In March of this year, Samantha and Dustin Coy and seven other families started the project of a lifetime.

One year from now, all of them will know each other a lot better, and have a new home they built themselves in Woodland Estates, through the nonprofit Homes for Islanders.

“Our group is very driven and we are trying to make a deadline which is not really possible,” Samantha said. “There is an $8,000 tax break if we can be in our homes by December 1. We have been told that building the homes in seven months has never been done before, but we are going to try to make that deadline.”

The project, located in the Rosario area of Orcas, meets the nonprofit’s goal of helping working people bridge the gap between their wages and the cost of buying a home.

Homes for Islanders finds the building sites, secures county approvals, clears the site, builds the infrastructure and supervises the job.

At Woodland Estates, the future tenants have finished laying the concrete for the last four foundations and are starting on the subflooring and framing.

Bruce Bracket is the contractor supervisor for the job. The Coys and the others can only work when he is available or when he has written a task list and two people are able to work.

Each of the families must be able to work 35 hours a week on the construction. The time may be split between the adults in the family and volunteers can pitch in up to 50 percent of the work.

The Coys are grateful to all the volunteers who have shown up to help. Samantha, who is a stay-at-home mom for their two young children, works eight to 10 hours a week on the construction project.

“A friend of ours, Chris Idleman, volunteered to help with the building,” Samantha said. “His wife, Mindy, is watching my children for no charge when I go out and help. My parents, Con and Lisa Russell, have also been helping us with the building and babysitting. They have all been a huge blessing to us. Dustin works 17.5 hours at the building site and 40 hours at the Orcas Village Store.”

“This will be our first home and we are really excited,” Samantha said. “We will have a four-bedroom home. We get to choose the outside paint and make choices on flooring, counters, cabinets and ceramic tile.”

The homes are two-, three- and four-bedroom, one-story homes with stick frame construction. The walls, floors, windows, and doors are insulated for energy efficiency. Basic appliances and washer/dryer hookups are provided.

Homes for Islanders say that thousands of dollars are saved by each family working on the construction of the homes.

The nonprofit’s services are free and they work together with the new homeowners during every step of the project, including applying for loans and construction budgeting and supervision.

The requirements for eligibility are based on credit scores, adequate and dependable income and an adjusted gross income in the low or very low-income range. Applicants must be without sufficient resources to provide necessary housing, unable to secure the necessary credit from other sources, be citizens of the United States, have the legal capacity to incur the loan obligation and be of legal age in the state of Washington.

To qualify for the program they must permanently and personally occupy the completed home, have a total debt to income ratio of less than 43 percent and have limited assets.

The opening of Woodland Estates will bring the total homes constructed through Homes for Islanders to 33. This is the first project on Orcas; the previous homes were all built on San Juan Island. The non-profit plans to build 45 more in the next five years, and they are accepting applications now for their next project, on North Beach, which will start construction this summer.

“Recruiting home owners is the difficult thing,” John Campbell, a Homes for Islanders board member, said. “It’s a chance of a lifetime but very few people step forward.”