Rebuilding Together to make repairs on local homes
Posted on Friday, April 25, 2008
GENTRY — While some people may have cursed a string of bad luck, Elizabeth Baker takes the time to count her blessings. This week those blessings include Rebuilding Together of Northwest Arkansas.
On Saturday, Rebuilding Together, along with hundreds of volunteers, will change the lives of 11 families in northwest Arkansas by making necessary repairs that will allow them to remain in their homes.
The Baker family owns a home in Gentry. In fact, they own two homes and have been making two house payments for several years. Looking back, Elizabeth Baker isn’t sure how they managed financially.
Several years ago, they bought a larger home for their growing family and decided to remodel it themselves to save money. Although she and her husband put all their spare time and money into the second house, they didn’t seem to be able to finish the work. More than a year ago, they lost power in the home they lived in as a result of an ice storm.
“ We threw mattresses onto the floor, and my husband went to work that night, ” she remembered about moving into the half-remodeled home. But they still had two house payments, six children and a series of health problems that kept them from completing the projects.
Early this year, they welcomed an exchange student into their already crowded home. It was the woman who managed the exchange-student program that introduced the Bakers to Rebuilding Together. Now they’re looking forward to having doors on their bedrooms and baseboards throughout the home. The den, which has never been usable, will get new flooring and may someday be turned into a fourth bedroom.
Families come in many shapes and sizes, and Rebuilding Together helps all of them.
Fifty-seven-year-old Darrell McKinney lives alone in the home he helped his parents buy in 1967. He inherited the home when his mother died in 2006.
The home has needed work for some time, but McKinney is legally blind and lives on disability. He was forced to give up his auto body shop when his vision failed.
In the weeks leading up to Rebuilding Day, professionals were contacted to replace doors and windows for McKinney, insulate his attic and replace his furnace. Even before the volunteers arrived to finish the work, McKinney could see a difference in his electric usage.
“ It’s going to make a big difference, ” he said.
Norma Ford and her husband, Jimmy, have lived in their home for more than 30 years. They were self-employed stonemasons before their retirement. The maintenance on their home started to get ahead of them when Jimmy Ford had heart surgery some 10 years ago. She is looking forward to what she calls a “ home makeover. ”
For more information, call, 725-2488.
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