Extreme makeover: Presque Isle County edition
Jesse Chappa wanted to live on family-owned property along 638 Highway in Pulawski Township since he was eight-years-old, but his plans to build a dream house with a view of Lake Huron were scaled back when the cost of building materials came in at close to $200,000. Chappa came up with blue prints from the different log cabin projects he worked on with employer Blue Water Log Homes of Rogers City. He took the prints to the lumberyard to price the materials, before coming away with sticker shock. That is when he decided to renovate a dilapidated granary, which is two years shy of becoming a six-decade-old roadside landmark. The building looked like it was one strong wind gust from toppling over, or would be best suited for a weekend fire drill for local volunteer fire fighters, but Chappa believed it to be a solid structure, starting with the roof and the rafters.
?THAT WAS the best indication we had, if we had any kind of hope of saving anything,? said Chappa. It was about one year ago Jesse and his fianc?e, Rachel Schurig, started gutting it, thus starting a extreme makeover that would rival any reality television show. ?Everybody said to tear it down and put in a modular,? said Chappa. ?For a lot less I was able to do this. I did 90 percent of it myself.? The work continued feverishly through the spring and into mid-summer. The couple, who are announcing their engagement in this week?s edition of The Advance, lived in a camper parked on the property on weekends, until the project was completed just before the Nautical Festival in Rogers City last July. That is when they were ready to move in. ?Nobody believed it at first,? said Chappa. ?Everybody who walked in the door thought we were crazy.?
There are no more signs of the once colorless exterior, but Chappa left some of the characteristics of the old building, such as the floor in the kitchen area on the third level and the master bedroom on the top floor. He had to patch a hole in the floor of the bedroom where the granary chute had been, but Chappa used some of the wood from the original floor. ?I wanted the heritage to be somehow be salvaged. I thought it had a neat layout,? he said.
WHAT PLEASED Chappa the most about the final product was the utilization of space. ?In most houses that we build, these big log homes with big vaulted ceilings, they are beautiful and impressive, but there is a lot of wasted space,? said Chappa. ?Here you have the high ceiling but it is part of the walkway. Part of the walkway encompasses the entertainment center, which is built in, and tucked away.? In a laundry room, in an area where the roof slopes down and there is not enough room to stand, Chappa decided to build a folding table. An upright freezer has a closet all its own, in the same area where the roof slopes down on the north side. Chappa, who is extremely proud of the project, found a way to save a bundle of money, build a beautiful place for his family, preserve an aging structure, and give people something more eye-appealing to look at along 638 Highway. The house is located on the east side of the road, at the top of a hill, just north of Hincka Road.