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When Lulu Snowden's grandfather built her Rockville home in 1929, he did so with what he could find, insulating the house with crumpled newspaper.
That made the sturdy structure an energy drain, and Snowden, 61, who still lives in the same house, was using most of her monthly disability check on heating bills that spiked to $1,300 in the winter.
But over the past two weekends, thanks to the work of Montgomery County Rebuilding Together, Snowden's house received new drywall, insulation, windows and other features to bring the 90-year-old home into the present.
The organization, which has a chapter based in Kensington, does major and minor home repairs for low-income people throughout the county. Over the past two weekends more than 1,000 volunteers from county congregations and businesses tackled projects in 32 homes throughout the county to celebrate National Rebuilding Day, which was last Saturday.
"I think it's just great; I have never met such a great group of people and I am just flabbergasted," Snowden said of her volunteers, who came from Temple Beth Ami in Rockville and Shaare Torah in Gaithersburg. "I'm so excited."
North Bethesda resident Roger Rothman, the president of the board of Rebuilding Together, said the annual push to help people who are faced with poverty because of home expenses is especially important this year because of the bad economy.
"One of the interesting things is you might get the impression that everyone in Montgomery County is wealthy and lives in huge houses and is well off, but in reality, in my experience working on these projects, we have neighbors who live in these older houses but can no longer afford to maintain them," Rothman said. "Our application pool is significantly up this year, north of 250 applications for help."
The 32 houses Rebuilding Together tackled the past two weekends represent about a third of what the organization can do annually, Rothman said.
Snowden said her grandfather would be amazed by the results of the work that was done.
"He'd probably just pass out, just totally pass out with all this," she said.
The projects are sponsored by congregations and corporations and then the money is pooled and directed to homes according to their needs, said Lee-Berkeley Shaw, the director of development at Rebuilding Together. She said a typical home would receive minor repairs, safety handholds for seniors, new locks, sometimes a fresh coat of paint. Lately, the organization has also focused on energy audits that help make the homes cheaper for their owners to maintain over the long-term, she said.
But projects like Snowden's, which benefitted from a new roof donated by Bartlett Roofing in Gaithersburg, are more extensive.
Joyce Love, 72, of Silver Spring, said volunteers from St. Mark's Presbyterian replaced and installed windows, installed new drywall and fixed her cracked front steps.
"I needed help," Love said of why she applied. "They just did so much stuff. When you have people like that that are gracious enough to put out a helping hand to people in need, what else can I say? I'm very grateful and thankful."
