Home sweet corn crib

      There are several new homes being built in the area, but the home of Travis and Kristy Roth in rural Washington is a bit different from the typical new house.

      The Roths, along with Kristy's father, Stan Skinner, converted their Ginkgo Avenue corn crib into a house. The idea originated with Skinner. Kristy laughed as she recalled that it took a bit of convincing to talk her and her husband into carrying out the idea.

      "We kind of thought he was crazy at first because we couldn't see the finished product. But then he made a lay-out of the idea, and it started to work out," said Kristy.

      "They thought I was crazy," agreed Skinner. "I'd thought about it for a couple of years."

      Transforming the corn crib into a house was one way to keep the building. Kristy's grandfather built the crib in 1952 to store grain.

      "We were living in Keota, and we always said we would like to move out into the country or build a new house. We had gone to Menards and got the blue prints for a house we really wanted to build," said Kristy. "We got to thinking about it, and thought, 'well, this is going to cost a lot of money for the driveway and the digging and all of that stuff.' My dad said, 'Well, you know, I've always thought about turning that corn crib into a house.'"

      In order to convert the corn crib, Travis started out with a pressure washer to clean up the building, despite the fact that it had not held grain for a couple of years.

      "I spent a week in here with a pressure washer, and sprayed and sprayed and sprayed," commented Travis. "There was a lot of destruction before we could actually start building."

      They took off the side doors and jackhammered the driveway out, poured the basement and built end walls onto the house. After that, they went to work on the rooms.

      The layout of the Roth's home echoes the original construction of the corn crib. For example, the area running through the house, from the front door, through the living room and into the kitchen was once the driveway where wagons would pull into the crib. Along that area are three lights which hang from the ceiling; the electrical work for the lights is enclosed in three grain chutes which were attached to three grain bins on the second floor of the home. The grain bins now serve as the upstairs bedrooms. The sides of the bins were taken off and used as flooring.