The fireplace in the living room of the home , along with great views out of a pair of patio doors .
The couple , who recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary , have built a lifetime of memories , and two stunning homes , just a few short minutes from downtown Custer .
“ We had been looking for quite a while ,” says John about the 40 acres of bare land they bought in 1997 .
“ One of the things that drove me to it , and there was no road in here yet and there was a herd of elk laying down in the grass . It was a nice piece of property ,” he says of the site that the couple would build their first home on . Most of the land was thick with trees and the Fejfars devoted their energy to building what they thought would be their forever home , the lower home , on a more cleared part of the land . Like their upper home they now live in , the lower home was constructed out of structurally-insulated panels or SIPS , that the couple put together themselves .
“ You send the company your plans and then they build the panels . They ’ re four feet by however high your ceilings are , “ Ione explains . “ You kind of put them together like tinker toys , sliding them together and putting them all the way around . They ' re all numbered . They have the cutouts for where you need a window or a door . And they ’ re super insulated .”
“ In each joint at the end there ' s a 2x6 to fasten each panel together ,” adds John .
The Fejfars scratched out the lower home ’ s design on paper , looking at it and changing a few things and then looking at it again . They agree the design was simple yet boasted a full basement and 4,000 square feet .
The two had virtually no help in the building process , although they did need a crane to lift a giant beam across the lower home ’ s center .
“ Then we had a few friends occasionally when we needed ,” says John .
The couple lived in the lower house for 20 years . In 2010 the pine beetles began hitting their acreage hard .
“ The bugs hit us every year for about eight years . The worst year we had to take out 400 trees from the bugs ,” before it began to taper down , John explains . But with the bugs and the thinning of their land came a view the couple had never seen before , one that can only be described as spectacular . That view , and Ione ’ s desire to remodel the kitchen in the lower house , led
myblackhillscountry . com the Fejfars to wonder , could they build another home on their own ?
“ I like to bake and we had a pretty small kitchen down there because we had just retired and said ‘ well I ’ m not gonna do that much cooking .’ Wrong . I didn ’ t have a big kitchen . We didn ’ t have a big enough pantry .”
Ione found herself walking up and down stairs from the main level to the lower level several times a day , and it drove her crazy . John didn ' t want to live in a home with the mess of remodeling so the two began to create a plan for an upper home on the property , one that would take advantage of the view they had discovered above the lower home . And like the lower home , they set their sights on building it with their own hands .
From virtually every room in the upper home the Fejfars built , you can see mountains : Coolidge , Black Elk Peak , and Calamity Peak are the backyard of this meticulously-designed , one-level retreat , that John and Ione built at the age of 65 .
The build began in 2017 , and the Fejfars completed the footings and foundation that same year . They wintered in the Hills that year shoveling snow and pushing what they could off the concrete with a 4-wheeler blade .
When they got everything enclosed they began to work inside , pulling wires , putting in the plumbing , hanging sheetrock . Both say they have had virtually no formal housebuilding training , although John says he learned “ the basic stuff ” during his job managing the American Presidents campground outside of town .
The upper home sits on the edge of a cliff , built literally into a rock formation .
The hardest part of the build , they both agree , was the roof of the backyard deck .
“ You couldn ' t get back there with equipment very easily ,” said Ione . “ We rented a telehandler for a month to put up the trusses ,” says John . The couple dealt with a near sheer drop off . “ I was sitting there praying the whole time ,” Ione says , “ You had this big long hose and your nail gun and you ’ re up there in this little basket and this machine is on the ground almost tipping ,” she described with a slight laugh .
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