SEATTLE -- A 6,200-square-foot mansion moved from Seattle to Bainbridge Island rolled off the barge that carried it across Puget Sound and up onto dry land at about 9 p.m. Friday.
A few people gathered along the shoreline to watch the last step in what was a slow and careful journey.
The home, built in 1923, was placed on a barge on Lake Washington and moved from Denny Blaine Park in Seattle's Madison Park neighborhood to Bainbridge Island overnight Wednesday.
The mansion arrived on the south end of the island Thursday morning. Crews with Nickel Brothers, who handled the move, said the home needed to be loaded off in extreme high tide.
Homeowners Mary Rain and her husband had been looking for the perfect house ever since their old home on Bainbridge Island burned down in 2012.
They spotted the four-bedroom vintage home on the website for the Nickel Brothers, which sells and relocates homes, and fell in love. They purchased the home for $850,000, which includes delivery and the price of the home.
"It just feels like it has so many stories," said Mary. "It has history and character. It fact, just today we met a couple of the former owners of this house who grew up in it the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s."
Mary and her family were among many that spent Wednesday watching the home be loaded onto a barge, as crews prepared it for its journey to Bainbridge Island.
"They're being very responsible with it, actually," said eight-year-old Teoman Champagne, who could barely contain his excitement as the house started moving. "It's super cool!"
According to the Nickels Brothers website, the home features unique architectural details such as custom white oak molding, silk-paneled walls, ironwork stair railings and a massive glass skylight. It also features upgrades such as a gourmet kitchen and a state-of-the-art technology heating and cooling system. Nickel Brothers estimates the home's value between $3.5 million to $6 million.
Rain said the move took months of planning with engineers and the Nickels Brothers.
"It is an amazing engineering challenge," she said. "The house weighs 400 tons. And it has quite a ways to go between here and it's new home."
The home is move-in ready, but they still need to lay a cement foundation at the location in Bainbridge Island. Rain says she and her husband and their three children hope to move in by the end of the summer.
Crews with Nickel Brothers called the recycling of this home a triple win: a win for the original homeowner who did not want to see it demolished, a win for Mary's family, and also a win for the environment. A Nickel Brothers spokesperson said recycling the home prevented nearly 200 trees' worth of lumber used to build it from winding up in the landfill.
