When the pandemic hit and construction costs started skyrocketing, Eric Murphy decided to get creative. 

Instead of building his home from scratch, the former Powell resident decided to buy and move one instead. Now six years and thousands of hours of work later, the home is nearing completion. 

“I didn’t know how this was going to go but it’s been a million times better than what I had imagined. I’m really pleased with how it’s turned out so far.”

An idea is born

Murphy bought some land from his grandma, with the dream of building a home from the ground up. He started prep work on the property, drilling a well and putting in an electrical drop. 

About a month later, when he was thinking about building, Covid hit, causing lumber prices to shoot sky high. 

“So I was looking at building,” he said. “I looked at two-by-fours and they literally all were like three times higher than just the year before.”

Not wanting to spend a fortune on lumber, the solution to his problem came just a short time later while making a pitstop at the Good 2 Go in Ralston. He and his uncle noticed that Exxon had purchased the property next door to build a bigger location. 

“We started talking to one of the workers at Good 2 Go, and we’re like, ‘Hey, what are they doing with the property over there?’ And she was like, ‘Oh yeah, they’re building the new gas station.’”

The location had a residential property sitting on it, which gave Murphy an idea. 

“If I could move the house, that would save an insane amount on lumber,” he said. “It just made complete sense to try and reuse the house rather than demo it. It would have been a waste of a good house.”

So they asked what the company was going to do with the house and the worker passed on the manager’s phone number.

“I remember I called him probably 20 times,” Murphy said. “I kept calling. He would never answer. And so the one time he did answer, I was like, “I want to get a deal done.”

They settled on the terms and Exxon gave him about four months to get the structure moved before the company started building. Murphy and his uncle looked at several YouTube videos on how to move houses and he got recommendations for people in the area who do it. 

He didn’t have a foundation built yet, but he knew he had to move the house as soon as possible. Murphy called about 15 movers before he found one who was able to do the job in the tight timeframe.

“We had to drill some holes in the old foundation where the basement was, and then we slid in two I-beams and welded them to a semi-trailer axle,” he said. “We used a huge excavator to build the dirt up so that the semi-trailer axle could be on dirt, and we had to really kind of compact the dirt to make sure it could support the weight of the house.”

Once the mover welded a little connector between the I-beams, the excavator lifted the whole house off the foundation and pivoted it onto the semi-trailer axle. It took two days to get it moved. 

Murphy said the most difficult part of the move for him was demolition of the basement, as he wanted to reuse all the wood.

“I stripped it all down so that I could reuse it all for the new foundation,” he said. “So I saved a ton because two-by-fours went way up, and the lumber quality in the older house was actually significantly better than what I could buy at the store.”

Getting to work

It took Murphy about a year and a half to build the new foundation on his property, and he was grateful for the patience of the mover, as the house had to remain on the semi-trailer axle all that time.

“I started doing my own concrete, but I did one pour, and one of the forms blew out, and I had to shovel like a ton of concrete back in because I had never worked with concrete before,” he said. “So I shoveled the ton back in and I couldn’t walk. I was totally messed up for two weeks, and so I was like, ‘Yeah, I probably shouldn’t do that on my own again.’ So I had a crew come in and help when I did my wall pours, and I had one guy come and help do the rest of the footers.”

Once the foundation was finished the mover had to come back and lift and pivot the home onto the foundation. When the house was in place it took some micromovements to get it perfectly square.

“It was quite a bit harder than if he would have just moved it directly onto the new foundation the first time,” Murphy said. “So once I had the new foundation, it took them a couple more days. Once it was in place, he slid the I-beams out and we grinded off the metal bar.”

With winter approaching, Murphy’s next step was getting some doors and windows for the basement. 

“I didn’t want my pipes and everything to freeze, but it was right as windows were taking like a year to order and get, so I ordered the windows and I had to wait a long time,” he said. “I had to board all the windows and doors off temporarily.”

Murphy lives in Laramie and is a network engineer, designing, building, securing and maintaining communication networks. He’s worked for companies like Walmart, Safeway and various hotel chains.

When he decided he wanted to do most of the work on the home himself, he committed to driving the 12-hour round trip every weekend to work on it. 

“Friday, I would typically try and get a job in Casper, and then once I was done working in Casper, I would drive the remaining way up here,” he said. “I would start construction as soon as I got here and work all weekend, and then Sunday night usually I’d go back. I did that for six years.” 

Once the house was closed in, he began the remodel. It was built in 1980, and had green shag carpet, which had to go, along with the rest of the flooring. He also redid the upstairs windows and doors, and installed a fireplace. 

“I redid all the plumbing that was in the upstairs, and then I redid all the electrical,” he said. “Then I redid all the lighting.”

His cousins, who owned Plumbing Plus, did the plumbing work and a neighbor did the electrical. Murphy put up most of the drywall himself, but did have another guy come in and help finish the job as well as do the painting. 

“During the building process, I would still come down and stay in it,” he said. “I had the water running, and the upstairs electrical was working probably within a month of when I put it down, so it was livable. It just wasn’t closed in the basement.”

Long, winding road

He said one of the most frustrating parts of the project has been the rising cost of materials. He’d budget for something and then when he went to purchase it, the price had gone up. 

“The other frustrating thing was traveling,” he added. “Every time I would come up, I would have to put all my tools into a cupboard. And then there were so many times that stuff would happen. Like when I was doing the foundation we had 100 mile an hour winds and it blew some of the stuff out of place. So every time I came back, there was some kind of setback.

“Plus the six-hour trips every weekend, that’s a lot. It was an insane amount of travel and expenses. It’s so much easier if you can live close to where you’re building.”

After working so hard for so long, Murphy took some time off the project this last year. He’s done some outside work including clearing some logs for firewood, but not much else. He’s hoping once he starts working on it seriously again at the end of this year that it should take just one more year to finish. 

The only thing left to tackle is some of the basement. He has an HVAC system and infloor heating, which includes a geothermal heat pump, to install. 

“So the basement’s all framed in, drywall painted,” he said. “The lighting and electrical are all done. I just haven’t done the flooring, windows and doors, and trim.”

The house sits on a hill behind the gas station and can be seen from its former location. Murphy plans to eventually retire to the house to be closer to his family.