Bungalow in paradise in northeast Iowa

Drive to the outskirts of Fayette in northeast Iowa, meander around a bend, and you'll see the small house Wayne Barness, 72, and Sharon Danielson, 73, call their paradise.

Their bungalow is tucked between rolling hills, with a wide porch overlooking a natural spring bubbling out of the hillside. The couple bought the land in 2010 but didn't start living there until 2014 — it took Barness four years to remodel the house.

He spent those years renovating the property, beginning with pulling out brush and overgrowth from around the house and gutting and rebuilding the structure from the floor up. The interior had low ceilings and musty carpet before he started.

'This is a place nobody really wanted,' he said.

When clearing the brush, he discovered the spring flowing from the side of the hill behind the house. He dug a pond for the water to flow through, and completed the picturesque scene with a foot bridge.

Inside, he put in new ceiling beams running the length of the rooms, new flooring and new walls, giving the home an airy, open feeling. Throughout the one-story house, none of the walls reach the ceiling, and picture windows line the living room, which flows into the dining room and kitchen.

The house is filled with reclaimed and upcycled touches. On the ceiling, tracks and ropes from old barn hay trolleys have been transformed into one-of-a-kind light fixtures he built himself. The wood floors actually are old school bleacher seats, as are the kitchen cabinets. The picture windows lining the living room are second-hand. The walls are 18-inch old growth wood beams, reclaimed from Iowa barns. A corrugated metal ceiling under a new roof completes the rustic aesthetic.

'We wanted it to have the barn look,' he said.

The material for all this came from a variety of sources — Habitat for Humanity ReStores, friends in the Amish community who let him know when they're tearing down a barn, and his work as an auctioneer — he runs Barness Auction Co. in West Union, where Danielson also works.

Their house is filled with taxidermy animals and antiques he has collected over the years — things like a gleaming black cast-iron stove in the center of the kitchen, which the couple use as a unique table and cupboard. Every piece in the house is unique, bringing its history into the home, even if many of the stories of that history are lost to time.

That means not everything is perfect and spotless. The bleacher seat floors have imperfections, holes filled in with putty. But that's part of what Barness likes about them.

'It's just not perfect, but I don't like things to be perfect too much,' he said. 'I just use what I've got.'

Danielson jumped in with her own assessment.

'It's comfortable. Everything is comfortable,' she said.

Barness did all the renovation work himself — he once fell off the roof — and has been taking on projects like this almost his whole life, one after the other since he was in his early 20s. Asked why he does it, he can't put his finger on the exact reason, beyond the deep satisfaction it gives him.

'I like making things better,' he said.

Outside, the wrap- around wooden porch and a stone patio offer the perfect vantage point to watch the deer that come out of the woods, the beavers that swim down the stream and the birds that fill the air with song.

'We've got privacy, it's peaceful, we've got nature,' Danielson said. 'It's paradise.'

l Comments: (319) 398-8434; alison.gowans@thegazette.com