Boss renovates dying worker’s home for £60k before raising enough cash to buy it for widow
50 volunteer plumbers, builders and gardeners worked for seven days straight to give the two-bedroom house a DIY makeover
A KIND-hearted boss secretly revamped a terminally ill employee's home and then raised £58,000 for his grieving widow to buy it.
Fencer and landscape gardener Addam Smith assembled a 50-strong team of workers to refurbish cancer suffer Keith Ellick's house after he revealed he had just 12 months to live.
Dad-of-two Addam then set up a crowdfunding page to raise thousands of pounds so Keith's widow Sasha Hogan, 28, and son Leighton, six, could afford to buy the two-bedroom council house.
The mother is set to finalise the deal in the next few days under the right to buy scheme set up by the government.
Addam was devastated when, in January 2016, his friend and colleague Keith, 42, told him he had throat cancer.
Addam said: “But all he talked about was how Sasha and Leighton would manage without him. Keith was a proper grafter and he worked so hard for me in the 10 years I knew him.”
The gardener quickly got to work, recruiting volunteer workmen on Facebook to give Keith's home, in Lincoln, a makeover.
Plumbers, builders and gardeners - fuelled with bacon butties donated by wellwishers - worked for seven days straight to install a new kitchen and bathroom, lay new flooring, redecorate every room and landscape the front and back garden, the Mirror reports.
Keith was away with Sasha and Leighton at a holiday chalet and had no idea the team were slaving away.
The revamp, which would have cost £60,000 in labour and materials, was finished before the couple's wedding in the Lincoln register officer later in May.
Many of the builder attending the wedding and Keith's RAF pals from his former regiment even performed a surprise guard of honour.
Tragically, Keith lost his fight with cancer and passed away in March.
Addam has now applied for his team the Band of Builders to be given charitable status so they can continue helping others workmen who fall on hard times due to injury or ill health.
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Grieving Sasha said: “I know Keith is resting in peace because Leighton and I have our own home which was something we dreamed about together when he was still alive.
“What Addam and the Band of Builders did for Keith and us was amazing and I know it meant the world to him to know the people he loved were being looked after. The house is still a beautiful memory of the time we had.”
Dad-of-two Addam said: “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. Knowing Sasha and Leighton are going to have a roof over their heads was what worried Keith the most.
“The week we spent doing the house was the most rewarding thing ever and I think I speak for the rest of the lads when I say that.”
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