Tanya Ouellette was shopping at the corner store when she overheard a conversation about homeless people living on the frozen lake.

“Those aren’t homeless people; that’s us,” Ouellette said.

She and her husband Kevin spend night after night each winter with all the comforts of home – a full kitchen, wood floors, surround sound, two televisions, a wood stove, a bathroom complete with a shower (no hot water) and a doorbell. Their home just happens to sit on a foot of ice.

“I have the best of both worlds — ‘American Idol’ and ice fishing,” Tanya said.

“People come through the door and they say, ‘Are you kidding me?'” said Kevin, who has been working on the ice palace for the past eight years. “It’s my little clubhouse.”

The Ouellettes spent 28 straight nights in their ice shack on Sabattus Pond last winter. “We loved every second of it,” Tanya said.

So far, they have enjoyed 11 nights on ice this winter. “We have not been home for three days and there are no phone messages because everyone knows we are out on the ice,” Tanya said.

When the Ouellettes stop in at their home in Lewiston, they don’t allow each other to sit down. “We run home, take a shower, feed the fish and are out in one half-hour, tops,” Tanya said.

“We eat better out here (on the ice) than we do at home,” Tanya said. “It’s nice to be out here and cook anything you want.” They store staples in a propane refrigerator and cook on a three-burner stove.

The one thing Tanya doesn’t cook is fish. “My husband hates fish,” Tanya said. “I can’t even open a can of tuna fish.”

“But I love catching them,” Kevin said.

Originally, the fish house was 12 feet long. “That’s back when it was an ice shack. Now it’s the Shangri-La,” Kevin said. Eventually, it grew to 16 feet, and now stands at 24 feet.

“It’s a work in progress,” Kevin said. He recently finished putting oak trim around the windows. He would like to generate his own power, rather than using a portable generator. He has been working on a small wind mill and dreams of putting a solar panel on the roof. “It would be nice to be done, so I can start on a new one,” said Kevin, speaking of his desire to build an even nicer winter home.

“He has been doing this stuff since he was knee-high to a grasshopper,” Tanya said. “Kevin grew up building club house after club house and this is his way of still doing it.”

“It’s just me being a bigger kid,” said Kevin, a 38-year-old graduate of Lewiston High School.

Kevin digs graves in the summer and plows snow in the winter. “Never thought I would marry a gravedigger,” Tanya said. Between winter storms, Kevin fishes and tinkers on the shack. “There is always a drill and saw going on while Tanya is at work,” he said.

Tanya, 30, is an education technician at Sabattus Primary School. Half of her 4-minute commute to work is driving over the frozen lake.

The Ouellettes’ shack attracts many visitors. They keep the porch light on at night and have built an ice rink for the nearby kids to play hockey on while their parents fish.

“Fishing to me is having everyone around, family and friends,” Kevin said. Tanya keeps a journal and every person who visits gets their name in her book. “The only problem is there are no girls out here,” she said.

But she still loves it. “Out here, it is hard not to smile,” she said.

The Ouellettes live with no cable, no Internet and no credit cards, so they can worry about catching fish rather than paying bills. “We live a very simple life to do this,” Kevin said. “Our priorities are a little different.”

The number of nights the Ouellettes will spend on the lake this winter will depend on the ice beneath their bedroom.

“It’s a sad day when this thing comes off the ice,” Tanya said.

Warm temperatures and heavy rain Monday forced the Ouellettes off the
ice Monday and Tuesday nights. “We just weren’t comfy with the
conditions of the lake. We like to be 100 percent sure,” Tanya said Tuesday
night. “It was just atrocious last night with the wind. We
walked out there and it was just awful. We couldn’t even stand up.”

The Ouellettes won’t be off the ice for long, though. “We’ll be going back out tomorrow night, for sure,” Tanya said.

During the winter, Kevin and Tanya Ouellette spend more nights in their 24-foot-long ice shack than they do in their Lewiston home. The “Shangri-La” has a loft bedroom, slide-out dinner table and a step-down kitchen.

The stairwell on the right climbs up to the loft bedroom. Below is a step-down kitchen — complete with a refrigerator, sink and three-burner stove.

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