SPRINGVALE — Inside the circa 1915 home at 24 Howard St., the sunlight pours in through the squares of stained glass in a hallway window.

The staircase, with its once-handsome banister, rises to the second story. Give it some polish and, like the rest of the house, it will soon be handsome once again.

Outside, there’s a cacophony of sounds, as hammers and saws are applied and students engage in banter as they work.

There’s a renovation going on.

Soon, this shell of a house will become a home. Families will apply to purchase the renovated dwelling through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program at Sanford Housing Authority, and the process of selecting a qualified buyer will take place. Once complete, a family will move in, and proceeds from the sale will go toward another project.

Right now, students in the building trades and residential wiring programs at Sanford Regional Technical Center are hard at work, doing their part to get the three-bedroom house on this quiet residential street in Springvale ready for the market. What they haven’t managed to complete by the end of the school year will be finished by in-house personnel at the housing authority and by outside contractors, said Sanford Housing Authority Director Bill Keefer.

Technical center students began working on the house at the beginning of the school year. Under the school’s program, the owner of the property supplies the materials ”“ in this case, the housing authority ”“ and the labor is supplied by students at no cost. While students have taken on new building projects over the years, constructing homes from the ground up, this is their first renovation.

And as most contractors will agree, anytime you take on a heavy rebuild of a property, unexpected glitches can add to the workload ”“ and the expense.

Building trades instructor Troy Hathaway pointed to the new front porch in the making. They’d intended to salvage the original porch, but rot had crept in and it had to go.

“It was in poor condition,” said Hathaway of the home, noting that there was water damage inside the house, due to a rotting roof.

Besides the front porch, students are replacing the roof, have installed new windows and more. A contractor will come in and install blown-in insulation, as there was none in the house.

Christian Stickney, a 10th-grade student in the building trades program, showed his father, Ron Stickney, through the house Wednesday, part of the school’s “open house” to show the public the work they’d been doing.

The elder Stickney is also a carpenter and works with plaster and drywall, particularly in old houses, he said. As they walked through the rooms, the student showed his father what had been done and spoke of upcoming planned renovations.

“This is something I grew up doing with Dad,” the younger Stickney said of the building trades profession. “I love it.”

Residential wiring instructor Tim Fecteau said the home’s electrical panel has been upgraded, but knob and tube wiring had remained and is being replaced. Students are also moving outlets ”“ in some cases they’d originally been placed in the baseboards ”“ and installing new fixtures.

The kitchen, at the back of the house, was gutted and will be restored, and an extension built to house a laundry room and three-quarter bath.

Upstairs, there will be a full bath and three bedrooms.

All of the rooms will be renovated, but some original touches will remain, like a built-in cabinet in the living room.

Outside, students in environmental science classes will landscape the property.

Keefer, the housing authority director, said this marks the sixth property renovated under the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program. Under the program, applicants may earn up to 120 percent of the area median income in order to qualify for a home purchase.

Sanford was among the Maine municipalities selected for NSP because at the time the federal program was announced several years ago the municipality had the highest rate of foreclosures in the state. Waterboro was also included because of the high foreclosure rate there.

York County Community Action Corporation and York County Shelter Programs are also partners in the NSP. YCCAP Housing Director Jen Gordon said the agency has rehabbed six homes: Four in Sanford and two in the Lake Arrowhead section of Waterboro.

Keefer said while there may be some adjustments made in any future projects involving the technical school students, such as modifying scheduling, in all, it has been a worthwhile experience.

“This was a good idea,” he said.

— Senior Staff Writer Tammy Wells can be contacted at 324-4444 (local call in Sanford) or 282-1535, Ext. 327 or [email protected].