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As the sharp, hard rattle of a jackhammer rumbled from the basement of a home in Silver Spring, Sara Robins knelt under a window in the living room upstairs, a pair of earplugs protecting her from the harsh cacophony of construction as she pried nails from the window frame with a crowbar.

Robins was one of six women volunteers hard at work at the run-down house Thursday for this year's Habitat for Humanity of Montgomery County Women Build Week program. Thanks to a $3 million grant from the Montgomery County Department of Housing, Habitat is deploying groups of women volunteers to renovate 10 county houses that will be made available to low-income families this summer.

"I enjoy using my hands and learning new skills, plus it's helping people," Robins said, adding that she couldn't wait to show her 2-year-old son pictures of her using the jackhammer. "He's going to think that's pretty cool; mommy with a jackhammer!"

Nearby, Habitat for Humanity of Montgomery County Project Manager Colleen Russell helped volunteers strip the kitchen under the careful supervision of a handful of construction and design experts. Many program volunteers delight in developing skills they might not have known they had, she said.

"It's empowering women and showing them what they actually can do," she said. "I just used a Sawzall [electronic handsaw] and did some demolition earlier. … It shows us what we can really do."

Bethesda resident Liz Keegan agreed, adding that the benefit of the project for her stems from the positive outcome of the renovation for families that might not have the money to buy a house.

"Housing is a basic human right and we should all have it," she said. "In this county, affordable housing is very difficult for people earning a living wage to afford. The average household income in Montgomery County is a little over $100,000 and not everyone has that."

Affordable housing is defined by the housing department as housing made available to residents who earn 60 percent of the area median income, which is about $60,000 in Montgomery County. As part of the program, selected low-income families will attend mortgage seminars and classes before signing a specially-tailored mortgage agreement and moving into the houses.

"The fact is, families who are helped by this particular program are at 40 or 50 percent of the area median income," said Richard Y. Nelson Jr., the county director of housing. "They could not go out and get the financing they would need to purchase a house [even] at half of the area median income."

Applicants will sign mortgage agreements with Habitat for Humanity for about $150,000, according to Russell. The assessed value for most of the houses is about $350,000.

"Because we get a lot of our materials donated and we have all volunteers who rebuild the homes, obviously [we can make the] homes a lot cheaper," she said.

Silver Spring resident Teklemariam Degefu will move his wife and four children into one of the houses later this month. He said he was overjoyed when he found out he had been accepted for the Habitat for Humanity program.

"When we heard this good news for the first time, I and my family [were so] exited we [couldn't] control ourselves," he wrote in an e-mail response to questions because he is a non-native speaker of English. "Everybody [was] happy and hugging each other. … It is great news."

Degefu, who works for a children's clothing store in Potomac, said his children are exposed to allergies and other health risks in his current basement apartment in Silver Spring, but he could not afford to move into a market-rate house. He heard about the Habitat for Humanity program through family and friends.