Tag: Yard work

Free House: Starting to get Empty

It’s been a while since I’ve done any work on the Free House. We got busy, and then we talked seriously about selling it. Had someone who made an offer, but then we had some inspections done, and currently, it would be difficult to sell the place as it is and get much for it. If we do decide to sell, we will probably fix some key things, like foundation and structure issues first. We had several people come to the house and walk through and make offers on piles of things they wanted to buy. That got rid of some stuff. Then our youth group was having a yard sale, so we let them go through and take anything that looked sellable.

Then, we just had piles of random things scattered around the house. Today we designated one room for thrift store give-away and started trying to get the other rooms completely empty.

We filled up another trailer full of trash and made some good progress in the downstairs.

We just have a back bedroom and the kitchen to finish the downstairs, which can probably be handled in another two sessions. Upstairs still has a ways to go.

Andy also has done some work on the outside of the house, taking down old screens and fixing some windows, clearing out more brush.

And one fun note, I salvaged an old couch and moved it to my front porch and made myself a fun sitting area. I personally cleaned the room where the couch had been so I knew it had only had old clothes on it and no signs of food or animals near it. Its cleaned up very nicely!

I really don’t want to sell the place. It would be so amazing to have a home that we could offer people in need.  Right now we are just taking it one little step at a time.

Free House: Outside Cleanup

Today is a lovely Tennessee Spring Day! Andy and an assortment of kids got outside and cleaned out some bushes and trees from the yard next door.

Here’s the before:

And then the after:

And all the brush at the alley waiting for a pickup, which fortunately our city does for free.

In other news, Andy did a job for a business opening up downtown. He got connected with the owner and found out she sells vintage clothing. He told her about our Free House and how there were several closets full of clothing that had been hanginging there for years. She came over to see what we had and ended up buying a nice big pile of stuff, so that was nice!

I’m glad spring is finally here. The warmer weather makes everything feel a little easier and all this brush cleared away makes the house feel a lot more approachable.

I’ll post more later!