Senior Spruce Up Gives Home a New Look

A local widow returned Saturday to a home that did not look exactly as it did when she last stepped onto the grounds, before she underwent knee replacement surgery.   

A new coat of paint covered her house’s façade. The leaky roof was repaired. The front and back yards were decorated with new landscaping.

Lawn ornaments that once stood in that front yard were moved to the back and placed on a fresh bed of mulch. New fencing was erected behind the house.

“I couldn’t have asked for anything better,” said the widow, 79, as she sat inside the house.

All the work at the property, located in a neighborhood just south of New Port Richey, was donated to the widow in a project called Senior Spruce Up. It was spearheaded by the Community Service Council of West Pasco.

The Community Service Council is a nonprofit organization of professionals that provide networking opportunities and supports service agencies.  Much of that assistance has been through grants and donation collections.

Council members and a squad of people gathered Sept. 10 to complete the majority of the work at the widow's property.

Patch is withholding the name of the widow and her family at the widow’s request.

This year is the Council's first Senior Spruce Up, said Sero Singh, council president. The outreach committee conceived the project as a way to provide hands-on assistance. The group accepted applications from people 65 years or older who lived in West Pasco.

“Next year, we’d like to do two homes,” Singh said.

The recipient lives alone. Her husband died in 2006. The home was bought for her parents in 1967, and she moved in with her husband in 1988.

Before he died, the husband started painting the house. He never got to complete the work, a line near the rear delineating where his painting had been interrupted.

The widow has remained independent. She drives friends around. She is affiliated with a local Elks Lodge.

She recently laid out new tiles, four at a time, in her home’s front interior entryway and did work in the bathroom. Her daughter said the woman found weeding the grounds and then using her pool to be therapeutic.

She applied for the spruce-up because of her home’s leaking roof, she said. She was fighting water in the kitchen and living room.

The widow said she would have tried repairing the roof (which stemmed from an issue with the shingles around a vent) but couldn't get up a ladder. She said she told people when she was applying that she didn't care if the house was beautified, she just wanted the roof repaired.

On Sept. 6, she underwent surgery on her left knee.

Four days later, on a rainy morning, about the Community Service Council and its squad of volunteers went to the widow’s home to complete the improvements. The new coat of paint was completed in the following days, and further landscaping is to be completed.

Now, she can look out a window and see a backyard free of weeds. 

"It's just like looking out into a garden," she said.

Debbie Humphrey, a board member on the council, said the improvements cost $1,500 to $1,800 in supplies. The Home Depot Foundation contributed $1,000 of the money, the Pasco Aging Network kicked in $500 and the Service Council picked up the rest. Local companies, such as First Choice Roofing and Ken Sisco Painting, volunteered their labor.

The widow’s daughter, a business owner who lives nearby in Holiday, and 11-year-old granddaughter came out to help on Sept. 10. The granddaughter carried stepping stones and helped carry mulch and.

"If they were willing to do all this for my mom, I felt my family needed to be here," the daughter said.

The widow feels blessed, she said. She feels she has a purpose and things to do.

"I better get out of my seat," she said.