Volunteers make a house of faith into a house of charity

Tucked away on a side street on Mission Hill is a boxy, light-brown-brick building once filled with Virgin Mary statues, rosary beads, and pews for 16 praying nuns.

But a few days before Thanksgiving, more than 70 volunteers scurried around the four-story Mission Church High School Convent with a wholly secular makeover mission: turn the vacant housing into a bustling group home for 10 active Little Wanderers.

"It felt weird to take all of the religious accessories out," said volunteer Ben Tucker, 35, who works in the construction business and believes the convent's layout is perfect for the youngsters, who have experienced abuse and neglect. "It's an easy transition from housing nuns to housing kids."

One room, located two doors down from the entrance, embodied the convent's religious roots: eight rows of wooden pews neatly nailed to the floor, an altar slipped into an alcove, and lofty windows that featured Jesus and Mary in flickers of sunlight through vivid red, blue, and green stained glass.

It was designer Debbie LaFave's job to turn this chapel into a play-and-study room for the kids, ages 8 through 12 -- and it proved to be the most dramatic transformation.

Tucker and other volunteers ripped out the pews and altar but kept the stained glass windows for now. They will be removed for preservation, either on the property or elsewhere.

The prayer benches were replaced with green woven anti--flammable furniture, including a couch, a loveseat, and an armchair arranged in a square in the center of the room. The altar has been traded for an oak wall unit holding a 32-inch television. Bibles and holy water have been swapped for decorative wooden boxes, chenille throws, and ferns.

"Greenery makes the room feel more homey," said LaFave, 47, who works for Hallmark Co. in Hopkinton, a builder of luxury homes. The living room "is warm and cozy and not stuffy for kids, but yet it is real sophisticated," she said. LaFave typically helps clients select fixtures, such as toilets and fireplaces, for new houses, and donated her time after the Home asked for help with the reconstruction.

The project might not have been possible without aid not only from the volunteers but from donors such as Sears and Bernie & Phyl's, which gave washers, dryers, dishwashers, and bedroom sets. They and other donors were corralled by WCVB Channel 5, which called the Home last month seeking a project it could help with. The station said it would provide donors and volunteers, as long as the work could be wrapped up in three days and could be videotaped for a local "extreme makeover" show.

Because the project is so extensive, Channel 5 and its volunteer team focused on only five rooms, and efforts to revamp the home will continue at least for another week. The Channel 5 show "Chronicle" will feature the makeover on its Dec. 23 show.

The volunteers spent their days dodging dripping paint as they rolled layers of white onto the 12 third-floor bedroom ceilings and coated the hallway walls in a pale blue. The bedrooms' dingy walls -- which alternated by room among rose, green, and blue -- were swathed in a green blush. Twenty rust-stained porcelain sinks in second- and third-floor rooms, once used by the nuns for their daily ablutions, were removed.

The youngsters will have their own rooms, a nice change from their current cramped quarters in Jamaica Plain.

"I think the new environment that these kids are going to come into is orderly and clean and it really affects how kids feel about themselves," said Edie Janas, 37, the Home's program director. "It's a lot like the 'If you look good, you feel good' attitude."

The $1.3 million property on Alleghany Street overlooks the Boston skyline and the Mission Church -- a reminder of the property's ancestry. Formerly owned by the Redemptorist Fathers of Brooklyn, N.Y., the land was sold to the Home in July. The School Sisters of Notre Dame, who had taught at the Mission Church High School next door before it was sold to the Boston public schools in 1992, moved out of the convent a year-and-a-half ago, said Sister Evangelus O'Brien, 91, who lived there for 40 years before relocating to the School Sisters of Notre Dame's mother house in Wilton, Conn. Many of the sisters were getting older, she added, and the upkeep of the place was proving more difficult.

"My heart still hangs on the door," said O'Brien, recalling when she would look at the full sky from her bedroom, No. 9, and think of Eddy Duchin's "Moon Over Miami" lyrics.

After the sale, the Home's staff faced a tight deadline, since they have to be out of Spring Park Place, the group home in Jamaica Plain, by the end of the month, said Ly Weintraub, 28, a volunteer.

"Everyone was panicking," said Weintraub. "We wanted things to be a smooth transition but we were all a little stressed."

At the beginning of November, the TV station called with its early holiday gift.

"We are so grateful to Channel 5," said Joan Wallace-Benjamin, the president and CEO at The Home. "They really made this whole project possible."

Even so, the three-day makeover was only the beginning. The staff has been racing to get a good portion of the house completed by Dec. 23 so the residents have time to adjust to their new environment before they go back to school, said Jack Harrington, 47, a member of the Home's board of directors.

Other additions will include a gym area for the kids -- complete with a treadmill and weights -- where they will receive free personal training once a week.

There will also be staff offices, a mudroom, a library, and eventually another group home located on the property, providing the Little Wanderers can raise $1 million.

But for now, a Christmas tree, decorated with the children's handmade construction paper ornaments bearing their names, sits in the corner of the former convent's living room -- its pine scent wafting through the space.

Having her former home made into a youth residence is "the most beautiful thing," O'Brien said. "I just wish those children moving in there all the joys that we had."

To donate to the Home for Little Wanderers, visit www.thehome.org, and click on "Extreme Makeover."