TRURO — After a damp and foggy day on Wednesday as house movers prepared to pull the imperiled, beachfront house at 133 South Pamet Road to safety, darkness began to fall. 

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The tide at Ballston Beach was out but the dozen or more onlookers gathered on the beach in coats and wet-weather boots wondered if, in fact, the empty house — with much of its dune support eroded away — was going anywhere.

An end-loader (with its pneumatic/hydraulic lift)  on the beach turned on its lights to illuminate the newly-installed cribbing, steel beams and steel rollers underneath the house.

The pilings had been cut away.

Stabilizing planks of wood were removed, or cutaway.

Soon, by about 5:40 p.m., up on the dune and next to the house, workers hollered.

The arm of a Bobcat reached toward a chain attached to the beams and clamped down. It pulled, and,lo and behold, the house moved.

As it turns out, the house was pulled 50 feet off the bluff on Wednesday, and then on Thursday another 25 feet sideways, said Geddes Building Movers owner James Paveglio.

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It was a particularly tough move because of the height, much of the house was on pilings in mid-air about 25 feet from the beach.

"It was a challenge for sure," Paveglio said.

The house weighed 88,000 pounds, he said. But that wasn't the challenge.

"There was nothing below us to work on," said Paveglio, who pulled the house back in the Bobcat himself.

While a crane might have seemed like a possible option, the beach below the house was not stable enough for that type of operation, he said.

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Owners Tom and Kit Dennis had hired the New Hampshire-based house moving company to move the historic home that is used in the summer only, after 20 feet of coastal erosion in a Jan. 17 storm and more erosion in the Jan. 29 blizzard left the building standing nearly on only its pilings.

The Dennis family bought the 1,500-square-foot renovated boathouse in 2014 for $825,000 in what the couple described as a rescue mission during an interview in 2015. 

The family also owns a home on Stephens Way.

Tom Dennis did not immediately return a call for comment on Thursday.

The house has been situated on an eroding bluff in a historic area. Next door was a house, owned by the Musnuff family, that in 2018 was demolished because of the dune erosion. A shed from the Musnuff property was moved to land owned by the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill.

The Musniff house was the first life-saving station on Cape Cod, and the shed had been where horses were kept for life-saving operations a century ago, the center's executive director, Cherie Mittenthal said. 

The move of the Dennis house to a temporary location on Wednesday was allowed under a town Conservation Commission emergency work order permit, according to a press release issued by the town. 

The town-owned Ballston Beach parking lot was closed to the public from Wednesday through Friday for the move of the Dennis house. The parking lot was used to stage equipment for the house move. Trucks with stacks of cut lumber used to build the cribbing sat in the parking lot.

When the house movers arrived on Wednesday, the Cape Cod-based site contractors filled in sand beneath the house, so that the bottom of the cribbing — ultimately three were built on Wednesday, each 18 feet tall — would be above high tide, Paveglio said. The movers knocked out existing cross-bracing on pilings and then basically built a track with steel beams and what are called X,Y-axis skates, or rollers, for the house to move on.

The skates are sandwiched between the beams, and then the house sat on the top beam.

"It rolls fairly easily," Paveglio said.

A jacking system that was on-site near the house allowed the company to weigh the building, and figure out how to properly take the pressure off the pilings, in advance of the move, he said.

The house moving crew included five people, along with two carpenters and two site contractors. 

The house movers stabilized the house, cleaned up the debris and were back on the road to New Hampshire by late afternoon Thursday.

"It was a total team effort all the way around," Paveglio said. He said he had not yet calculated the cost of his company's part of the move. 

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While the town wrote in its Feb. 2 press release that the Ballston Beach parking lot and area near the beach were closed to the public, many onlookers walked through the parking lot, alongside the move site and around to the public beach to watch the operations.

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The Dennis family must now seek approval from the town Zoning Board of Appeals for a permanent location of the house and must obtain any necessary zoning relief required for the structure’s siting and use at the permanent location, according to Barbara Carboni, the town planner and land use counsel. 

The zoning board last met about the house on Jan. 24 and continued the hearing for 90 days. 

The house may not be occupied unless and until all required relief has been granted by the zoning board, and an occupancy permit is granted by the town building commissioner, Carboni said.

From a conservation perspective, following up on the emergency certification granted allowing the house to be moved, inspections will be performed to determine any necessary restoration of the affected areas, she said.

 Any use of town property to access affected areas will require further approval by the town, Carboni added.