20 hours Ago By MARY JANE SKALA [email protected]
Back in 2010, the home of Norris and Lori Marshall was the site of the annual Cattlemen’s Ball, attended by 4,000 people. On Saturday, the Marshalls are opening their doors again, this time for the HelpCare Clinic Holiday Home Tour. This time, they have something new to show tour-goers: a barn built with wood from Lori’s grandfather’s 120-year-old barn near Elm Creek.
The Marshall home and barn, and a 12-year-old antique-filled home built by Dorothy and Steve Rogers, are just two of the eye-catching homes on this year’s tour, which raises money for the HelpCare Clinic. The stunning Marshall home is filled with garlands, wreaths and mistletoe, along with Lori’s collection of 40 Nutcracker figures, ranging from Christmas tree ornaments to soap dispensers to salt and pepper shakers. But it will be the barn that tour-goers talk about.
It has a 15-foot tree, a red sleigh, life-sized reindeer and a 10-foot-high Santa. The Indigo Bungalow will enhance the decorations for the tour. The tall stone fireplace in the Marshall barn is an eye-catching spot for Christmas conversation.
Fifteen stockings dangle above the massive stone fireplace, creative greenery beautifies the three bathrooms, and there’s a huge cowboy boot, too, a souvenir from the Cattlemen’s Ball. The barn also has floor-to-ceiling windows, an expansive area for socializing, a stone chimney and a loft with children’s games. There’s also a very practical institutional kitchen, designed like the kitchen at St.
James Catholic Church. It’s eye-catching, too. Plenty of light fills the barn on the Marshall property, used for social gatherings.
It will also be the site of the HelpCare Clinic Holiday Home Tour preview party Dec. 6. The barn is where the Marshalls entertain, something they love to do.
When they dedicated it on Labor Day weekend 2023, they invited 200 people to the party. On Thanksgiving Day, they fed 70 relatives there. Lori and Norris, owner of Blueprint Engines, talked about building the barn for 10 years.
The family used to vacation at a Colorado dude ranch, and “I wanted to do something like that,” Lori said. “But we talked about it so long our families thought we’d never do it.” The barn of Lori’s great-grandfather, near Elm Creek, was built 120 years ago.
When it was torn down, the Marshalls used its wood on interior walls of their new barn. Work began in 2022. They tore down the sagging old barn on the property north of Elm Creek where Lori grew up and used a lot of the old barn wood on the interior walls of this one.
A picture of that old barn hangs on a wall. The Marshalls moved to the country from a home in Kearney in 1998 with their four children, now adults. They have nine grandchildren ranging in age from 17 to 7.
“I grew up outside of Elm Creek, and I always thought I wanted to live in town, but after we were in town for a while, we decided we wanted to live out of town,” Lori said. Lori Marshall stands beside an antique kitchen cabinet, a family heirloom now in the barn she and Norris built in 2023. Because the Marshall home was on the Holiday Home Tour 20 years ago, the couple has added a pool and a garage, as well as the barn.
What does she like best about the house? “Everything,” Lori said. An old telephone. A 16-piece Christmas village.
An old cigar stand, refinished. Those are just a few of the antiques that can be seen at the home of Steve and Dorothy Rogers at 2301 Talmadge St. Built 10 years ago by Chris Holtz, it was just the second house in that neighborhood in 2014.
“I had lived in a house on a pond in Cozad, and I wanted water,” Dorothy said. “But it was pretty rough when we came out here,” she added. They bought the lot in 2012 and put in their own well and septic system since it was outside city limits.
Dorothy and Steve Rogers stand in their foyer beside a picture of the farmhouse where Steve grew up, south of Kearney. His mother painted the picture. It was their first and only home.
They were married Nov. 30, 2013. Dorothy was a widow, and the couple brought special items from their lives into the house.
“We didn’t have a lot of money after we built this house, so we worked to make things work,” Dorothy said. Hanging on the wall in the foyer is a painting of the house on Ravenna Road where Steve grew up. It was painted by his mother, who loved to paint.
This antique cigar-cigarette table sits in the Rogers’ great room. The little ashtrays pull out for the convenience of whoever sits beside it. Dorothy Rogers refinished this piece.
There’s a cigar/cigarette box that belonged to Steve’s great-grandfather, born in 1891, who lived in Seward. “I sanded it and painted it to match the TV,” Dorothy said. She also painted her oak end tables and coffee tables and re-stained the tops.
“That one piece was probably a dresser at one time, but my grandfather kept it in the wash house. He kept his coveralls in there so he could change and not bring dirt into the house,” she said. “I refinished it and stripped it down and put a walnut finish on it.
We have both old and new pieces. I like old and new together,” she said. ABOVE : Dorothy Rogers created this sink from a piece of granite taken from the counters in the bank where her first husband worked.
It had been stored in a shed in Cozad. LEFT : Fetching ornaments, including this wagon that belonged to Dorothy Rogers’ son Heath, hang on their Christmas tree in the foyer. In the bathroom is a washstand that also belonged to Steve’s great-grandfather.
Dorothy stripped it down, sanded it and applied a Minwax walnut stain. She created a sink from a piece of granite taken from the counters in the bank where her first husband worked. It had been stored in a shed in Cozad.
“The sink isn’t very big because we didn’t have much room on the top,” she said. Only one drawer can be opened, because plumbing apparatus fills space behind the faux drawers. Fetching ornaments, including this wagon that belonged to Dorothy Rogers’ son Heath, hang on their Christmas tree in the foyer.
Just as fascinating as the antiques is the Christmas decor, like the 16 pieces in the Christmas village sitting high on kitchen shelves. They were gifts to Dorothy from her first husband. The first was a replica of the church where they were married, and he added a piece every year, most with personal connections.
Like her furniture, Dorothy found many of her holiday treasures on the Junk Jaunt, Indigo Bungalow, The Rustic Patch, thrift stores and garage sales. The Rustic Patch will assist with the tour decorations. The home will have three or four Christmas trees and other family memorabilia.
Tour-goers will also see an old telephone. She grew up on a farm between Gibbon and Kearney, and “it probably was in the old house,” she said. It no longer works, but it’s a fetching conversation piece.
The HelpCare Clinic’s 2024 Holiday Home Tour will be held Dec. 6-7. It will feature five homes, including one with a large barn for entertaining.
The Friday ticket includes a 5:30 p.m. reception, followed by the tour from 6:30 to 9:30 p.
m. Cost is $50. Tickets are limited.
The Dec. 7 tour ticket is $25. Tickets are available at HelpCare Clinic, 3015 A Ave.
, 308-224-2392, and: Home Within, 2210 Central Ave., 308-455-8239 Divas at Kearney Floral. 210 W.
21st St., 308-234-1987 Rustic Patch, 2110 Central Ave., 308-870-0518 Central Mercantile, 2206 Central Ave.
, 308-455-0484 Tickets can be purchased at each home on the day of the tour, or online now at helpcareclinic.org. A $5 charge will be added to online tickets.
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