BUILDER Bill McDonald has overseen the construction of hundreds of houses in the Hunter, but barely any are ever built in just 21 days.
It takes a mighty effort to raise a brand new, fully furnished four-bedroom home in three weeks, and that is exactly what will take place at Medowie from Monday.
Hunter tradies and suppliers will band together to voluntarily build a house as part of the fourth Build for a Cure, which raises funds for the Children’s Cancer Institute.
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The house, to be built by McDonald Jones Homes on land donated by the McCloy Group in The Bower estate, will be auctioned in October to raise a predicted $650,000.
“Today, the challenge that we have is almost 1000 children and adolescence are diagnosed every year in Australia with cancer,” Anne Johnston, of the Children's Cancer Institute, said.
“Around 50 of those will be in the greater Hunter region.
“And even though we’ve done so well in improving survival rates through medical research to about 80 per cent, still about one in five children are dying from their disease. In Australia, that’s 200 children every year.”
Mr McDonald, founder of McDonald Jones Homes, said “every penny” earned from the sale of the house would go to the Institute.
“The outlook of where the house is, it will be sensational,” he said. “You’ll look out from the alfresco area across the road to the the national park. You’ll never be built out.”
The project has been scheduled to achieve the quickest possible build.
“Instead of just one tradesperson working on the frame, we might have 12 or 14 carpenters and they’ll have that finished in a day,” he said. “That’s what we try to do, bring everybody together so that there’s not one burden on someone to provide something more.”
The McCloy Group have donated land for a second year. Chairman Jeff McCloy said the project would not be possible without the variety of contributed services.
“”It’s absolutely crucial,” he said. “They put their time in for nothing, the suppliers who supply the bits and pieces, and of course carrying the burden by lots of different people is a good community thing to do.”
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