Re-Building the Brown House

Re-building the Brown House

By Simon Van Dyken

“I think we should buy that house next door and fix it up.”  My dad said one night at the table. That’s where it all started.  This house needed a lot of work and we knew that it would take a lot of time and a lot of money to make it look nice.  Our plan was to re-model both the inside and outside of the house so that my grandparents could come and stay up here for the whole summer because they did not like the 90 or more degree weather everyday in Arizona.

My parents took a little while to talk about the idea of doing this job and then they finally asked, “You guys ready to work and fix that house up next door?”  I’m guessing we all said yes, because not long after my dad bought the house.  I remember when they bought it, I was really sick and could not go and look inside of it when everyone else was.  I didn’t get to see the inside for a little while longer after that because I could never get out of bed.  My dad bought the house in late spring or early summer, which was a perfect time because now we could get right to work.  My dad’s plan was to start on the outside of the house and then when it got colder do the inside.  

There was a lot of work of work to be done on the outside.  We had to cut down at least twenty four trees, put new shingles on, re-side the house, level the whole property off with new dirt, take down the old shed, landscape, and many other small things.  My dad called up Perry Slagter, who does tree work, and asked him “Would you be willing to cut down twelve big trees at our new place?”

Perry happily responded, “Yeah, I can do that.”

We cut down twelve of the smaller trees and then Perry did the bigger ones.  We also ended up doing the shingling and siding by ourselves which took a little while, but eventually we got it done.  The landscaping and yard leveling was done by I&M Landscaping from Willmar, who made it really nice.  The last thing that was done to the outside was the grass.  We planted new grass in the whole yard and filled the yard really good.  

When we bought the house we knew that we were going to have to do a lot of work on the inside of the house.  The main level needed a new kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, family room, and many other things.  The bathroom and kitchen were quite small, so we took the wall down in between them to make the kitchen bigger and then moved the bathroom over to a bedroom.  The kitchen was totally redone and the bathroom now has way more room than it did before.  The bedroom and living room did not need a lot of work done to it.  They needed some walls painted, the floor redone and then a couple other little things.  The upstairs was remodeled the same, but not until the following year.

Re-building this house and making it look nicer was a really fun thing for my family to do and we were looking forward to doing it for a long time.  My grandma has thanked us so much and now she has a place to stay.