City, Habitat crews join forces to rehab house

A month ago, a photograph of D.B. Williams' house showed what was wrong: layers of blue tarps covered the roof, nailed down by 2x4 slats and an old tire; the sagging front porch was propped up by a long 2x6; and water had rotted the southwest corner of the porch.

Hurricane Charley blew off shingles in 2004. Williams, 81, climbed onto the roof and stapled them back, but a few weeks later, Frances blew off more.

"He put a blue tarp on his roof," Sebring code enforcement officer Joe Romanik said, "and every few years, he added a fresh tarp."

That didn't keep the roof from leaking. Water ran between the walls for five years, especially in the back room. Alan Ball, Highlands Habitat for Humanity's construction manager, said the house really wasn't livable anymore.

For a couple of years, the neighbors had been complaining about the dilapidated house and the refrigerators and major appliances that littered the carport and yards at 1041 Evanston. Williams mowed the neighbor's yards, and in gratitude, they gave him more mowers.

Finally, Romanik acted. He assembled a crew of 20 friends, family, building official Ed White, and volunteers from their departments and Habitat for Humanity.

They hammered away at Williams' old house, tearing off the shingles and the rotten wood. On the roof went strips of new aluminum, and the front porch - knocked off its base years ago by a car - was shored up with new wood.

"The front porch is solid now," Ball said. "There's a new front door. It was about to fall off."

About the only thing keeping the add-on back room together was termites holding hands. Ball's crew removed the walls and built an outdoor deck instead.

Romanik came over one day and pressure washed the peeling paint from the house, and now the exterior wood has been repainted.

"It took some outside-the-box thinking on their part," said Alan Ball, Habitat's construction manager. "Ed White paid for the roofing permit out of his own pocket."

Habitat mostly builds houses, but about two dozen times this year, they've built wheelchair ramps or helped rehabilitate houses that helped seniors with accessibility and safety issues.

"We want to prevent oldsters from getting hurt," Ball said.

Williams, by the way, paid for two-thirds of materials - the wood, the paint and the aluminum for the roof. The back yard is still literally full of junk, but Williams has promised to sell it for scrap.

On Wednesday, the work was finished.

"It's wonderful," said Williams, a farmer and turpentine maker from Georgia who made boxes at the packing plant and picked fruit after he moved to Sebring. "I don't even know how to attempt to thank them. This place looks the best it's ever looked."