Rebuilding Together Peninsula Helps the Catholic Worker

Our Catholic Worker house on Cassia Street for at-risk teens was built in 1917. It’s a wonderful house, but it has its needs. Rebuilding Together had helped with our house for Day Laborers and with the language school and so we turned to them again.

Rebuilding Together is the finest, most professional, most efficient volunteer support group we have ever worked with. This year they helped people in about 60 homes and 15 community facilities.

Rebuilding Together (aka Christmas in April) had their main volunteer day April 25, and there were close to 40 volunteers here at our Catholic Worker house. These men, women and children came from sponsoring agencies like the San Mateo Credit Union, the Peninsula Sunrise Rotary Club, Rotary of Woodside/Portola Valley, and Sierra High School. The lead contractor and work captains are from NOVO Construction. Thank God for NOVO and all the volunteers.

NOVO came in a week early to do preparatory work. The work included 30 feet of fence and a gate, striping an exterior wall to the studs and rebuilding it, replacement of all the kitchen counters, rebuilding the front steps, demo and rebuilding of the front room ceiling, replacing the laundry room floor, and upgrading the gardens around the house. The biggest issue was asbestos in our front two rooms, which required extra planning and work.

The Encore Performance Caterers came with breakfast and lunch, with tables with tablecloths. We ate really delicious food and had a lot of fun. If you ever want to volunteer, we recommend Rebuilding Together.

Here are some pictures of the work Rebuilding Together volunteers did at the Redwood City Catholic worker home for teens and families. (If you select one picture, you can see all the others in a slideshow.)