Lemont family builds igloo in backyard

LEMONT – While the recent cold weather has made some miserable, Jostein Alvestad has taken advantage of it as a creative outlet.

Alvestad and his family built a multicolored igloo in the backyard of his fiancee’s house in Lemont.

“I wanted something for the kids to play in, and it seemed like a really fun project,” he said.

Alvestad, a firefighter with the Elmhurst Fire Department, said he has been a winter outdoor enthusiast since growing up in Norway, where he said it is cold for about half the year.

He built a snow cave that his family slept in last year and was inspired to make the igloo this year after seeing pictures of a similar igloo online.

“I’ve never seen an igloo before in real life,” he said.

Alvestad said he created bricks by freezing plastic containers with water and food coloring.

He said when the weather was at its coldest, the brick could freeze in about eight hours.

Once the bricks were formed, he used a slush mixture as mortar to stick the bricks together.

His fiancee, Sarah O’Brien, along with both their children, helped with the construction process.

“With Jostein, I’m not shocked with his ideas,” she said. “He’s very imaginative. We both love to do fun things with our kids.”

Alvestad said they started building after Christmas, but they almost lost the project two weeks in during a warm spell.

But thankfully for him, temperatures soon dropped and, after about four weeks of build time, the igloo was finished.

He said the igloo is about 6-feet-tall, 10 feet in diameter and can hold a combination of 10 adults and children.

Alvestad already has inspiration for a winter project for next year.

He recently returned from a cross-country skiing event in Wisconsin.

“The party had an ice bar,” he said. “I thought that was different.”