How a homeless man’s dream of cleaning up his apartment was thwarted by a carpet cleaner

Posted September 08, 2018 05:24:00 The man behind a $40,000 renovation project has admitted it took him nearly two years to find a new carpet cleaner for his home in Melbourne’s west.
The project, which was funded by a $20,000 grant, required the contractor to install a new floor cover.
The contractor was told to do the work himself, and the man said he never had a chance to find another.
“I’ve been in this position before, I was in this situation with carpet cleaning,” he said.
“It was so much work, it was really frustrating.”
Mr Ollie’s dream to buy a carpet cleaning service, which he had started on his own, was met with a challenge.
“The carpet cleaner was out for the job and he was very upset that I wasn’t getting a carpet,” he told the ABC.
The man, who is now in his 40s, is a single father of three children.
“My kids haven’t had a single coat for years, I had to give up on my kids because I couldn’t afford it,” he explained.
The former carpentry apprentice had to sell his apartment for $150,000 to get his dream to come true.
“That was the only thing that was going to get me out of the hole,” he recalled.
“And then the contractor said ‘yeah, I can’t find a contractor to do this, I’m not going to hire you’.” It was only when the man decided to buy his dream home that he found a carpet service was ready to help him.
“So I got a bit of a shock, I said ‘no, no, I have to do it myself, it’s not going anywhere’.” The man’s wife, who lives in an apartment complex in west Melbourne, is also a carpet installer and has helped him install a floor cover for the first time.
“They just came out and asked me to put a carpet in my bedroom and the rest is history,” she said.
Mr Olli said the experience has been good and he’s looking forward to working on his dream.
“There’s been no problems, no complaints, nothing,” he laughed.
“You’ve got to be brave to do something like this.”
The project was originally funded by the Department of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development, but was subsequently funded by state government, which means Mr Ollo is now eligible to receive a $25,000 award.