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Drivers in the east- and westbound lanes of Interstate 90 may have been startled by a two-story house being transported over the bridge between Luverne and Magnolia Wednesday morning, Dec. 23.
No one was more apprehensive of the travel than the home’s new owners, Scott and Lisa Remme of Luverne.
“It was very nerve-racking, exciting and scary all at the same time,” Lisa said.
Since August the Remmes had been making plans to move the 1950s farmhouse from rural Steen to its final destination in Magnolia Township east of Luverne.
The 20-mile trip began Monday, Dec. 21, when house movers Berghorst & Sons of Hull, Iowa, prepared the building for travel.
The 28-by-42-foot, two-story structure was the childhood home of Glen Boeve, whose parents, Art and Henrietta Boeve, purchased the five-bedroom house in 1961.
The home provided one amenity the family didn’t have before the move.
“When we moved from (Hull) Iowa, that home didn’t have any indoor bathrooms,” Glen recalled.
The new Minnesota home had two: one upstairs and one on the main floor.
For more than five decades, the house was home to three generations of Boeves, the last of whom was Glen’s son Matt, who recently moved into a new home constructed near the family farm.
During the same decades, the Boeves’ cattle operation also grew, bringing the feedlots closer to the farmhouse. Flies, a cramped farmyard and stress of a remodeling project prompted the Boeves to give the home away.
“We were hoping someone could use it,” Glen said.
For the Remmes, the home offered the character and charm that a new structure couldn’t. The move-in home also hastened the timeline when the Remmes could move into the remodeled home, which they anticipate to be the summer of 2016.
Until then, plans call for the farmhouse to be extensively remodeled and include the adding of a family room, garage and wrap-around porch.
“It will pretty much look like a new house,” Scott said.