Home Repairs

St. John's United Methodist Church in Lutherville boasts just 40 parishioners, but its members are proud of the large impact they can make with their volunteer efforts. The most recent, the Baltimore County Christian Workcamp, provided a team of parish volunteers that has traveled the county and country doing service work in the past with the unique opportunity to give back close to home. "It doesn't matter where you are," said Carol Anders of Lutherville as she stood in front of this year's work site, on Stanmore Road in Towson.

The Village to Village Network, a national organization that helps coordinate senior villages, defines villages as "membership-driven, grass-roots organizations that, through both volunteers and paid staff, coordinate access to affordable services including transportation, health and wellness programs, home repairs, social and educational activities, and other day-to-day needs enabling individuals to remain connected to their community throughout the...

Not only did Christmas come in April for Elijah Galloway, it lasted three whole days.That's how long it took teams of volunteers to spruce up his Annapolis home at Jackson and President streets in Eastport.They were only supposed to stay one Saturday, but so much needed to be done to the tired, two-story home that the work crews came a few days early. Galloway couldn't have been happier."I think it's great," he said, sitting in a folding chair near his front sidewalk, smiling and listening to the sounds of workers virtually rebuilding the house he has owned for 18 years.

Dennis H. McGinley Jr., a retired electrical engineer and model railroad enthusiast, died Tuesday of heart disease at Anne Arundel Medical Center. He was 73. The son of a Jersey Central Railroad yardmaster and a factory worker, Dennis Hayden McGinley Jr. was born and raised in Allentown, Pa., where he graduated in 1957 from Allentown Central Catholic High School. He served in the Air Force for four years until being discharged in 1961. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1970 in electrical engineering from Drexel University in Philadelphia, while working for Roeback Co. in Trevos, Pa. He also earned a master's degree in business administration in the 1980s from what is now Loyola University Maryland.

HOME REPAIRS have a troubling tendency to propagate. One spawns another. Last Saturday, for instance, I had just finished doing a patch job on the roof. As I eased my way down the steep stairway that clings to the back of our four-story rowhouse and allows access to the roof, one of the stairway's wooden steps suddenly went wobbly on me. It is OK to rock and roll when you are on a dance floor. But not when you are descending from the heights. I was scared. In the words of Jerry Lee Lewis, there was "a whole lot of shakin' goin' on."

Karon Gibbons, a single mother of three, readily handles the minor upkeep at her home in Taneytown, but the major repairs have overwhelmed her. Christmas in April, a charity that rehabilitates homes for the needy, will be on her doorstep early Saturday to tackle a long list of repairs. The roof on Gibbons' townhouse leaked so much that the ceiling in her son's bedroom caved in, spilling soggy insulation all over the furniture. The fiberglass surrounding the bathroom tub leaked water, too, usually into the downstairs light fixture.

Evelyn Stammer figured she'd just have to live with a leaky roof in a ranch-style house that turned chilly each winter and steamy each summer.For one thing, the 74-year-old Severn widow suffers from a bad back and poor eyesight and can't make home repairs herself.And with only $626 from Social Security coming in each month, the great-grandmother has little money to spare.Enter several employees of Mandrin Construction in Pasadena, Jerry's Siding and Roofing in Glen Burnie and American Baltimore Home Insulation.

Sue Schrider has multiple sclerosis. She can't stand for long and uses a cane to walk. She doesn't work. And to add to her physical challenges, she is a divorced mom with two children. But she is not facing her difficult life alone, and she is not without help. Since joining Grace Community Church in 1996, Schrider has been able to count on the care and generosity of its members, especially through the Columbia church's Home Improvement Ministry. Started by Donna Kirby, the ministry provides supplies and labor for free home repairs for its members who cannot afford them and who are unable to do the work themselves.

With efforts to reduce lead poisoning among children at a crossroads, Maryland lawmakers are wrestling with proposals to expand state regulation of home sales, rentals and repairs to reduce youngsters' exposure to the toxic metal. But the biggest question facing legislators might be how — or whether — to help landlords facing a flurry of lead-paint poisoning lawsuits from former tenants. The number of young children reported poisoned by lead in Maryland has dropped 98 percent since the mid-1990s.

The Village to Village Network, a national organization that helps coordinate senior villages, defines villages as "membership-driven, grass-roots organizations that, through both volunteers and paid staff, coordinate access to affordable services including transportation, health and wellness programs, home repairs, social and educational activities, and other day-to-day needs enabling individuals to remain connected to their community throughout the...

