The first house salvaged by Dennis and Nelda Werkmeister was 20 years ago. The date isn’t certain, but they do remember – it was HOT! The house on Commerce Street is recognized as the (Vernel) Riedemann house. The salvage was not intended to be a first step into a sprawling, intense business. It was intended for Dennis to get some wood to do small wood projects. They couple did two houses to do woodworking. They quickly outgrew their garage and bought a building. Then they needed to make some money from the woodworking,
Some how word spread and calls started coming from around the area for salvaging structures. “95% of the salvage was within a couple hours. We were lucky in that respect,” said Dennis Werkmeister. “We never had to make calls. We were always busy. Now, we are more busy than we want to be.”
They grew from the garage to the old lumber yard building west of the car wash, then the old car wash. We built the connector building. When the building on the highway came available we bought that. Nelda added, “We always wanted highway frontage.” Once there we put up the hoop building and added the annex. The quonset was redone to create more room. The downtown (part of the former Muller Furniture building) was acquired. It was intended for use as a workshop. Shelving was built making the buildings look like lumber yards. The business really is a vintage lumber yard. The still have some original shelving at their first building.
They’ve had employees over the years, each with different strengths to the business. But mostly they assisted with the salavages – whatever was needed. For awhile they looked at plat maps to find possible jobs, but that wasn’t needed long.
Recalling how ND MillWerk Salvage and Sales developed, they can’t recall when or just how the name came about, their first major customer was Kelly and Luanne Nieuwenhuis. They wanted colonades for their new home to be more like where they had spent years prior and loved. “It looks very nice,” said Nelda.
Nelda built ND MillWerk Salvage and Sales first website.She took a class and laughed. “It never happened,” she said. She hired a student, perhaps from NCC and got the first site up. They did some shipping but have limited what items they will ship. The time and cost of finding and actually shipping has made shipping prohibitive.
In their “heyday” they would salvage up to 25 structures each year. They’ve done school buildings, houses, churches, even a theater. The “School on the Hill” near Ida Grove is memorable for Nelda and Dennis. The recounted how they made the location of the structure the place where buyers could come and pick up the parts they wanted or had ordered. It saved a lot of time, handling and expense. That job had a crew of 6. This job provided a lot of parts for new homes being built in the area and the large volumes were advantagous.
They are still busier than they want to be, but it is still somewhat enjoyable. And they are the most organized they’ve ever been. They have a good varied inventory and a good customer base with a lot of repeat customers. It’s been built mostly by word of mouth.