- A historic home in Lincoln, Kansas was being demolished until a group of locals intervened.
- In August 2022, Julie and Eddie Flores won the house from the local group and business owner.
- Flores explained how she’s renovating the house on a budget of $250,000.
In 2022, Julie Flores, 32, a part-time accountant and stay-at-home mom from Kansas City, Missouri, got the calling of a lifetime: She and her husband, Eddie, had won a 20th-century home in Lincoln, Kansas. a small Midwestern town of about 1,000 in the Smoky Hills region of the Great Plains.
Though the couple haven’t gotten a mortgage, they’ve spent $105,000 to renovate the home so far, which includes a $45,000 fee for physically relocating the home to another Lincoln lot that cost them nearly $3,000. To control costs, they’ve set a tight budget of $250,000 and plan to do most of the work themselves.
Flores, a Lincoln native, first heard about the historic home while visiting the city in January of last year. The more than 100-year-old house gained notoriety after local residents created a special committee tasked with saving the run-down house.
It was a community effort to prevent its demolition by the owner, Lincoln County Hospital & Health Care Foundation, who were planning an expansion of the hospital.
After applying and facing stiff competition for the home, due in part to a social media campaign by a member of the city’s economic committee, Flores and her husband were selected as the new owners in April 2022.
The family moved to Lincoln in January as renovations continued, an experience they write about on the Nursing Back to Life blog. Until they can move into the house, they rent one about ten miles away and still own their own home in Kansas City, which they periodically rent through Airbnb.
“We haven’t looked back,” Flores told Insider. “We’re just fixing up the house and participating in the community,” adding that the family hopes to fully relocate by the end of 2023.
Flores explained what the family has accomplished with the renovation so far.
