Photos by JARED SOARES The Roanoke Times

Giant blue tarps cover the roof and an outer wall of John Stickley's condemned house in Botetourt County's Rainbow Forest subdivision.

Photos by JARED SOARES The Roanoke Times

Giant blue tarps cover the roof and an outer wall of John Stickley's condemned house in Botetourt County's Rainbow Forest subdivision.

Stickley has until April 14 to empty his house and prepare it for demolition. He said he has belongings stored in large metal containers in his yard and more in his Land Rover.

JARED SOARES The Roanoke Times

John Stickley sits in the second story of his home Monday. For now, he is staying with a neighbor. The disabled Air Force veteran said cleaning out the house is difficult; he has diabetes, goes in and out of the hospital regularly and is missing two toes.

BLUE RIDGE -- Time is running out for disabled Air Force veteran John Stickley, and for the Rainbow Forest home he has lived in -- for better or worse -- since 1991.

Botetourt County officials, who condemned his derelict house last summer, want it torn down -- pronto. And if Stickley doesn't do it himself, they say they'll do it for him, then send him a bill.

What he does with the giant feral cat that showed up and moved in is up to him.

"I don't know why they won't help me," Stickley said recently as he stood among the belongings he has hauled out of his home and placed throughout his yard. "If this happened to any of them, they'd want help."

The house, located within a bamboo grove behind a row of well-kept homes in the well-known Rainbow Forest subdivision, is the only one the disabled 54-year-old has, and he has lived within its moldy walls even as its disintegration accelerated over the past few years, ever since the calamitous winter of 2005 caused his water pipes to burst and flood the small A-frame home.

County building officials, alerted by the social services department, ordered the 39-year-old home's destruction after an engineer determined that Stickley was living in a house in danger of collapsing on his head, assistant building official Larry Minnix said.

"We felt the structure was unsafe," Minnix said. "We asked Mr. Stickley to move out of the house. We're trying to help him."

Stickley has until April 14 to completely empty the house at 206 Hunters Trail to prepare it for demolition. He said he doesn't know if he can manage; he suffers from diabetes, is in and out of the hospital on a regular basis and has had two toes amputated, all of which slow him down.

But if it were up to him, Stickley wouldn't be trying to prepare his house for destruction. If he had his druthers, he said, he would have found a way to fix it up back when it was still fixable. Yet he holds out no hope of saving the house now.

"They said it was going to fall at any time," he said.

Stickley's house first became a problem for him during the winter of 2005. He said he was in the hospital for several months, and while he was there, the water pipes in the house burst during a cold snap. For days the water gushed forth unnoticed by neighbors. Water stood 14 inches deep in the basement, 8 inches deep on the main floor and 4 inches deep upstairs, he said. Ceilings throughout the house collapsed.

A neighbor eventually saw icicles hanging all around the empty home and shut off the water. Stickley said he came back from the hospital to a ruined home and a water bill for more than 43,000 gallons.

Stickley said his insurance company paid out on his policy, even temporarily putting him up in a motel, but the money wasn't as much as he would have liked. So he began making what repairs he could himself, hampered by his ailments but determined to tear out the rotted and moldy walls and once again make his home livable. Or livable enough, anyway.

"He tried to save this house all by himself," sympathetic neighbor Jeanne Quill said.

But things got worse. On July 27 last year, a county official came by and, on a wall by the door at the top of the rickety stairs, posted a note condemning the property as "Dangerous and Unsafe."

Stickley started dragging his belongings outside. His yard has become a repository for large metal container bins, piles of brush and rubbish, rusting appliances and equipment. Giant blue tarps cover the roof of the house as well as the outer wall he has ripped off. More blue tarps cover nearby outbuildings, while orange cones and yellow police tape block off the rocky driveway.

Stickley, who said he is now staying with a neighbor, spends his days shambling about his home, tearing down walls and lugging out the accumulated bits of a lifetime. Much of his belongings sit in the large metal containers in his yard. His Land Rover is piled to its ceiling with smaller items.

Minnix said he anticipates that Stickley will be unable to demolish the house himself, so the county will have to tear it down. "Most property owners like to do it themselves," he said. "As long as they are moving forward, we try to work with people and help them out. But if things aren't progressing as fast as we'd like, we'll talk to a contractor."

The demolition could cost Stickley between $4,000 and $8,000. Stickley said he has the money, and when it's all done, he'll still have the land and some hope of rebuilding -- but he won't have a home.