Smith Cottage Renovation

Some of you may be aware that one of our cottages had a small kitchen fire in the last quarter of 2021. Instead of a setback, we chose to see it as an opportunity! An opportunity to renovate one of our houses with the intent of addressing functionality and aesthetics. While we certainly want to be good stewards of your support, we also want our campus to be more than “just a children’s home”. We want our residents and our houseparents to be at “home” and for our houses to have the functionality and comfort of the houses in which most all of us live. So, through the generosity of our supporters, the skilled labor of our maintenance staff and house dads, and a few local contractors, we spent the winter months slowly making this house into the ideal home on our campus. We spent approximately $40,000, mostly in materials, and slowly did much of the work ourselves. We remodeled the kitchen, bathrooms, and flooring throughout and installed new appliances. The local Rotary Club graciously gave us a grant for new beds and dressers which we are preparing to order along with some other new furnishings. We hope that over the course of the next few years we can slowly bring each of the other houses on our campus up to the “standard” we have set by this one!

— Gary Hicks, Executive Director