Many hands, much work
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Toolbox
By David Delcore TIMES ARGUS STAFF - Published: May 18, 2009
ORANGE – Elsie Reed doesn't have a little dog named Toto – just a 14-year-old cat named Tabby-Jo – but the 73-year-old Orange woman does have at least one thing in common with the lead character in "The Wizard of Oz." Just like Dorothy, Reed says, "There's no place like home."
Right now, Reed's without a home, but there's going to be a happy ending just like in the movie: Her tiny abode on Spencer Road is undergoing a central Vermont-style version of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," thanks to a team of volunteers.
Constructed on a poorly drained lot at the base of a steep hill, the home Reed's parents built back in 1946 had seen much, much better days when she finally abandoned it last week, placing both her keys and her trust in the hands of volunteers led by two men from the Berlin church she attends on a regular basis.
From crumbling floors and sill rot to mold and mildew caused by years of spring runoff pooling around the little house, the woman's dilemma caught the attention of members of the local Seventh-Day Adventist Church last year.
Initially, the plan was to obtain and renovate a trailer that could be placed on the lot after the house was demolished and the drainage problems solved.
However, the mobile home that was eventually donated needed more work than originally expected, and placing it on the property raised a separate set of challenges that prompted Ty Rolland and Nathan Knowles to take a second look at Reed's house.
"We decided to fix it," explained Rolland, who owns Blue Ridge Construction and, with Knowles, is serving as the point person for a project that began in earnest Tuesday.
Since then a crew of volunteers, including a handful of Rolland's employees and six students from the church-run Central Vermont Academy, have been hard at work. They have demolished two badly deteriorated additions, gutted the remaining 400-square-foot single-story home, and trucked off two 30-yard Dumpsters filled to the brim with debris.
They have poured footings for a new 200-square-foot addition, used an excavator to deal with the drainage issue and started interior renovations.
Heading into the weekend, the walls and the ceiling had been insulated and Sheetrocked, new electrical service had been roughed in, and plans to construct interior walls, expand the kitchen and upgrade the bathroom by installing the home's first-ever shower were firmly in place.
"We're hoping to be substantially complete by the end of this week," said Rolland, who said a number of area businesses have contributed to the project.
"People have really stepped up," he said, ticking down a list that ranges from Allen Lumber, Barre Electric and Casella Waste Management to Dimmick Waste Management and Lucky's Leasing and Storage.
Dimmick loaned a portable toilet, and Lucky's offered a huge storage container in which Reed's belongings are being stored on site.
According to Rolland, Builder Specialties is contributing windows and cabinets, paint is courtesy of Sherwin Williams, the exterior doors have been donated by Harvey Industries, Morrison & Clark and Delairs Carpet Barn are tag-teaming on the flooring, and S.D. Ireland donated the concrete.
Jacob Gouge of Gouge Electric, who was at Reed's home Friday, said he was happy to offer his expertise when approached by Rolland to handle the wiring.
"If God gives a talent and some extra time, I don't mind sharing it," he said.
Ditto the students in Knowles' class at Central Vermont Academy, who are fulfilling a requirement that they perform a weeklong "mission" much closer to home than many of their classmates who traveled to Mississippi.
They weren't complaining.
"We're helping an old lady rebuild her old house," said Torin Daum, 17, of Marshfield. "That's pretty good."
It doesn't get any better, according to Kristina Kaltz, 18, of Barre.
"It's awesome how we're fixing this house up so that she can have a safe place to live for the rest of her life," Kaltz said.
Not that Reed, who is staying with church members David and Loretta Santos in Northfield, was complaining. She wouldn't.
When she returned with her husband to the town where she was born and raised, the couple lived out of an old school bus that is still parked next to what is now her home.
"In the winters it got kind of cold, but that was our first home," said Reed, who recalls building the newly demolished addition years later and eventually taking over the house when her mother died in 1990. Ten years later Reed's husband died on Christmas Day, and for nearly a decade she has struggled to keep up the little house that provides shelter for her and Tabby-Jo.
"I guess I deserved better than I had," Reed said when asked about all the fuss that's gone into fixing up her old house.
Reed, who is eagerly awaiting her homecoming, vowed to take good care of her new and improved house.
"I'm too old to be young and too young to be old," she said. "I just want to go on living and make the world a better place in my corner of it."
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