House Renovation

The big news out at the farm this week is the foundation on the house. In 6 days of work, the foundation people have already demolished the old foundation, leveled up the house, dug out the area for the new foundation (which is digging down and out to expand the foundation to cover the whole house), and poured the walls. So the house is now sitting on new walls.

Here are some photos of the foundation work in progress.

First, a random amusing pattern: If you follow my family tree up, once you get back to the 1800s, you'll see several generations in a row in which people alternated names between B. H. Friesen and H. B. Friesen. The pattern finally broke when D. B. Friesen was born in 1891. This was back in the day when people were often called by their initials. (The initials stood for Heinrich Bernhard, by the way.)

Now then...

Frequent readers of this blog know that Terah and I purchased the place my grandparents owned (where my dad grew up).

The part I haven't mentioned is that my parents did the same thing -- my great grandparents owned the farm that my parents bought after they got married. My dad's mother grew up there.

My parents had an old farmhouse on their property, too. They opted to build a new house -- the old house made a nice home for rats, but not such a great home for people by that time. But that doesn't mean that the old house got torn down.

Nope, they had it moved to a museum, where a group of volunteers restored it.

Terah and I went to visit the 1911 Friesen House at the Mennonite Heritage Museum in Goessel a couple of weeks ago to get some decorating ideas for the house we're renovating. I'm going to get some more photos this weekend -- it's THRESHING DAYS again at the museum! Cliff, there's still time to drive down to Kansas! (Here's a partial schedule)

Terah liked the idea of buying the farm. But I don't think she'll go for restarting the other family tradition.... (well, I wouldn't, either, but it is funny...)

So I will end this post with a small collection of photos from Threshing Days 2004 (click the link).

Here's the usual sample:

Whew. Lots has been going on the past couple of days.

First, many thanks to all that sent us e-mails, comments, and notes. We appreciate it! It's nice to have people the care.

Next, in addition to the first set of fire photos I posted, I have now added more photos: a second set of fire photos. Note that there are two pages to that as well.

I've also added some photos to the Grandpa's Farm set -- this shows what things looked like back in April, before the fire. The buildings that burned are the barn, calf barn, and chicken house.

On to the updates...

Monday I went out to the farm first thing in the morning. Some areas were still smoldering -- basically wherever there was hay. It was a bit concerning. I went up to the 2nd floor in the house and took some photos of the yard.

I headed on in to work. Later in the evening, I went back out to check on things. Two fire fighters were back out there with a fire truck dousing the remaining smoldering areas. Apparently the fire fighters had been checking on the place intermittently all day and had been out there with water earlier as well.

The Goessel Fire Dept. is an all-volunteer department. These people aren't getting paid for this, and they do an EXCELLENT job. Someone was out at 1AM Monday, again at 10AM Monday, then twice more with the truck. They did all this on their own -- I hadn't asked them to. It is amazing how much these people care about the community and taking care of fires.

I also never knew how long bales of hay burn.

Here's one of the new photos:

I never thought I'd be writing a post like this today.

As Terah mentioned already, there was a fire out at our farm today. We lost both barns and the chicken house. Several acres of mostly grass burned in all.

It's hard to see those buildings gone. There was so much history and so many memories in them. And that loss isn't just ours; so many people have fond memories from out there.

Before I go on, I've posted a few very preliminary photos. I haven't even downloaded all of them from the camera yet. Here's how our yard looks:



We're sad about this, but there's a lot to be thankful for. There are so many ways that this could have been worse. If the firefighters had been a few minutes later to the scene, we probably would have lost the only remaining buildings -- house, wash house, and elevator -- as well. The fire was starting to burn a hedge row from two sides. It got within a few feet of the house.

Somebody driving through the country noticed the fire and called it in. That in itself is fortunate, because people don't just drive through this part of the country all that often.

We're very fortunate to have such a wonderful and loving family. The people from the Goessel Volunteer Fire Department spent 7 hours of their evening out there, part of it in 100-degree heat. (The Walton Fire Dept. also responded -- I don't know how long they were there). Even our insurance agent (one of the barns was insured) came out -- and he didn't have to.

We hope that we'll get enough insurance money to let us rebuild something in the same style as the original barn.

And, most importantly, nobody got hurt.

But somehow, despite all these things, it still feels like we lost a little bit of Grandpa today.

Well, it's been a few weeks since my last update, but I was still out there once a week taking pictures. The changes have been less dramatic -- but then it's hard to get as dramatic as tearing off the kitchen and pulling off a chunk of a house.

So check out the week 3-5 photos. Note there are two pages of photos.

The lath and plaster is all down. So it looks really empty inside.

The foundation work starts Thursday and continues for about 2 weeks. Then the reconstruction will begin.

Here's this week's highlight:



It's an old wagon that was in the chicken house. Because of the pickup that was in there, I had never been able to get a good picture of it before.

Terah and I realized something the other day. This table should demonstrate:

Person	Relation	Attends our church
Heating/Air Person	Great Uncle	Yes
Plumber	First Cousin, Once Removed	Yes
Interior Designer	First Cousin, Once Removed	Yes
Electrician	Second Cousin	Yes
Phone Company Line Installer	First Cousin, Once Removed	No
General contractor	None	Yes
General worker #1	None that we know of, but his great grandfather built the place	Yes
General worker #2	None	Yes
Historians	Yes	Yes

It seems this is typical for this sort of project around here.

The big news this week: the kitchen is gone and the wash house was saved!

On Monday, I went out to take the week 1 pictures and clear out some junk from the wash house.

Workers started Wednesday. We thought we'd have to tear down the wash house, but they managed to save it! It'll make a nice outbuilding somewhere.

They pulled down the kitchen/bathroom. So things are looking very different already.

Check out the week 2 photos. Here's a sample: