“We decided this house didn’t come with a maid, so we knocked out a door into the room and opened it up to the house,” Jeanette said. “I asked one of my boys what he thought the room was going to go to and he looked at me and said ‘outside.’ I actually turned it into my laundry room, why not have it handy to where all the bedrooms are?” Moving Day “It took us two days travel to get here,” Jeanette said. “The movers left the house at the Alcester Steak House the first night and finished the trip next day. There was really only one way to go over the interstate. If there was a bridge or something, they had way to lift the house to get above the railing.” However the trip was something the family enjoyed watching. “We would always try to get ahead of the house so we could see it coming down the road,” she said. “As we got closer to home we started to get a bunch of friends and family watching with us. You had to be in the right spot. Coming down the last little bit of the road they asked us if we wanted to ride on the porch, not something they would let us do today.” The house was moved the second week of August and the Hubert’s moved in on December 3. “They were just finishing the floors as we moved in the back door,” she said. “We have always pushed things just a little. We lived over there until the day we said we are moving. The basement wasn’t finished yet, so we did that over the next year. “ Over there, is the family’s original farm house, which is now used by the hired man. “Our farm is right here, we wanted to be close to the farm, but I was getting tired of the mud and flies,” Jeanette said. “On the other side of the trees is the farm. If you look out that window you can see it. But now I can landscape it how I want it and not have to deal with the farm.” Prior to moving in, Jeanette said the family spent a lot of time patching the lathe and mortar walls, as well as insulating all the walls. “Twenty years ago, wall paper was in style, so we just wallpapered over it,” she said. “Since then, we have redone all that. I have learned how to skim coat over wallpaper. I can’t imagine how many layers of wallpaper are actually on the walls. But since we knew what was underneath it, I tore anything lose off and skimmed over it. You would never know.” Jeanette is proud that the family was able to maintain all the original woodwork in the home. “I did refinish it all the very first year,” she said. “The main floor is Bird’s Eye Maple out of Omaha, the rest of the main floor the walls are Oak and upstairs it is Fir wood work.” She also noted that she listened to people when they suggested how to refinish updates to the home, such as when they lowered the ceilings to accommodate the new heating system. “I appreciate what people told me, because I had never done a project like this,” Jeanette said. “Like one guy in town told me to make sure to do a flat ceiling, because that was at the time everyone was doing popcorn ceilings, and smooth was more traditional. I am so thankful for that suggestion. It was important that you saved what you could and stayed true to the home.” The family was also able to save all buy one of the decorative windows original to the home. “The windows that have cut glass or beveled are original to the house, but the other windows have been updated over the last few years,” she said. “One thing was damaged during move in day; the cut glass window on the door was broke. We had both doors open and the window caught it vLIVING continued on page 22 HERVOICE MAY/JUNE 2015v13