Rancher perks up Picabo homes

Traveling the flat, east-west U.S. Route 20, approaching mile post 190, a driver’s gaze scans the rise of sage-covered hills, a glassy stream and cattle loping through bucolic prairie.

But most will miss the recent changes to the cottages and roofed trailers south of Picabo’s business district--the stores, silos and gasoline pumps huddled around Silver Creek Supply Co.

Picabo denizens haven’t missed it, though. Quarter-century-local Pat Millington’s touch on formerly ramshackle dwellings has been on their lips all summer long.

Façade-lifts

Millington’s residential fix-up projects are more a labor of love than of business.

She owns more than two-dozen Picabo lots, which really doesn’t add up to as much acreage as it would seem--many were platted for holding just single- or double-wide trailers.

For the past few years, she’s been cleaning up the seedy lots and restoring houses into what she considers "homes."

"I don’t want to have all fancy houses. I want to mix it up a bit," Millington explained at her Susie Q Ranch, a mile or so east of residential Picabo.

Millington’s peacocks scuttled aside from her truck, which was barreling down the Susie Q driveway on the way to her Davenport Street workshop in town.

The "high tech for Picabo" workshop is lightly dubbed "Longstory" after a phrase excusing lackluster performances and delays—"It’s sort of a long story."

"That means not everyone comes out and just does something," Millington said.

But Millington has just come out and done it. Climbing from her truck, the rancher waves up and down the street from Longstory and, stopping often to curse Open, her black mutt, describes a bunch of remodeling projects she’s completed.

"I loved the view here, so I bought all those lots, took the crappy trailers out, and buffed ’em out," she said, adding. "Can you believe you’re in Picabo, Idaho?"

Aside from the workshop and the office behind, there’s a small, shaded cottage and a simple cornflower-blue house marked by wooden "For Sale" signs on a front-yard tree.

Millington fixed that one up last winter, along with the beige one perched in a bright tangle of flowers and fruit trees next-door--her favorite.

"I wish people could’ve seen this house before. The yard was all full of falling down buildings and crap," Millington said. "Some friends of mine, a couple from Ketchum, bought this one."

In the same vicinity are a new, solid roof and log trellis capping a trailer and various other homes, out-buildings and rustic sheds spruced-up à la Millington .

Millington isn’t looking to transform Picabo into a ritzy bedroom community.

Her aim behind transforming run-down lots into the bright, modest family homes is to keep the properties limited to the same scale and modest price historically characteristic of Picabo.

"I don’t want to sound like somebody who came and said, ‘This Picabo place looks like shit!’" she said. "This is a little historical town. I want to keep the same flavor of what was always there."

A little variety is more what she was after for Picabo.

"I love old things and I restored these old buildings how they were. Maybe they’re not architectural masterpieces but they have charm and I love ’em."

Things are looking up elsewhere in the neighborhood, too. Millington pointed to others’ projects near the homes she fixes. There are a bright cedar fence, blooming gardens and new paint coating homes down the road.

"People on this side of Picabo are starting to care about cleaning it up," she said enthusiastically.

Overseeing these projects is a natural step for the graduate of Stanford University’s architecture and art history programs who rehabilitated about eight homes in Aspen, Colo. during her years just out of school.

That and time spent living on both coasts--including childhood on a family ranch in Southern California and high school at Miss Porter’s School in Connecticut--convinced Millington that Picabo was the place to spend the rest of her life.

"I love Picabo. I want to live here until the day I die," she said. "I know, people sometimes say, ‘Yuck, Picabo,’ but once you realize how peaceful and beautiful it is, you’re sold."

New kids on the block

Millington’s meticulous mending of down-in-the-mouth residences has drawn a new breed of resident to the area.

"It’s affecting the town, that’s for sure," Picabo lot owner Will Smith told the Idaho Mountain Express last August.

Millington’s nice homes are attracting people from out of the area to Picabo who might not have given the place a second look before, Smith said.

The change probably isn’t drastic.

Many Picabo residents still earn their living working on surrounding ranches and in local businesses.

Others, however, lead a commuter’s lifestyle. One man works for a building supply company south of Bellevue and another at a high-tech firm in Ketchum.

A couple, former magazine publisher-turned wood worker and fishing guide Mike Riedel and his wife, Vicki, a physical therapist, abandoned their Ketchum lifestyle for their current Picabo digs.

"They loved Ketchum," Millington said of the couple. "Now they couldn’t believe they ever lived there. Everybody who’s bought something from me loves it here."

Millington is tossing around the idea of pursuing a different kind of project, one which would cater to a more entry-level home buyer. Trailers can be bought and installed and a substantial roof and deck built around them for some-$20,000, Millington said.

"Where on earth can you buy a home for less?" she asked. "And where are the people who work for a living going to live?"

Millington is clearly proud of her work in the grid of homes and she plans to keep at it for years to come.