FAIRFIELD — Eric and Melissa Miller are settling into their new house southeast of Fairfield, overlooking Eric’s business just down the road at Southeast Iowa Diesel Service.

The home is located on Queenscup Avenue, a stone’s throw from where Eric grew up, in the house his parents reside in to the northeast.

Eric attended Fairfield High School and graduated in 2002. Melissa is an Iowa transplant, having grown up in Shreveport, Louisiana. The two met at a bible college in Rock Island called Bible Missionary Institute. Eric said he only attended the bible college one semester before switching gears to study diesel at Indian Hills Community College, and later found his own business.

Eric said he has always prided himself on figuring out how things work. For instance, he’s been tinkering with machines since he was a boy, and tore an engine apart when he was 7 years old to see how it functioned. After he graduated from college, he and his dad started Southeast Iowa Diesel Service in 2005, and Eric has been in charge of the business ever since. His dad has focused on managing the family farm, but recently Eric has taken on that, too, though he leaves the livestock to his dad.

“I really enjoy the crop farming, but not the livestock,” Eric said. “You have to take care of those animals seven days a week.”

Though Eric and Melissa were only in school together for a short time, they stayed in touch and eventually wed in 2004. Melissa said it didn’t take much convincing to get her to move to small-town Iowa because she fell in love with the area during college.

“I had to make a trip to Chicago a few weeks ago, and I was thinking, ‘Please take me back to Fairfield. I like my two-lane roads,’” she laughed.

Before moving into their new house in January 2022, the couple lived in a smaller home on Queenscup. The home had one bathroom to share among two adults and three children.

“We didn’t want to live there forever,” Eric said of the old home. “We looked at several houses for sale, and decided we’d rather build a house.”

Keosauqua Lumber drew up the plans for the Millers’ new house. The couple wanted to be sure that the new home would comfortable fit their family of five, plus regular visitors. For instance, Melissa’s parents will come for a week at a time to see the grandkids, and her father is especially fond of fishing at the ponds on the farm.

The Miller’s oldest child is 14-year-old Piper, and their other two are 10-year-old twins Blake and Brenna. The couple wanted Blake and Brenna to have their own rooms in the new house, since they were previously sharing one.

One thing they stressed in the floor plan was to have an open layout conducive to large gatherings.

“We wanted to be able to work in the kitchen while still visiting with people in the living room,” Melissa said. “We also wanted lots of windows for natural light.”

The house is mostly on one level, with one room over the garage. Melissa said she was adamant that the new home not include a basement.

“They just collect clutter,” she said.

“And she grew up without a basement,” Eric said.

“It doesn’t bother me not to have a basement,” Melissa said. “In Louisiana, if there was a tornado, we would just go to an inner room.”

Eric and Melissa said they love their location, since they have plenty of room with a big backyard and they’re not too close to their neighbors. At the same time, they’re less than 15 minutes away from Fairfield.

“It’s not a trip at all. It’s easy,” Melissa said.

Eric was the general contractor on the house, and most of the contractors he hired to work on it were people he had done work for at his business. He said it was nice to be dealing with people he had a track record with, people he could trust.

“It went really well,” Melissa said. “All of the guys we used, we liked really well.”