlyn: Nice to meet you, too.

Kevin: You, uh -- You couldn't resist, huh?

The house went up, and you had to see it.

Kaitlyn: Yeah, it's pretty cool.

Kevin: It is pretty cool.

Well, thank you for being the architect on our project.

Kaitlyn: Yeah.

Kevin: What did Adam and Rachel ask of you?

What was the plan that they wanted?

Kaitlyn: Yeah, so we added a rear dormer upstairs across the back of the house, which allowed us to put all the bedrooms upstairs, embrace the view a little bit more to the back two, and then have all living space on the first floor, and so really open up, have a big new kitchen in the back that's open to living space, have big doors and windows that face the backyard.

Kevin: Which means, if I understand it, that we don't add or change to the original footprint of this house, right?

Kaitlyn: Right, yeah, so by pushing all the bedrooms upstairs, having a rear dormer and actually getting conditioned space in the basement, we really don't add any footprint.

Kevin: Tell me about the historic neighborhood.

What do we call it?

Kaitlyn: So, it's a historic overlay.

It's a neighborhood conservation zoning overlay.

Kevin: Okay.

Kaitlyn: So the goal of the overlay is to protect the historic character of the neighborhood.

Kevin: How do they feel about the lift?

Kaitlyn: They said this is one of the first times this has been done in a historic overlay in Nashville.

So I think it's gonna be a great example of how to add space to a house.

Kevin: So style -- I'm gonna put you on the spot here.

I look around the neighborhood, and there are some houses that are, say, for example, clearly bungalows.

This one isn't clearly anything to me.

I've heard Tudor.

I don't quite get it.

Do you have thoughts, like?

Kaitlyn: You know, I really don't know.

Um, it's a brick cottage.

Kevin: Well, the brick cottage is going to stay a brick cottage and just be a little bit higher.

And you might want to stick around, 'cause there's more excitement to come.

Kaitlyn: It's gonna be exciting.

Tom: Alright, so, they're starting to roll this beam in.

Inside on that cradle over there, they've actually got a roller that they'll drop the beam on.

They're gonna bang that roller with a hammer to reposition it.

By banging the roller, they can direct the steel slightly turning the wheel.

Gonna go out the back and see it coming through.

Now he's gonna throw a roller on top of this cribbing here.

He's gonna position it under the beam.

Don's pushing it from the front.

And he's directing it to go to the next cribbing.

And you remember, that -- that cribbing is three inches higher.

Alright, so Don's gonna drop the other end.

And as he does, they're going to adjust the cribbing on this side on the very end of the beam so they can get another roller in, and they push it right through the house.

♪♪ The second beam is getting ready to go in.

Same process -- spin it around, line it up, and push it in.

♪♪ As simple as that.

That's how you move 7,000 pounds around like nothing.

♪♪ Alright, so both beams are in.

Next thing they need to do is get ready to put the rollers in between the two beams.

So, to move this house, they're actually putting this I beam in right here.

And they're gonna clamp it to the beam.

They've laid a jack on its side, and they're gonna take the jack and pump the house with hydraulic pressure and move it back.

I can actually feel it coming down, but I can also see the space between the dolly and the beam getting shorter.

When all the dollies have made connection with the I beams, that house will be level.

Alright, it's moving.

Kevin: Oh, yeah.

Keeping my eye on that gutter.

Tom: See that?

But lookit.

You can see it rolling right on that.

Kevin: It's interesting he's got a guy laying right on the beam keeping an eye on that front roller right there.

Tom: Yeah, and you notice he's got a sledgehammer in his hand.

That's how he's gonna steer the building.

So if he taps that to the left or to the right, it's gonna steer the building over and keep it centered on the beam.

So if you look right here, look, just like you said, the back of the downspout in relationship to the face of the old foundation.

It's out about a foot to 14 inches right there.

Kevin: Each push is about 14 inches.

We've just done our second push.

And so there we are, just about 28 inches.

What do you think?

Adam: Slow and steady.

Kevin: That's the way, right?

The hare house-moving company is out of business.

The tortoise company still in business.

♪♪ ♪♪ Well, that's some progress, huh?

Rachel: Yeah.

Kevin: How do you guys feel?

What are you thinking, Rachel?

Rachel: Uh, great.

I think it's pretty awesome.

Kevin: Yeah, it is pretty awesome.

A lot of progress.

Place is moving back.

Let me ask you this.

What do you think of your basement right now?

Adam: It wasn't this messy when we left it, I promise.

Kevin: But you'll have a new one soon.

Adam: Yeah.

Yeah.

Looking forward to it.

Kevin: Um, can you explain these to me, these cedar posts?

That was holding up the house?

Adam: That was holding up the house.

Kevin: No kidding.

Adam: Those were -- I mean, they lasted a long time.

I think they're still in good shape.

Might try to reuse them.

Kevin: Alright, well, that'll be in the backyard pretty quickly.

And then soon after that, you guys will have yourselves a new foundation.

So we are off.

Adam: Awesome.

♪♪ ♪♪ Kevin: Well, I'd say Don and his crew did a great job.

That's some nice progress.

Tom: He made a lot of progress today.

I didn't expect him to go this far, but it's great.

Kevin: So next steps are to, uh, demo that old foundation, excavate it, then get it inspected.

Tom: Right.

Kevin: And then we can bring in the new precast concrete panels.

Those are gonna be fabricated off-site, and then they'll crane them into place.

Tom: Right, and interesting enough, the measurements will be taken, they'll get the measurements.

They can cut all the pockets for all the needles, drop the house on the new foundation, and patch the holes.

Kevin: Gonna be awesome.

And then we'll be back at it.

Tom: Yeah, right.

Kevin: Alright.

Well, so until next time, I'm Kevin O'Connor.

Tom: And I'm Tom Silva.

Kevin: Here for "This Old House" in East Nashville.

That was pretty cool, the fact that it rolled back.

Tom: Yeah.

Kevin: That's a first for me.

Tom: And think about it, they have to put stops so it doesn't keep going.

[ Laughs ] ♪♪ Kevin: Next time on "This Old House"... Tom: These 10-foot precast panels have arrived to the jobsite, and when they go in, they'll transform that basement into great living space.

Kevin: And then the house is gonna move back into place over its new foundation.

Tom: Not a lot of clearance, but there's enough to get it by.

-Kevin: That's cool.

-Tom: It sure is.

Kevin: That's next time.