Family bounced around, then home to Greensburg

It took some fixing up and sweat equity, but Mike and Tamera Kaltenbach have a home in Greensburg again.

They lost their rental home in the May 4 tornado. That first night, they stayed with a teacher Tamera knew.

The next month, they stayed in Haviland with their friends Karen and Bill Gibson, who opened up their home to the family. The home to five ballooned to a home to nine with the Kaltenbachs and their two sons, Garrett and Dylan.

"We're still very good friends," Karen Gibson said, despite sharing close quarters for a month.

From June to October, the Kaltenbachs stayed in a rental home in Haviland, unsure where they would land permanently, though they hoped it would be Greensburg.

On Oct. 10, they moved into a home the previous owners gave them. The twister had damaged it, but it was salvageable.

The Kaltenbachs used insurance money to fix up the house and also got some help from volunteers.

They put on a new roof, carpeted two rooms, installed seven windows, redid the kitchen, pulled paneling off the basement walls and put up Sheetrock. They also put in a deck.

"I had to paint every room in the house just to make it me," Tamera said.

The living room is a powder blue; the hallway is an almost lime green; the computer room is blue and lemon yellow.

"And our basement is Harley (Harley-Davidson) orange," she said.

Now, she said, it feels like they're home.