• Features special financing programs exclusive to Cleveland homebuyers. Local lenders, and down payment assistance grants from the State of Ohio. When purchasing paint for the exterior of your house, visit the Paint Program website.
• Faces and Fun has now expanded its talents to mural paintings. Feel free to contact us for details. This is our specialty! Our most popular paintings include butterflies, hearts, and flowers for the girls; bats, spider-masks, sports, and pirates for the boys. Just outside Cleveland, Ohio. Face painting is a wonderful creative.

What is lead?

City of Cleveland Paint Program: For details and to see if you qualify for a refund when purchasing paint for the exterior of your house, visit the Paint Program website. Visit the Paint Program website. Program of the Ohio Department of Development to help low-income Ohio residents to improve the energy efficiency of their homes.

Lead is a poisonous metal that is especially dangerous to babies and young children, and can harm them even before they are born. Lead poisoning can damage children’s nervous systems, brains and other organs. It can also lead to additional health, learning and behavioral problems.

Where is lead found?

Lead is most often found in lead-based paint; in dust that is formed when lead-based paint is scraped, sanded or worn down through use, and; in soil that becomes contaminated with peeling, lead-based paint. Lead can also be found in:

• Water
• Leaded crystal glassware
• Lead-glazed pottery and ceramic ware
• Some hobby equipment
• Cosmetics, such as kohl
• Home remedies such as 'greta,' a Mexican folk remedy (taken commonly for stomachache or intestinal illness) and 'azarcon' (a folk remedy that usually contains substantial amounts of lead).
• Painted toys and furniture, especially if they are older, may contain lead.

How do children get lead poisoning?

Children mainly get lead poisoning by swallowing and/or absorbing lead-based paint used in houses that were built before 1978. Lead paint gets into children’s systems when they:

• Eat or handle peeling paint chips and flakes that contain lead.
• Put their hands, toys and other items covered with lead dust in their mouths.
• Breathe lead dust.
• Chew on windowsills, furniture and door frames and other items covered with lead-based paint.
• Drink water from older water pipes that may leach lead.

What are the symptoms of lead poisoning?

In many cases, children who have lead poisoning have no symptoms. Even healthy-looking children can have high levels of lead in their bodies. Symptoms of lead poisoning in children include:

• Hyperactivity (restless, fidgets, talks too much)
• Learning problems
• Changes in behavior
• Headaches
• Fatigue
• Anemia (not enough hemoglobin in the person's blood)

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CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Elevator doors opened to the aroma of fresh paint on the fifth floor of the Carl B. Stokes apartment building on Cleveland's East Side Wednesday afternoon.

Toward the end of a long hallway, a team of men and women -- public housing residents all -- were busy at painters' tasks. Masking baseboards. Mixing paint. Rolling out the results on a dingy wall that suddenly gleamed anew.

A dreamy look alighted upon the face of Thieann Rembert as she painted in long, practiced arcs, the moist hiss of her roller leaving a sheen that Sherwin-Williams calls bone white.

'I like to do stuff like this, make something beautiful,' she said. 'I hope to get a career out of this, actually. That's what I'm looking for.'

She might find it. The 39-year-old mother of three, who works off the books for a cleaning service, on Friday will graduate from HomeWork, a two-week house-painting class sponsored by the Cleveland-based Sherwin-Williams Co.

Rembert and 23 others will leave with certificates that attest to basic painting skills, that approve them for work on federally funded projects, and that attract the attention of contractors.

About 65 percent of HomeWork graduates soon find jobs, Sherwin-Williams reports, and many go on to lead their own painting crews and launch companies.

The class, now in its ninth year, has shaped more than 4,000 'economically challenged' men and women into painters in 50 cities, according to the company.

Robin Holmes, the administrator of youth and adult services for the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority, would like to train that many in Cleveland alone. She'll settle for the nearly 50 painters who will emerge from the current class and a second class planned for fall.

Sherwin-Williams, the nation's number one paint-maker, plans to run the program in 32 other cities this year, said company spokesman Mike Conway.

Holmes said it would be great if other local industry leaders followed the company's lead and offered training that could open doors to their fields. Reaction to HomeWork, she said, belies the perception that public housing residents do not want to work. The class filled rapidly and Holmes said she could fill a dozen more.

'Sometimes there are barriers that keep people from attaining a job or keeping a job,' she said. 'Training is one of those barriers.'

Two weeks is not enough time to master a craft, of course, but it's time enough to get started. That's the view of Bill Allman, a retired Sherwin-Williams paint expert who is working with the CMHA to lead the Cleveland HomeWork class.

'It's not that they become experts,' he said. 'They become a hirable skilled force.' Tera nasha song.

Across two weeks, his students spread 60 gallons of paint through eight apartment units and up and down hallways. In shifts enriched with job-readiness training, they learned to mask trim, patch walls, grout tubs, chose paint, mix paint and achieve a fine finish with a stroke they repeat sing-song, 'two over, three down.'

'I have learned a lot that I thought I knew,' said Andre Wells, 26, adding that he has long painted, just not always correctly.

'Everybody's done a little bit of painting around the house,' agreed Dion Jones, 37. 'This is professional painting. What contractors are looking for.'

He hopes they come looking for him. Single and fit, he's been unemployed since the downtown Crowne Plaza hotel, where he washed dishes, closed for renovations.

On Friday, he'll be handed a Renovation, Repair and Painting certificate from the federal Environmental Protection Agency at a 9 a.m. graduation ceremony at Woodhill Community Center, 2491 Baldwin St., then embark upon his next quest.

'I think I have the knowledge to start my own business,' he said, adding, 'I'm looking for employment first.'