KANSAS CITY, Mo. — An Independence woman is still trying to put her life back together months after a fire made her home unlivable.

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A local contractor offered to do electrical work for free, but that’s not all it will take to fix things.

“It’s misery, it’s prayers, crying,” Deanna Magee said. “I don’t know what to do next.”

Magee came home from a trip to a house that’s no longer a home.

“Yeah, so there’s a lot of stuff that’s going on in here,” Ian Chambers, an electrical contractor said. “The fire’s obviously destroyed some of the framing above the door, just across the rafters it’s burnt a little bit. She’s going to need to have some electrical work done.”

It’ll also take new drywall and plumbing.

“It’s a little bit of everything,” Chambers said. 

The work needed is doable, but Magee’s on the hook for all of it.

She’d just closed on the house and wasn’t able to get insurance on the July 4th weekend before the fire.

“It’s a nightmare and i just want to be. I want it to go away and be done,” Magee said.

She needs permits and licenses to do anything.

It’s been months of calling contractors one minute, homeless shelters the next and crashing on couches with her kids.

“Thanksgiving is coming up and it’s like, I have nowhere to cook Thanksgiving. And that’s one of my passions is cooking,” she said.

Chambers is with Current Solutions Electric and heard about the house.

He offered to do the electrical work for free.

But that can’t start without the help of contractors to take care of everything else without cost.

“That’s the goal,” he said. “We’re really asking for help on this deal because I mean, she’s siting here with this house that she can’t live in and her family’s on the streets basically.”

Thanksgiving won’t happen at the home.

But there’s hope people like Chambers can give Magee and her kids a place to spend Christmas.