The Power of a Vision

If you Start with a vision you can make your dreams come true!

Here is what we fell in love with. We thought, “Hey, we can fix this place up and live here!”

My wife and I lived near Minneapolis MN and got a little tired of the rat race. We lived in a nice house in a nice neighborhood but we felt the itch to create our own lives and not live a life where we were simply plugged into a system so we did the unthinkable!

In March of 2020, we bought a ramshackle barn complete with a “raze or repair” order on it! Yippee! The barn was on the outskirts of a little town in Northeast Wisconsin called Oconto. Our friends and family thought we were crazy!

The barn was in severe disrepair and every window was cinder blocked up because the previous owners raised veal there. The barn was chock full of wet hay and there were veal stanchions from wall to wall.

We thought, “Oh, this would be a perfect spot for an outdoor wedding venue! We could have a fire table where the feed bunker is, we could make a koi pond in the old shit gutter! We could think of a cool name for the place! What should we call it?

After some family discussion, someone - we’re not sure who - suggested we all it the “Oconto Riviera” and the name stuck. My dad asked if he could design a barnyard sign, so he took an old piece of tin into his basement, fiddled around with a few font styles and came up with this retro-looking sign complete with Vegas-style lights!

And then there was this . . .

What to do with the manure trough in the barnyard area? After cleaning out a few truckloads of debris, we thought, “Oh man, wouldn’t that make a great koi pond! We could have a spillway in the middle and pumps on both ends!” The old man got right to work and drew up a plan (shown below).

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Fearless American Dream

My wife and I bought our 1880's house in 1980. The roof leaked, the furnace was a fire breathing dragon, the siding was falling off, the cast iron sewer pipe was rotten, the wiring was knob and tube, and the house had one foot in the grave. We were just a young couple and took a chance.

That first night we slept on the floor of the living room in sleeping bags listening to a raging thunderstorm all the while hoping the plaster ceilings weren't going to cave in, but we had a dream. We wanted to bring the house back to its former glory.

We're in our 60's now and have zero regrets. Our original vision was a powerful motivator and every minor project we finished gave us hope we could restore and preserve our house. We just want to let other young couples know that dreams and visions are powerful motivators and that it's possible to transform a property and preserve it for future generations!

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