Who says house prices are out of sight?

Ken and Rachel Preston bought one for $1.

But then they had to move it nine-tenths of a mile.

And it didn’t help to have it slide off its trailer in the new driveway.

“I’m still glad we did it,” Ken Preston said late Tuesday afternoon as he watched the movers attempt to get the house back on its dolly. “And I’m glad we’re not paying them by the hour.”

The 1,450-square-foot, three bedroom, two-bath single-story house was built in 1951.

Midmorning Tuesday, it was on a trailer being pulled by a big truck weighted in the back and accompanied by convoy vehicles and a line crew to adjust any low-hanging wires.

It made it up French Road to Fiske Road in less than an hour. Then there was a delay while the crew adjusted the load to fit the narrower roadway. The destination, the Prestons’ driveway, could be seen about a 100 yards away.

When the house finally entered the driveway, one of the dollies that was carrying it “flipped” in a soft spot, and the house ended up at a 45-degree angle less than 100 feet from its destination, Preston said.

“They’re digging it out now,” he said. “But we’re losing daylight. I guess they’ll come back tomorrow.”

Preston said he and his wife probably didn’t save much money by moving a house instead of building one on their Fiske Road property.

“But it’s a good, solid structure,” he said earlier Tuesday. “I would have hated to see it destroyed.”

“That would be sad,” agreed Rachel Preston, before heading up the road to check on the destination site.

The house was offered to the Prestons by local artists Richard Davis and Zia Gipson, who recently built another house on their property along French Road near Bailey Road.

“The county said it was too big to keep on the property,” Davis said of the original house. “It was either tear it down, offer it to the fire department or this.”

Davis, a mosaic artist, and Gipson, a textile artist, bought their Maxwelton Valley property about three years ago as a weekend place.

They moved to Whidbey Island full-time about a year and a half ago, and lived in the original house until their new one was completed.

The Prestons, who currently reside in Marysville, are employed in the engineering department at Verizon in Everett. They plan to commute.

“After living in Port Orchard and commuting on the ferry from Southworth,

I said I’d never do that again,” he said. “But I think this will work.”

“It gets me back in the woods,” he added. “And I love the idea of saving a house.”

Preston said it cost about $35,000 to have his new house moved by the D.B. Davis Co. of Everett. He said he and his wife don’t plan any major renovations to the structure, and they hope to move in February or March.

“We’re going to keep it pretty much the same,” he said. “I’m going to change the porch, that’s about it.”

As for the dolly snafu in their driveway, he added: “It doesn’t look like there’s any damage. It was just a little bit of excitement.”