Women raise a roof
Hillstone Road residents might be forgiven a stare or two the weekend of June 7, as they watched a garage being re-roofed by an all-woman crew. Participants in Home Repair Resource Center’s women’s repair program, under the direction of Repair Instructor Jim Kunselman, did the entire job -removing the old roof covering, replacing water-damaged portions of the wood deck beneath it, and installing new modified bitumen roofing.
The job was one of the hands-on repair classes in HRRC’s “Home How-To” program, a six-month course that teaches women heads-of house basic carpentry, plumbing and electrical repairs. Each woman has a repair completed at her house as part of the program, although not all projects are as extensive as this one.
Homeowner Cheryl Lewis was thrilled with the new roof she and her classmates installed on her garage and proud of the skills they had learned. Many of the women had never used power tools before they started this program, and some were uncertain about getting up on the roof. By the end of the day, however, their confidence and enthusiasm were evident, as the women made plans to tackle other garage roofs needed by members of the group.
Home Repair Resource Center offers “Home How-To” each year to a new group of eighteen women homeowners in Cleveland Heights. To join the Home How-To program, you must be a homeowner/occupant here in Cleveland Heights who is a single woman head of house. There are also some income requirements that depend on household size.
For information, call Becky Stager, program coordinator, at 381-9560, or visit www.hrrc-ch.org.
Becky Stager has been the repair education programs coordinator for Home Repair Resource Center since 1989 and has seen ten classes of women graduate from the “Home How-To” program.
