Igloo for sale – it’s snow fun!
SALEM – “Igloo for sale. One owner. Free air conditioning. You move.”
That could be the description in a real estate ad for the “building” Matt Thomas constructed. Thomas is an unemployed construction worker who got tired of sitting around the house during the recent snows.
So he put his construction skills to work and built an almost-8-foot-tall igloo in the front yard of his parents’ house at 400 W. Burwell St., behind the Salem Post Office.
Matt Thomas, right, built this 7-1/2-foot tall igloo that Realtor Doug Roberts jokingly is offering for sale. Photo by Meg Hibbert
Realtor Doug Roberts, who lives down the street, saw the day-glow-orange-outlined snow house last week, and asked to put one of his for-sale signs out front.
The sign he had with him said “100 percent financing, $8,000 tax rebate.”
“The asking price would be at least 12 grand,” joked Roberts, who works with Wainwright & Co. Realtors in Salem.
“If they can move it, they can have it,” responded Thomas, with a laugh.
The 27-year-old said he spent parts of three days building the open-air igloo, “Using a cooler like you take to work. I just stomped the snow down in it to make blocks,” he added, “and put them around in a circle. I quit when I couldn’t reach any higher to put on a top.”
What else can you do with more than a foot of snow on the ground? Create a giant head, with a sign reading "Help, it's really deep," like Dr. Jim Reinhard and his daughter, Paris Eve, did in front of their Broad Street home in Salem. Photo by Rich Gaynor
He mused that once high winds died down, he might put a big umbrella over the hole. I addition to the day-glo paint, he decorated the igloo with 2-foot-long icicles he broke off his family’s roof, and painted them orange, too.
His girlfriend, Jennifer Hodges of Salem, supervised, she said, “but I didn’t help build it.”
Thomas started Sunday night, Feb. 7, and finished up two days later. After getting the blocks laid and smoothed over with sow, “I sprayed it with a water hose to make it more solid. I must have done a good job building it, because that wind Tuesday didn’t knock it down,” he said.
Thomas said he had some extra day-glo paint lying around, so he outlined the snow blocks. “I figured I’d make it look like something. You can see the orange coming down the street,” he added.
The igloo is almost warm inside, compared to outside temperatures, he found when taking shelter from the wind while building it.
Would he build an igloo again?
“Sure. I’d try to make it a little more sophisticated next time. Maybe a castle, something you could walk around,” he said.
Thomas has been doing some shoveling of driveways, and is looking for a job, he said, but jobs, especially construction work, is hard to find. He attended Salem High School, and is considering going back for his GED.
He lives with his mom, Connie Gardner, and stepfather David Clayton, and brother Boo Clayton, who is 19.
