Builders usually had two questions for Jim Briden when he explained his plan to park a 20-ton (18 t) antique steam tractor in his new family room.

"Are you married?" Then, "Does your wife know about this yet?"

"I’m married to a man that’s just always outside the box," Lynette Briden said with a laugh, sitting on a couch under a Christmas tree and tractor that both stand more than 12 ft. (3.6 m) tall.

Jim Briden’s 110-hp (82 kW) Case tractor was one of 50 the company built in 1913, and one of only five restored and intact today.

Briden said he became interested in old tractors as a child. He finished the restoration on the Case tractor 20 years ago, after six years of work that led him around the country, borrowing parts from other owners so he could have replacements cast for his machine. He and another steam-engine aficionado bought the tractor from a British Columbia saw mill, which was using just the boiler and engine for power.

Now its sole owner, Briden shows the machine at the Western Minnesota Steam Threshers Reunion in nearby Rollag, where collectors of antique farm and construction equipment meet every Labor Day weekend.

The tractor runs fine, although it needs 350 gallons of water to power one hour of work.

The tractor had been stored in Rollag until about a year ago, when the Bridens moved to a ranch house near Sabin, about 12 mi. southeast of Fargo, N.D., and began planning to add a family room.

"The room kept getting bigger and bigger until there was room enough for everything," Jim Briden said.

To support the tractor’s weight, 3- by 5-ft. (.9 by 1.5 m) footings were sunk into the ground beneath a concrete floor. The floor is 6 ft. (1.8 m) thick under the tractor’s large iron rear wheels, which carry 18 tons (16.2 t) of its bulk.

A 13-sq.-ft. (1.2 sq m) door in the wall is camouflaged on the outside with the same blue siding as the rest of the addition. Inside, the door is painted the same dark green as the rest of the room.

A neighbor brought over a modern tractor to push in the old Case. At 11 ft. (3.3 m) wide and 12.5 ft. (3.8 m) tall, it fit inside with inches to spare, Briden said.

"I’m sure this would give Martha Stewart a headache," Lynette Briden said. "How do you decorate with a 20-ton piece of iron in your living room?"

But the red-and-dark green tractor blends in well in the family room, which is a study in old things put to new use: The lights that hang from the 16-ft. ceiling came from a small Clay County church; a cast-iron spiral staircase salvaged from Fargo’s demolished water plant rises to a loft office.

Briden said his wife has often been asked what she was thinking to allow the tractor in the house.

"I have friends that have a lot of stuffed deer heads on their wall," she said. "Everybody has their thing."

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