The former District 31 schoolhouse is being transformed into Ray and Jeanette Walter's home. (Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Daily Gazette) [Click to enlarge]

"A little bit of cosmetics," and Ray and Jeanette Walter will have a new home southeast of McCook.

Ray, with help from Rich Hauxwell, is putting the finishing touches on a remodeling project in the two-story red-brick home that once was the Red Willow County District 31 school house.

Ray, above, sits on his back deck. At night, he's impressed with McCook's lights across the cornfield to the northwest. (Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Daily Gazette) [Click to enlarge]

Classes in the school ceased in the late 1980's, and a McCook couple, Candy and Mitch Farr, remodeled it into a home several years later. The next owner, Gilbert Wilson, tore down a neighborhood barn and used the lumber to build a deck on the north side of the school off the second level and a double garage with storage on the west. Ray says that most of his project has been "cosmetics. We haven't changed a lot."

The breezeway between the garage and the lower level of the schoolhouse will be Ray's computer room, and has been equipped with a functional barn door that will lead to a flower garden and courtyard.

During remodelings, the classroom in the lower level was transformed into a sewing room, bedroom and the master bedroom suite. The master bedroom's updated and stylish bathroom is located where the schoolhouse's original boys' restroom was, Ray said.

The lower level also includes another updated bathroom and a cedar-lined store room with a basket system and storage under the stairway.

A new eight-foot front door will be topped by Ray's own stained glass creation. The original schoolhouse light fixture hangs at the top of the foyer.

One of the schoolhouse's original double doors located at the top of the stairs has been moved to swing into the completely reconfigured bathroom decorated in black and white and gray, with old-style Chicago floor tiles and a tin ceiling. An eagle-foot bathtub that Rich found in a pasture was soda-blasted and painted to compliment the room's color scheme and the ceiling tiles.

The upper grades' upper-level classroom is now the kitchen, dining room and living room awash in sun-drenched desert colors of dusty yellows and terra cotta. Huge banks of (energy-efficient, updated) windows, surrounded by freshly-painted bright-white woodwork, let sunshine fill the single great room. Ray's own art work will hang on walls in the wide expanses between tall, slender single windows.

C hocolate-brown planks of bamboo warm the floors. The project has been "green" whenever possible, Ray said, thinking "recycled" and "recyclable," and reusing what they could.

"It's been mainly a redecorating project," Ray said. "We've gotten the major things done ... there's just some dinky things to do yet." Rich added, with a grin, "Basically, we're done. He can dink for the next five years ... "

Ray said, grinning, too, "It's been a fun project. Little by little, we've changed the place to make it our own. Now, we can't wait to get moved in. Know anybody who can help move furniture?"