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Calgary Family Wants To Give Their Home Away For Free

It's an adorable, century-old home.

When Kathy and Cameron Brown moved to Calgary from New York in 2014, they told themselves not to fall in love with their tiny, century-old Inglewood home.

For a growing family, it just didn't make sense.

About two years later, things are getting a bit crowded. Josephine, age two, has one bedroom, while the other is a small nursery for nine-month-old Violet. The parents' bed is in the living room.

The couple, however, did fall in love with the home. And now they're hoping to save it from a landfill by offering to give it away for free.

The one catch? The owner will have to move it off of the Brown's property, so the family can build a bigger home in its place.

In some ways, the house was perfect for the Browns — it was in a great location to raise a growing family. The couple moved to Calgary to be closer to Cameron's grandfather. His health was failing and he had gifted the pair some money to put towards a down payment.

When the couple began looking for a home to buy, they realized that this little home in Inglewood was just blocks away from Colonel Walker School that Cameron's grandfather had attended as a child.

"This was meant to be, we need to be here."

"Even though we knew the house itself wasn't perfect for us, we thought 'this location is the best.' Literally, as we were leaving the house, we passed Colonel Walker, and Cameron made the connection," Kathy told The Huffington Post Alberta.

"To know that our kids would be going to that same school, it just... literally, we just started crying like babies. This was meant to be, we need to be here."

Unfortunately, other things about the home weren't quite right. Namely, the size. The Browns had a builder take a look at expanding the house, who said while the home had held up its roof for 100 years, it just couldn't handle a second floor.

“At that point, we knew it would be temporary for us.”

Take a peek inside the century-old Inglewood home. Story continues after slideshow:

Free Home In Inglewood, Calgary

Free Home In Inglewood, Calgary (February 2016)

The Browns knew they wanted to stay in Inglewood, so their kids could continue attending Colonel Walker.

The initial plan was to bulldoze the home, but Brown says it just felt wrong, especially with all of the home's charming qualities.

"I made the joke to myself at the time, ‘Watch me fall in love with this house.' Here we are, almost two years later, and we’ve fallen in love with it, of course."

But she added, "It's time for it to go."

"We thought, you know, if this could benefit someone in some way we'd love to be able to offer it to someone."

She said another motivating factor to give the home away was Calgary's economic climate, which has left many families needing affordable housing.

Moving a house can be pricey — up to $30,000, plus the costs of building a foundation and hooking up utilities — but it's a steal compared to the cost of buying a home.

"We thought, you know, if this could benefit someone in some way we'd love to be able to offer it to someone," Kathy said.

Interested parties can contact Kathy and Cameron at theshingleshack@gmail.com.

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