Built in a year of Saturdays

By Wiley Wood

A year ago, it was just a hole in the ground. The long-vacant lot on Hillside Street was bought by Habitat for Humanity of Northwest Connecticut in 2009, but there was still nothing more on it than the remains of an earlier cellar hole.

Today, a house stands there. And on November 16, those who built it and those who plan to live in it gathered in the mostly finished living room for a dedication ceremony.

In the front row were the Sitter family—Douglas, Donna and their three children—who will move into the house as soon as the hardwood flooring is laid and the kitchen counters installed. Douglas Sitter, a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army National Guard who served in Iraq and works at Specialty Minerals in Canaan, has contributed several hundred hours of labor to his house already. Donna Sitter is a certified nurse’s aide for Companions & Homemakers, a Connecticut-based home healthcare agency. The two older children, Jessica Constantine and Caylin, attend the Botelle School, while the youngest, Jericho, is still at home.

Also present were representatives of the Wuori family who owned the lot until 2009. “We bought it in 1950,” says Ann Wuori, the family matriarch, “and paid taxes on it all those years.” They planned to build a house there and excavated a foundation, but circumstances intervened and the Wuoris raised their five children elsewhere in Norfolk.

Habitat for Humanity is an international organization that creates low-cost housing in partnership with the owners, who contribute both money and sweat equity. The Northwest Connecticut affiliate, which serves six towns in Litchfield County, has been in existence since the 1990s and built 10 houses in the area. This is the first to be built in Norfolk. A number of Norfolk residents serve on the board of the local affiliate, including Erick Olsen, who was the organization’s president when the Hillside Street lot was bought.
Habitat fronts the construction costs, then sells the house to the partner family at zero interest and zero profit, usually on a 30-year mortgage, with monthly payments under $1,000. The building lot will remain in Habitat’s possession.

Much of the materials for the three-bedroom house were donated. Building progressed mostly on Saturdays, when groups of volunteers would show up to work under the direction of a construction supervisor. Members of the Hartford affiliate of Habitat for Humanity came in strong numbers. Students from the Hotchkiss School pitched in, and a number of Norfolk residents also took part on a regular basis.

Kate Johnson, a Norfolk architect who, with Pete Anderson, designed the 11,000 square-foot house, describes the organization as surprisingly nimble. “If a change needed to be made, if an item needed to be bought, we didn’t need to always get the lowest bid, we could just do it.” This she attributes to the fact that so much was already donated or provided at cost.

Mark Burke, a Norfolk resident and the chairman of Habitat’s building committee, agreed. “As long as we stayed within the construction budget of $150,000, we had a fairly free hand in dealing with contingencies as they came up,” says Burke. He expressed amazement at the willingness of people to donate labor and materials. “People came from all over the place. They would spend the day working and then leave. Sometimes you would see them again, sometimes not. The electrician was a guy from southern Connecticut who donated all the fixtures, all the wiring, all the permitting. He would show up with his crew and do it, and he never accepted a dime for his work.”

The dedication ceremony included a blessing by Reverend Olsen, music by board member Kirk Sinclair, the traditional offering of bread, salt and wine by Martin Johnson, a volunteer, and a speech welcoming the family to Norfolk by First Selectman Sue Dyer.

“It means a lot to us to live in a small, close-knit community,” says Douglas Sitter. Asked when he planned to move in, he said he hoped it would be by Thanksgiving.