A cabin in Colorado's high country for just $1 — if you can haul it
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EDWARDS, Colo. — It’s no secret that living in Colorado’s high country is expensive.
In Eagle County, the median listing price hovers at $1.7 million dollars. So when the opportunity to save a historic cabin from destruction fell into their lap, Ashley Thomas and Taylor Michelmore, longtime residents of the valley, seized their chance to become homeowners.
The only catch? Before the couple could take over the keys to their new life, they had to physically move the home more than 20 miles from Edwards, Colorado to Gypsum, Colorado.
It was a cute idea — save a house from the dump — the type of scenario you might see on HGTV from the safety of your couch. For Thomas and Michelmore, however, turning that idea into reality would mean scrambling to find a lot, spending early mornings and late nights preparing the structure for the move and navigating a migraine of permits, insurance and loans. But after spending a decade living in the valley, facing high rent and housing instability, Thomas and Michelmore saw an opportunity to secure their future and finally have a place of their own.
A decade of precarity
Both Thomas and Michelmore are intimately familiar with the housing crisis plaguing mountain towns across the West.
Thomas moved to the valley from Chicago 11 years ago. She pays the bills by working three jobs: property management, bartending at the Ford Amphitheater and running her own home decor business.
“It's hard to see some of these beautiful but extravagant homes that sit empty a good portion of the year,” said Thomas.
Michelmore works in excavation.
“I dig holes for big homes,” he said.
His most recent jobs include swimming pool add-ons and celebrity hideouts. In winter, he plows snow. In summer, he bartends.
Michelmore moved four times during his first four years in the valley.Since then, he and Thomas said they’ve gotten lucky finding places to live. The couple currently lives in a West Vail condo.
“We've had so many friends over the past years that would love to stay out here, and they just get priced out and can't find housing,” said Michelmore.
Like so many resort residents, Michelmore and Thomas played a constant game of mental arithmetic. Was it worth sacrificing financial security and the chance to expand their family for their love of skiing, friends they’d made and access to the outdoors?
The idea of owning a home had always remained just that — an idea.
“I more or less kind of started looking when I moved here and it's never seemed feasible. And then it really started to seem unfeasible after COVID,” said Thomas.
When life gives you a house, move it.
Michelmore was the first to hear about the house. Homeowners Sue and Harvey Allon wanted to make way for new construction and needed the 2,200 square foot home torn down.
They called Michelmore’s boss, Ted Johnson to do the demolition.
But Johnson couldn’t take the job — the cabin had been his childhood home.
“His father, Dozer Johnson, built it back in 1970,” said Michelmore. “It was a Montana kit-home built by a bunch of ski patrollers. They all came here and built the house off of a budget of Budweiser.
At the eleventh hour, an idea came to Thomas.
“We were watching ‘Homestead Rescue’ or ‘Log Masters’ or something like that,” said Michelmore. “And, she [Taylor] turned around and said, ‘Why don't we just try to move it?’”
Michelmore approached his boss with the idea, then spoke with the homeowners and their contractor.
“Everyone was all for the idea of saving a home from the valley.”
Taylor and Michelmore came to an agreement with homeowners. They paid $1 for the four bedroom, two bathroom home. In exchange, they would remove the structure from the property.
Demolition
The work to move the home began in earnest at the start of September. In order for the house to fit on a 24 foot-wide, two-lane highway, the first step was to deconstruct an addition that protruded from the house. Next, the couple removed the upper level of the house and dug around the foundation so structural movers could insert steel beams beneath the structure and jack it up.
“All the logs were labeled so they could go up in the same way at the new site. We saved the pine tongue and groove on the ceiling, which was quite the task,” said Michelmore.
He and Thomas hired extra-hands to help remove logs from the addition and upper-story, but they kept costs down by doing the majority of the work themselves.
“We saved all the bathroom fixtures so that we didn't have to re-purchase those,” said Thomas.
After devising a scheme to save the house, the couple still had to find a place to put it. Thomas soon learned, however, that most homeowner’s associations in the area don’t allow log structures — no one she spoke with could give her a clear answer as to why that was.
Thomas resorted to cold-calling anyone who had a lot that might work. Finally, Thomas and Michelmore found a quarter-acre lot located above the town of Gypsum. They contacted the owner on Facebook and closed on the lot, August 30th. It cost them $173,000.
As the process unfolded, unexpected costs began to pile on. The utility provider sent the bill for a water and sewage tap fee on the new lot. Given the shape of the parcel, it made sense to change the arrangement of the home’s addition, and since they would already be paying to reconstruct the upper level, Thomas and Michelmore decided to reframe the second level and upgrade the windows.
Perhaps the trickiest part, however, was finding someone willing to finance such a bizarre project and insure the home as it traveled down the highway.
Although the total costs are likely to exceed the $400,000 budget the couple initially created, the project is still far below the cost of buying a home in the valley.
The practice of moving homes is not common, but “Americans have been moving buildings successfully since the early 18th century,” said Lee Nelson, the chief of the Technical Preservation Services Division, housed within the U.S. Department of the Interior.
A drawing from an 1873 copy of the American Agriculturalist depicts one house moving scheme.
Nonetheless, the U.S. The Department of Interior advises in its manual of moving historic homes that the process should only be taken, “as a last resort.”
Hurry up and wait
When the day finally came at the end of October, neighbors gathered to watch the house pull away. A state trooper and pair of flaggers helped to escort the structure.
“My stomach was upside down. I was so nervous,” said Michelmore.
As the truck pulled into the lot in Gypsum, Thomas pointed to where various rooms will be.
“It feels crazy. I still don't feel like it's our house yet. Now that it's here, it's a little more surreal, but, right now, it just feels like a project that we took on for some reason. I think once we have our stuff in it and it's put back together, it'll feel more like our home,” she said.
Although Michelmore and Thomas admit their situation isn’t a silver bullet solution for Colorado’s housing woes, they said dozens of people have reached out for advice, including another couple with a log cabin of their own. If they decide to attempt moving the structure, Michelmore and Thomas are eager to share their advice.
The first piece: “It always takes longer than what you think,” said Thomas.
In the meantime, they hope others will think twice about sending building materials straight to the dump.
The couple hopes to be fully moved in by Christmas.
Rocky Mountain PBS multimedia journalist Joshua Vorse contributed footage to this report.