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(Enlarge) Future homeowner Lorraine Massey, right, greets Dulaney High School seniors Meghan Gallagher, left, and Zoe Schultz, center, as the students work on the Habitat for Humanity house in Sandtown. Massey will take possession of the townhouse this Saturday, and has become friends with the students who helped renovate the house. (Photo by Anthony Castellano)

hen the new owners of a townhouse in the Sandtown-Winchester community in West Baltimore move in this weekend, they'll have an army of past and present students from Dulaney High School -- and their former physics teacher -- to thank.

And those students, in return, say they're thankful for the experience.

"I've learned to appreciate the house I have," said Zoe Schultz, 17, of Timonium, who has spent many hours drilling, hammering, caulking and painting at the Sandtown-Winchester Habitat for Humanity project.

On Saturday, the public is invited to celebrate completion of three Habitat for Humanity houses in that community. Schultz is one of many Dulaney students who were introduced to Habitat for Humanity by Ed Langrall, a physics teacher at Dulaney High School, who retired this past June.

Langrall said he started working with Habitat about six years ago, and one day students at Dulaney heard him talking about the work.

"Almost right away ... the kids started getting really interested and coming down," Langrall said.

Students organized their own Habitat for Humanity club at the school and did more than work on the house -- last year, the club raised $2,800 to help sponsor one of the houses that will be dedicated Oct. 10.

"This is the first time Dulaney financially sponsored a house," Langrall said.

He has worked on some 13 Habitat for Humanity houses, and describes the experience as an "addiction to feeling good about yourself."

Since Dulaney students began volunteering in the Sandtown Habitat project, 20 to 30 have participated each year, Langrall said.

Sandtown Habitat sells the house to low-income families at cost, with a no-interest 20- to 30-year mortgage.

The project has finished more than 260 houses in the community since the affiliate was created 20 years ago, according to Michael Barb, resource development manager and volunteer coordinator at Sandtown-Winchester Habitat for Humanity.

Though plumbing and electrical work at the houses is reserved for certified professionals, nearly all other work is performed by volunteers and the future homeowners.

Schultz, a senior at Dulaney, said she first volunteered last year with a friend, and soon found herself busy caulking.

"I'd never really worked on anything in a house," she said. "It sounded like a good way to volunteer."

Schultz said she had already met her service learning requirement of 70 hours, but, "I like helping out the community."

Langrall said that's a typical attitude among volunteers from the school. He said most of the students who help already have 200 to 300 service learning hours even before they come to the Sandtown project.

"It's just the type of kid that does this," he said.

Schultz said another reason she volunteered in Sandtown was "to get out of the suburbs and do something."

After her first experience with Habitat last October, Schultz returned five times that school year. Then, in June, she participated in Summer Building Week, a program in which volunteers work each day from about 8 a.m. until after 2 p.m. for a week.

"I was free every day, and so I went every day," she said.

That was particularly rewarding, she said, because sometimes at the house she worked alongside the future homeowner, Lorraine Massey.

"I like how you can work with the homeowners," Schultz said. "It was just nice knowing that she needed a nice, affordable house and I was helping her to get there."

As a client of Habitat for Humanity, Gwynn Oak resident Massey was required to work 330 hours in "sweat equity," to be awarded the Gilmor Street house. While working this spring, she started getting to know the students from Dulaney.

"I started talking to them and they started talking to me, and we became close," she said.

Massey enjoyed their friendship, and said the Dulaney students, in particular, touched her heart.

"I could tell they were doing it from the heart. That got to me," Massey said. "It just blew me away."

Hunt Valley resident Xi Zhu, 18, who graduated from Dulaney this year and is attending Davidson College in North Carolina, volunteered in the spring of his junior year at Dulaney, and said, "I plan on coming back. Definitely."

He said that when he heard Langrall talking about the works of Habitat for Humanity, he told himself that "if a 60-year-old man can do this, I can do this."

"Pretty much all of his students look up to him," Zhu said of Langrall.

Zhu thinks that volunteering was more productive than what he would have done otherwise -- "I'd just sleep in on Saturdays," he said -- and found working with his hands relaxing, and leaving the suburbs to work in West Baltimore "eye-opening."

"You know it's all for a good cause, and you feel good," he said.

The house that's been sponsored in part by Dulaney High School's Habitat for Humanity club, at 1528 Gilmor St., Baltimore, will be dedicated at noon Oct. 10. Dedication ceremonies for two neighboring houses will be at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.

Though Langrall has retired from teaching physics, and though the Oct. 10 dedication will mark the completion of three more houses in Sandtown, he still wants to lend more elbow grease.

"I enjoy working with my hands and seeing a visible product come out of it," he said.

One of those visible products is the moment when the keys to a completed home are handed over to the new owners in the dedication ceremony.

"I don't think you can match the good feeling you get about that," he said.

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