Growing up in Iowa, Steven and Ashley Evans knew all about the local fire station in Cedar Rapids because it was right by the high school they both attended.
“We always dreamed we’d live here one day. It went up for sale and we thought we’d come check it out,” Steven, 40, tells CNBC Make It. “When we tell people we live in an old firehouse, everyone around here knows exactly where it is and which one it is.”
The station was first built in 1960 and converted into a home by its previous owners in the 1980s. In 2016, when the Evans first saw it was for sale, listed for $125,000, it had been abandoned for years and was covered in black mold.
“We had no intentions of purchasing it because we didn’t have the finances at the time,” Ashley, 33, says.
In 2016, she was working as a dermatology nurse, and Steven had a job working with adults with special needs and owned six rental properties. They owned a house they paid $65,000 for, Ashley says, but “my parents actually had to cosign on the house because we just couldn’t afford it. ... It was $550 a month, and we were just struggling.”
