The house in the middle of Live Oak Street has become unstuck.
After the home was abandoned for four days in the middle of a Travis Heights neighborhood, mired in a permit imbroglio, all fees were paid and insurance assurances were made. The journey of the house would finally resume Tuesday night.
Workers from the Taylor-based moving company, AAA-Austin Home Movers, took chainsaws to the white exterior of the house Tuesday afternoon in preparations for a 10:30 p.m. estimated departure for its new home in Lockhart, where it will be refurbished.
Its odyssey began Friday and came to a jolting halt Saturday about 20 yards from where it started. At the intersection of Brackenridge and Live Oak streets, police stopped all work after a neighbor called 911 when it appeared that the crew intended to cut the limbs of her heritage tree.
Since then, the house has been in bureaucratic limbo. With city offices closed over the weekend, the moving company was unable to pay for a permit to block the street. They paid on Monday, but the city’s Transportation Department told company owner Nick Morphis that he needed to get documents that insured the city against for any damage that the move might cause city property.
The home appeared to have already struck a utility pole during the first attempted move.
“I think its a quagmire,” said Guillaume Smith, the former owner of a home next door to the now-possibly-unstuck home.
After filing paperwork with the city early Tuesday, the Transportation Department approved a permit to allow the home to move. That afternoon, Morphis and a crew of workers arrived with railroad ties, chain saws and extension cords.
The plan: Chainsaw a 3-foot portion off the side of the house so it could fit under the tree.
Morphis called the situation “a big misunderstanding.” The moving crew never intended to cut the tree.
“There’s always hiccups,” Morphis said from the scene.
If there were any hard feelings in the neighborhood, they weren’t apparent. Onlookers continued to come and go, snapping photos and chuckling. Someone had adorned the house with Halloween decorations such as a white ghost and a skeleton. One sign advertised “Haunted House $5,” but was it the entry fee to the eerily abandoned home or an asking price?
“You’ve got to laugh,” said Travis Heights resident Bobby Thomas. “It’s just so unusual to see a house parked in the middle of the street.”
On the Internet, the house had earned its own Twitter handle, its creator likely hoping to catch the viral magic of the Austin Cobra. In the real world, commercial sign painter Jimbo Baumann created his own likeness of the house, dubbing it the “weird load.”
