Ragan House Renovation & Journey to Our Land
And what an adventure this will be!
When we decided to commit to this project - I knew it was something I wanted to document as much as possible. So much has already happened since it’s inception, and yet we really haven’t even gotten started! Let me share a little of our backstory…
We always knew that we’d want to raise our kiddos close to family and live a homesteading lifestyle. So at some point during the pregnancy of our firstborn, we began to earnestly pray about the Lord sending us back home to Nebraska. Nearly 4 years, the birth of twin babies, and much hard work and planning later, this God-sized vision for our family seems somewhat tangible now.
So here she is. The old gem we are working to restore and will have moved about 25 miles south to homestead on family land we are oh so grateful to have. We might be in over our heads with this prospect, but it sure has stolen our hearts already. This house is one of the oldest, built in 1890, that sits in a tiny town of about 24 people in Harlan County, Ragan is the name. When we found the location on our land, we started crunching numbers and figured the most affordable way to get a house out there was to find a house for next to nothing and have it moved. Since we don't live in the state at the time, my mother-in-law went on an old house hunt within our allotted move radius and this one jumped out at her. The neighbors were standing outside, so she hopped out of the car and asked if they knew who owned it. Just so happened that they had just sold the lot to their kids who only wanted the land! She sent us these photos of the finding a couple days later and I instantly knew there was something special about it.
After they did a couple walk-throughs for us, we discovered that it is in fact structurally solid, but the poor house was abandoned by hoarders in 2016 and apart from all their junk and a society of raccoons, has sat empty ever since. These are some of the first photos we took when we finally made it back to see the house ourselves.
Isn’t she grand! I hope you can see past the junk, damage, neglect, dirt, and grime. Yes even past all the raccoon poop on those nasty mattresses, and see the raw beauty that we see here. I think we're all a little like this house. Created, built to hold life! A home for the Maker. We too can get a little run down, cluttered up, and pooped on, but God sees past it. In fact, despite our dilapidated state, He's willing to get His hands dirty and move right in, if we let him. And He loves us too much to leave us like that. He gets right to work cleaning out the crud, restoring beauty, bringing in new life and I pray we can bring beauty and new life back into this home as well!
We’d love to have you join us on the journey to making the old Ragan House our new home. More to come!
