Every home comes with a story. And all homeowners have a tale or two, as well. But it’s not every day that homeowners actually make the home’s story. A romantic Vergas couple with a penchant for preserving their personal histories has created and re-created their own legend in the voyage that has become their home.
While preparing to retire from years of work as a civil engineer and a direct marketing sales rep in
It all began several years ago, when Monte and one of the couple’s sons were hunting for geese on an old farmstead south of Vergas that belonged to Monte’s grandfather. The curious men discovered a rustic log building.
“It looked like an ideal deer hunting cabin. Small. Old. And better yet, possibly a part of our heritage,” reminisces Monte. “It looked like it had siding, but when we got closer, we realized that it was all log.”
A bit of snooping on the 144-acre spread uncovered the start of a dream. Lover of history and all things meaningful, Lyla enthusiastically joined Monte in the adventure of turning this little old farmstead into their dream retirement home.
Harold Wallace had bought the property from Monte’s dad many years ago, so the first step was buying it back from Harold’s son, Walter.
“We originally considered building a stick home here,” Monte explains. “But between the high prices of materials and the lack of character in a new building, it just didn’t seem like the right fit.”
“Antiques are more our style,” says Lyla with a beaming smile as she glances at her antique secretary’s desk. “We’re drawn to the old stuff because of the stories that come with. Plus, we’re not afraid of hard work. It was great to preserve the history of this neat old place.”
Not long after obtaining the property, Monte and Lyla came across another abandoned log house nearby. The owners, George and Jane Christianson, told the Berends that they could have the structure for free as long as they filled in the hole that would be left behind. They had to change the roof pitch to match it with their existing home, but the story-and-a-half house was perfect for the second addition.
Relatively inexperienced in the home-building department, Monte and Lyla relied a lot on their common sense and their quest to maintain the integrity of the old home. They can tell you about each log that makes up the outside of the house and every piece of every component that’s part of the inside. Literally, the Berends remember each ounce of thought and effort that went into their home.
They started with a large shed in 2000, where they stored all of their possessions while they wintered in
“When we began salvaging this house, our son, who lives and works in St. Cloud with his family, came and worked every Thursday and Friday for three years,” says Monte. “He and I first used ice picks to randomly poke the old logs, testing for strength and rot. Luckily, quite a few of the logs were good and solid.”
Lacking the machinery of a construction company, the Berends often put their creativity to use. With Monte’s engineering background and Lyla’s concern with safety, the two found unique solutions to some of the logistical issues that arose.
When Monte was cutting out some of the rotted logs from the roof of the original structure with his chainsaw, he roped his waist, stretched the rope over the roof and down the side where he was working, and secured it to the bumper of a car. “I reminded my family, ‘Don’t you drive away now,’” Monte chuckles.
Searching for replacements for the partially missing roof, Monte and Lyla heard about a log house that had been dismantled and was being sold at a Perham auction. For just $25, they bought the rest of the logs for their house.
As they tore down the old Christianson house, Monte labeled each log with a little metal tag cut from aluminum flashing, each coded to tell where the log fit into the house. As he delivered each load of log with the tractor, he knew exactly where to drop them so that they wouldn’t need to be moved again. During assembly, everything fit just right.
Monte’s brother, Dennis, is also an engineer. Visiting the construction scene one day, he asked Monte how he was going to get the biggest, heaviest logs up to the top of the house. After admitting that he hadn’t thought that far yet, Monte was thrilled to see Dennis pull out a set of drawings. The pictures were complete with cartoon characters of Monte and his John Deere, and contained several views of a system Dennis had designed combining pulleys and cables with the tractor.
After a few test runs to make sure the parts they’d purchased were strong enough to be safe, they found a winning solution. The first set of hardware was not strong enough, so it’s a good thing they tested it first. Monte still shows off the drawings to anyone who asks.
After Lyla pounded out all the chinking (the mortar-like filling between the rows of logs) by hand, she insulated between the logs and then rechinked the whole house. When the new chinking was still damp, she scrubbed it with a sponge brush to achieve a rustic texture.
For the sake of low maintenance, the couple used cedar siding along the top of the home and oak logs all along the front. They chose the rocks that decorate the bottom portion of the home from their land, each one as unique as the next.
“Some people might think we’re a little crazy to do so much ourselves out of old materials, but we did go with new materials where it counted,” explains Lyla. “We bought all new windows and doors for energy efficiency.”
“And we do have a cleverly hidden satellite dish,” pipes Monte.
They designed the two-home-into-one-home project to enjoy a master bedroom and bathroom on the main level, along with an open, sunny kitchen and dining area, a generous three-season porch that overlooks
The living room is dressed in red oak — original wood from the farm. Monte took it to Ponsford to have it cut back in 1980, although at the time he had no specific plan for using it. Talk about unforeseen foresight. The couple used a whitewash stain to keep the natural look, while protecting the wood.
Tongue-and-groove poplar covers the ceiling in the kitchen and dining room. The skylights were a bit of an afterthought. “After seeing how much light the two covered porches cut out, we knew we needed to do something,” says Lyla.
“We did a lot of it as ‘feel as you go,’” Monte says. “By the time we were through, we built this house one and a half times. We learned many tricks of the trade — mostly the hard way, sometimes on our second or even third attempt.”
The warmth of the walls and ceiling melds well with the stamped concrete flooring that covers the main level. It looks like large stone tiles and feels nice on summer bare feet. The in-floor heat ensures that it feels just as nice in the winter. It has a custom look that you probably won’t find other places.
“That’s because Lyla taught the folks at Diversified Foundations a thing or two,” explains Monte. “After several test runs to try to get the right depth of color on some leftovers from the foundation, Lyla suggested the installer spray the concrete with water before using the acid instead of after using the acid. Sure enough, the colors came to life just as we’d hoped.”
Along the edge of the cozy living room, the Berends used the house’s original banister. They moved it to the other end of the house to open the layout.
In the upstairs bedroom rests a large wardrobe. When Lyla started re-finishing it a couple years ago after purchasing it an auction, she noticed some hand-carved initials hidden on the side. “It looked like a little kid had carved ‘MB,’” she says. “Who’d have guessed that a young Monte Berend would someday have this wardrobe back in his possession?”
The rest of the upstairs is filled with family history, including an antique trunk, beautiful beds, a quilted velvet bedspread and warm braided rugs. The interesting stories in this one cozy house easily could fill a book or two.
The project took a long time to complete by modern standards, and for many good reasons: The Berends did the majority of the work by hand. Plus they still wintered in
Rebecca Kurowski is a writer from Moorhead.
(Editor’s note: This is a reprint of an article from the August/September issue of Lake and Home Magazine,
