When Sierra Crees first brought her boyfriend, Chad Wythers, to the house on Seward’s Fourth Street, he was not impressed.
The stately three-story home built in 1917 was a mess. Previous tenants had left the place in disrepair, she said.
It was 2020, during the COVID pandemic, and Crees and Wythers wanted to move to Seward from Lincoln. Interest rates were low and houses were moving quickly.
“Every time we would go to an open house the agent would say, ‘oh sorry, someone just put in an offer’,” she said.
Then an agent they knew suggested a rental house his step-father was going to put on the market.
“This was worse than I thought it would be,” Crees said.
There were holes in the plaster walls, futons in the yard.
“Chad had just quit his job at a Lincoln law firm and ventured out on his own in Seward,” she said. He worked a lot.
Crees was a full-time student at Wesleyan University in Lincoln and had a job, too.
They did not have time for a fixer upper.
A love story begins
But they saw this house.
“It’s honestly a little bit of a love story with this house,” Crees said.
“I instantly saw all the potential of this house,” she said, noting the original yellow pine flooring, wainscoting, wood trim. A wall that could be removed to make a larger owners’ suite upstairs.
“I just fell in love with the house,” she said.
She did not expect Wythers, then her partner of five years, to feel the same way about it.
“I said ‘trust me’ and he did,” she said.
A big factor in the couple’s decision was that Sierra’s father, Scott Crees, lives in Seward. He is a Tenneco retiree and a jack of all trades, she said, and was willing to help with the much-needed renovation.
“That was such a giant leap of faith,” Sierra said. “It was an entire year of my dad showing up every day, all day and doing what I told him to do.”
They agreed about 97 percent of the time, she said, though there were days when she had to go sit in one of the boats in the yard for a bit to regroup for the work.
“We spent a year trying to keep the house as original as possible but having to make some upgrades to make it functional.”
She and Wythers moved in on June 21, 2021.
When she finished her degree at Wesleyan in 2022, Sierra went to Creighton University Law School, which meant she came back to Seward on weekends when she could. Wythers still works about 60 hours a week, she said.
But the two enjoyed living in the house. She graduated from law school last spring.
“I am 100 percent certain that when people were building this house, they did not think that some 30-year-old was going to come in and move this house,” she said. “I am obsessed with the house.”
Dreams of country life
But there was one other thing both of them had dreamed of as kids– Wythers in Geneva and Crees in Friend.
“We have this gorgeous house now but always wanted to live out in the country,” she said.
As Sierra neared the end of law school, Wythers was looking around.
“Chad spotted farm land by Pleasant Dale,” she said. “When I got to come back that weekend from school, we went out to look at it.”
She saw beanfields and a creek running through the land. She could see where a house would go, and a garage, and a horse barn.
So as much as they loved their Seward home, they started thinking about building on the land they had now purchased.
Chad’s uncle, Mark Wythers, reminded them that “it doesn’t matter what you live in as long as you are with the person you want,” which made sense.
But Sierra’s aunt, Linda Fry, told her how hard it was to leave the house she and her family built years before. That made sense, too.
“I would not be able to come down Fourth Street and see someone else living in my house,” Sierra said.
She and Wythers crunched numbers and filled spreadsheets.
Either way, they had to invest in a well, sewage and other utility lines, as well as a basement.
In the end, they decided to move to the land northwest of Pleasant Dale, but bring the Seward house with them.
“We have had both the good and the bad, but mostly it’s been great,” Crees said.
They worked with their friend, Tim Tieken – Tieken House Moving – to make plans to move this very large house halfway across the county.
On. Jan. 14, the day before the move, Crees said her stomach was in knots worrying about details as she studied for the bar exam she will take Feb. 24 and 25.
(The golden rule of preparing for the bar exam is not to move while you are studying, she said. “I have broken that rule 10-fold.”)
Home hits the highway
The house sat ready for the highway that night and before 10 a.m. it was making its way up Fourth Street to Highway 34, making a wide turn and being greeted by a line of utility workers in raised buckets, ready to pinch wires together to make sure the attic cleared them as the house moved out of town.
Traveling via Highway 34 to 252nd Road to Holdrege, then to 210th Road over Interstate 80, down Van Dorn and 182nd Road and then to A Street, the house moved steadily on.
“It was just such a surreal experience,” she said the day after the move.
There was anxiety before and during the move. Surprises along the way. Tears of relief at the end. And now the house sits on their land awaiting I-beams and a few walls to be installed in the basement that awaits it before it can be setle down until the end of time.
“I don’t know the adjectives to use right now,” Crees said.
She, friends and family watched the house along its path, wondering at one time if it was leaning a bit, being surprised by the number of spectators who came out to see it pass by both in Seward and along its rural route, and laughing at jokes offered up in timely fashion by her mother, Stacie Becwar.
They got an unexpected mid-day break on 252nd Road when the tree trimmers had to clear a bit more path for the house and Crees and her mother made a Pizza Kitchen run for the crew’s lunch.
The number of people involved was impressive, from the moving company to tree trimmers, utility workers and those who helped plan the route, Seward and Seward County law enforcement, all keeping an eye on the house.
Wythers, who had to be in court on the 15th, was able to watch the house pass over Interstate 80 during a break in the action.
“It was like the pope came into town,” Crees said of the attention the house received.
When she finally got out of her truck, where she spent most of the day, and into the apartment where they are staying during the move, she put a heating pad on her back and shed some tears of relief.
“I’m so excited that the house has been taken care of, “ she said.
The workday ended about 5 p.m. on the 15th, and Crees looks forward to getting into the house soon to see how well her plaster walls made the trip. She expected to have some exterior paint touchups to do, but “there is not a scratch on this house.”
She will stop thinking about her childhood experience of seeing a church being moved and ending up parked in a ditch for a long time due to low clearance issues.
She is not sure if she will get involved in the social media conversations about she and Chad’s house. There’s a surprising amount.
Crees will still worry about taking the bar exam in late February, spending days studying and completing the prep materials.
But soon, she will worry about the bar exam from their big house in the country, just like she dreamed.
“I will never have to miss a sunset again,” Crees said of their new rural homesite. “We are really, really looking forward to it.”
The love story continues.
