After Roxanne Milner’s children graduated, and she and her husband finished the traveling they wanted to do, she felt like they were beginning a new chapter in their lives.

“I had always wanted to redo an old house,” Milner said. “What better way to start fresh?”

A friend called and told her about an old farmhouse on Dewolf Road in Iowa.

“When we were on the phone, I could hear her husband in the background saying she shouldn’t waste my time because the owner would never sell,” Milner said.

Nevertheless, Milner and her husband, Martin, drove to the house as soon as they could, and Milner peeked through a couple of windows.

“Vines had started to take over,” Milner said. “One of the windows was busted. The screens were torn. But when I saw the floor, the walls and the swinging kitchen door, I told my husband, ‘I am buying this house.’”

Her husband’s response: “You have lost your mind.”

It was April 2015. The Milners contacted Floyd Dewolf. The home had been his grandparents’, A.J. and Ethel Dewolf. Floyd lives next door. His uncle was the last person to live in the house. However, no one had lived in the house since 2000.

The Dewolf family originally came from the Midwest in the early 1900s and homesteaded the property, according to Floyd. They farmed – mainly rice – and raised cattle, eventually accumulating thousands of acres. The original two-story farmhouse built in 1915 burned to the ground.

“The house was rebuilt during the ‘30s,” Floyd said. “I remember the lumber grandpa used wasn’t new. It was during the depression.”

The floors, walls and ceiling are heart pine, so hard screws had to be used instead of nails.

When Floyd showed the Milners the inside of the house, Martin Milner pronounced it “solid.”

The Milners made an offer.

However, Floyd had been under the impression the Milners wanted to buy the house and move it.

“I wouldn’t dream of moving this house,” Milner told him. “To do so would mean taking out some of the beautiful trees and I plan to have some of those oaks registered.”

Saying good-bye to the house would have been bittersweet. Parting with both house and land that had been in the family since the 1900s was a tougher quandary.

“There are nine of us involved in the A.J. and Ethel Dewolf estate,” Floyd Dewolf said. “In 2012, we put the property into a couple of LLCs.”

A few family members had thought about restoring the place, but had busy lives with no immediate plans to do so. Floyd remembers family get-togethers in the house that included big dinners with his grandfather playing the fiddle and an aunts at the piano.

“They had five girls and five boys,” Floyd said. “The girls slept in the house and the boys slept in the bunkhouse.”

Floyd also remembers hot meals being stowed in the car’s trunk and driven out to the rice field workers.

Milner grew up on a rice farm. The practice of loading pots into the back of the car to take to the field was growing more rare when she was young, but she also remembers those days

Milner, according to her husband and Floyd, can be very persuasive. She communicated her vision for the house. She told Floyd the door would always be open to any family member who wanted to visit. She promised an open house when the work was finished.

“She didn’t know it at the time, but I checked up on her and the people I talked to said if she said she is going to do something, you can depend on her to do it,” Floyd said.

“When she was saying what she wanted to do with the house, it almost sounded too good to be true,” Floyd’s wife, Carolyn, said. “She told the truth.”

Floyd talked to the rest of the family and got their O.K. Some were reluctant, but all finally agreed that making use of the house and bringing it back to life was better than letting the house run down.

It was July 2015. Getting the approval from all the parties involved and completing the paperwork took almost four months. The work on the house would take eight months.

“That house has been waiting on you a long time,” one of the neighbors commented.

The Milners loved the rustic farmhouse look and wanted to keep the integrity of the interior. They cleaned the surfaces. Ceilotex, stapled directly to some of the ceilings, was removed. They applied a clear coat sealer to walls. They painted some of the ceilings, a wall in the bedrooms and a bathroom floor.

The plumbing was replaced. The old knob and tube wiring was replaced. However, the house had once been powered by battery. The lumber from the battery house was used for flooring in the new master suite addition, which includes a large bedroom, large bath and large walk-in closet.

Milner had finally found the perfect home for the items that she’s been dragging from house to house: her grandfather’s buffet, her grandmother’s prayer chair, and a great grandmother’s rocking chair. The house also welcomed her grandmother’s quilts, an old church pew and a window from Dr. Uncle’s old home.

“He was a well-known pediatrician in this area for a long time,” Milner said.

Burlap rice sacks from her father’s rice farm are displayed next to burlap rice sacks from the Dewolf rice farm.

Milner calls her cabinetmaker, Mike Estes, a God send.

“I had an idea and he made it work,” she said.

Milner’s husband told her it felt like he was living with Thomas Edison for a while. Milner created lamps from deer antlers, old chandeliers and an heirloom lampshade.

She used an antique sewing machine cabinet for one bathroom sink base, an antique buffet in another bathroom and an old barrel in a third.

She didn’t create barn door hardware. She actually used hardware from the old barn. Reclaimed architectural salvage from a burned church found a home in the master suite. Old beams from the barn were used in the bathroom.

Rodeo pictures and gear decorate some of the rooms. Milner’s daughter was a Reserve State Calf Roping Champion.

Every bit of lumber salvaged from the house and barn was stored and workman had to check the available salvaged lumber before buying new.

The house is wholly Milner’s vision and creativity.

When she finished, she invited everyone to see it. Seventy people attended. Many were from the Dewolf family. A few tears were shed, but according to Milner, the tears were bittersweet.

“When a house is a home, it feels like a living being,” Milner said. “It’s warm. It feels like love, and I get that response from most all who come through the door. I’d say all the items I’ve collected from many generations are pages of our families’ stories. Now those stories are bound together into one — at the A.J. and Ethel Dewolf Estate.

The Dewolf-Milner farmhouse is surrounded by old growth live oaks. Milner plans to have some of the oldest trees registered through the Live Oak Society. (Rita LeBleu / American Press)