St. John's United Methodist Church in Lutherville boasts just 40 parishioners, but its members are proud of the large impact they can make with their volunteer efforts. The most recent, the Baltimore County Christian Workcamp, provided a team of parish volunteers that has traveled the county and country doing service work in the past with the unique opportunity to give back close to home. "It doesn't matter where you are," said Carol Anders of Lutherville as she stood in front of this year's work site, on Stanmore Road in Towson.

With efforts to reduce lead poisoning among children at a crossroads, Maryland lawmakers are wrestling with proposals to expand state regulation of home sales, rentals and repairs to reduce youngsters' exposure to the toxic metal. But the biggest question facing legislators might be how — or whether — to help landlords facing a flurry of lead-paint poisoning lawsuits from former tenants. The number of young children reported poisoned by lead in Maryland has dropped 98 percent since the mid-1990s.

Robert W. "Bob" Summers, a retired Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. manager, died Thursday of heart failure at Oak Crest Village retirement community. He was 82. Robert Wendell Summers was born in Baltimore and raised in Forest Park. He was a 1947 graduate of Polytechnic Institute and earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1952 from the Johns Hopkins University. He served in the Army from 1952 to 1954, and was stationed at Aberdeen Proving Ground, where he worked on weapons development research.

For years, Annie and Eugene Hamm worried about the stairs. Their daughter was physically and developmentally disabled, and it was becoming harder to carry her up and down the front stairs of their Aberdeen house. "It got to be where we couldn't handle the steps," says Annie Hamm, who is 81; her husband 82. "It was dangerous." What the Hamms needed was a ramp so their daughter, Betty, could roll down in her wheelchair. But a ramp would cost thousands of dollars. "More than we could afford, I'll tell you," says Annie Hamm, who is a housewife.

Everyone out there who wants to decorate a room by putting up some trendy wallpaper, please, reconsider. And by "reconsider," I mean come to my place and help me strip some 10-year-old wallpaper off the kitchen walls first. The thing about wallpaper is, it's glued to the wall. To my knowledge, the folks at 3M have not yet developed a Post-it wallpaper. Nor is there any Velcro wallpaper. What is wrong with America? Why is it that we can inhabit a space station for months on end doing important yet largely unintelligible research on the behavior of flames, fluids, metals and protein crystals in space, and yet we cannot come up with an easily removable wallpaper here on planet earth?

Nothing makes a person's blood run cold quite like an unexpected, desperate need for a plumber. Or a mechanic for that odd, whirring noise in the car engine. Or a roofer to patch the gaping hole in the attic. The misery of the damage is only compounded by the misery of finding and hiring someone to fix the problem. A walk through the Yellow Pages can be precarious. Far too many choices. Asking friends for recommendations? Somewhat limiting and time-consuming. Might as well just throw darts at classified ads while blindfolded.

Anna Anzulis started worrying about her back porch six months ago. The 82-year-old, who uses the porch to enter her Riviera Beach house, began noticing that the wooden boards felt soft under her footsteps.She knew the rotting boards had to be replaced, but there was nothing she could do.Her husband, the handyman around the house, died two years ago. And contractors quoted her prices she couldn't afford.So she waited. And feared every day that the porch would finally give, as she carefully treaded in and out of her house.

Besides being the site of most household accidents, bathrooms also seem to require more than their share of home repairs. It's the water, of course; combining moving water with any kind of construction or fixture is a recipe for trouble. But who would give up such modern conveniences?Fortunately for homeowners, manufacturers keep coming out with new products to make repairing or restoring bathrooms easier -- or at least, more efficient and with more professional results.Here are some of the new offerings, available at hardware and home-improvement stores:Bondo, best known as makers of auto body fillers, is introducing a new line of household repair products, called Bondo Home Solutions.

The federal government's biggest home mortgage program streamlined itself at the end of December, and that could be good news for buyers, sellers, realty agents and builders in 2006. In fact, the Federal Housing Administration's decision to eliminate or soften many of its onerous rules about property conditions and mandatory repairs should be a stimulant to the entire housing market this year. It could help open low-down-payment mortgages with no prepayment penalties to thousands of first-time, moderate-income purchasers who might have turned to higher-fee "sub-prime" alternatives instead.

A Southwest Baltimore man who had been charged in a neighborhood dispute - and then paid two men $50 apiece to club the witness with broken table legs to prevent him from testifying - pleaded guilty yesterday to assault and witness-intimidation charges. Joseph John DiAngelo Jr., 52, was sentenced by Baltimore Circuit Judge Sylvester B. Cox to 15 years in prison. One of the men DiAngelo hired was fatally injured during the home-invasion-style attack, likely when residents sat on his chest.