Roberts Family To Buy Habitat House

Jeff Green | Dec 04, 2013

Jessica and Chris Roberts, and their children Konner and Paige, will be moving into a new home in Tichborne sometime in the spring of 2014.

They are the family who has been chosen by Habitat For Humanity to purchase the home that is under construction in the hamlet of Tichborne. The Roberts put in an application to Habitat early in the summer and learned in the early fall that they were one of three families on the short list for the home.

“We didn’t let ourselves think we had much of a chance,” said Jessica, speaking from the modular home that the family is currently renting, when contacted early this week.

Even though the Roberts found out that the home was going to be theirs on November 22, they couldn’t tell anyone about it before the official announcement, which happened one week later, on November 29.

It so happened that the 29th was easily the coldest morning of the season so far - so cold that when everyone went into the unfinished, and unheated, home to warm up after the photo-op, it was even colder than it had been in the sunshine outdoors.

However, two people at the event who seemed not to notice the cold were Konner and Paige, and there was a reason for that.

“We didn’t tell them about it until we drove up to the house that morning,” said Jessica. “We just said, here is one of our Christmas presents, a new home to live in. They were pretty excited; they even picked out their bedrooms on the spot.”

However, although the official opening took place on the 29th, the selection was not really a secret. That’s because Chris is one of the managers of the Mike Dean’s grocery store in Sharbot Lake, and when he walked into work the day after finding out, “the first person I saw took one look at the smile on my face and said ‘you got the house, didn’t you,” Chris related.

The shell of the house is up, and the heating and electrical systems are going in this week; however all of the interior finishing, the drywall, flooring, etc. is still to be done. One of the expectations that Habitat for Humanity has is a commitment of 500 hours of labour from the recipient family. In return they will not need to come up with a down payment and will receive an interest-free mortgage for the full value of the home.

“Chris is ready to start working on his days off and my father and other members of our family all have building experience so we will be ready as soon as we get the go-ahead,” Jessica said.

Ron Ruttan, the relatively new CEO of Habitat for Humanity Kingston, said that a number of local contractors have provided materials and labour to the project at very low or no cost to help the project along the way.

“And now that we have such a good family lined up we are hoping to see even more community involvement to help us get this house finished,” he said.

To volunteer for the Tichborne build, call 613-548-8736 or go to Habitatkingston.com and click on the volunteer button at the bottom of the home page.