Day Eighteen: January 2008

Day Eighteen: Friday, January 25

Our Friday morning wakeup included news that it wasn’t raining. We actually kind of hoped that it would rain so that we could head to Rosie’s instead of going to Habitat this morning. Instead, we split the difference. Those who had crucial jobs to continue at Rosie’s went there, and those who could spare some time for Habitat joined in on the events there today.

The Habitat folks started with some big jobs, including laying decking (the flat part of the roof) on one house and finishing shingling on another. We all enjoyed the heights, the challenges, the power tools, and everything about those jobs. The wind was picking up, though, making our huge sheets of plywood function like sails sometimes. No one took flight. Just as we broke for lunch, though, it began to rain and the temperature dropped dramatically. We went inside one of one of the more-advanced houses and waited for today’s special lunch to arrive: pizza! We also enjoyed brownies that were cooked for us by our Habitat staff friend Katie.

After lunch we had to abandon all of our roof jobs (reluctantly) and take on some other tasks that didn’t involve sliding around on top of houses. Several of us took on siding the highest parts of the houses and others installed hurricane straps on the house with the double hip roof. Hurricane straps are flat bars of 12-gauge steel that are nailed into a stud and then bent over the cap plate (the highest 2x4 in the main house structure) to help hold the parts of the house together in high winds. Each of them takes 14 nails, making their installation a very slow process. Elijah got to enjoy himself on the hurricane strap task, as he got a big kick out of bending the heavy steel plates with his bare hands.

Our house leader on that job (Jordan) bid us farewell today. We were a bit surprised because we still have one more day at Habitat; Jordan, however, is going out of town this weekend, so we won’t see him again before we leave. We’ve been through a lot of stages of this house with Jordan, so it is sad to see him go. It also reminds us that we, too, are about to leave town and that we are about to say goodbye to a number of our new (and old) NOLA friends. We were so struck by our impending separation from our Habitat friends that we invited them all over to dinner tonight at our place.

We headed over to Rosie’s after our Habitat day and found that the early shift had made huge progress on the jobs that we had left undone. Matt W. almost single-handedly moved the 15,000 pound sand pile to the backyard. Others managed to help him a bit, but he said that he really like the mindless monotony of shoveling and toting the sand. He’s a hero for the day.

Briana, Brad, Shane, and Justin teamed up on the front doors and installed the new glass panes as they also continued sanding. This door job – which was not on our original list of chores – has turned into one of our most time-consuming undertakings. It would have been incredibly expensive to replace the doors and the windows that surround them, but the amount of time that we have spent on the entire porch area is pretty enormous. We expect that whole area to be beautiful any day now.

Even more impressive was the work of today’s floor crews. The first crew consisted of Jed, Scott, Matt P., Mark, and Obi (with a lot of help from Chris and Justin) and the second crew consisted of Emily, Lindsay R., Sam, Alec, and Aaron. The first crew got things going during the early shift and managed to take the board-by-board vinyl plank flooring through the bathroom, back entryway, and two bedrooms. Because the process involves spreading a fierce glue over the floor, peeling the adhesive back off of the vinyl plank, then applying it to the glued floor, there is much room for error and even more room for making a total mess. Everyone on the floor was covered with glue, despite all of their attempts to control where the glue belonged.

We ended the day very, very dirty, but we really wanted to celebrate with our Habitat friends anyway. In the bus we decided to make tonight a big thanksgiving dinner, complete with stuffing, mashed potatoes, yams, and turkey. We had all but the turkey, so the late shift workers stopped and got some on the way home. Our night was loud and fun. Colin from Habitat brought his trombone and proved that he is an excellent player. We played games in the tent and played music for each other. We stayed up later than we should, but we want to have fun too. We’ll definitely make our 5000 hours, as today we worked for 302 hours; now our running total is 4766.


Best friends, Sergio and Erik, sit on Rosie’s stoop after a long day of flooring.


Kate Julie and Lindsey laughed as they painted Habitat signs and made up songs about the indescribably cold weather.


Julie sketched the Habitat for Humanity symbols on all the signs.


Jed the stud rocks the power tools.


Bryan and Elijah keep the morale high as they paint Rosie’s walls and sing songs.


Lindsay and Eric laid out some plans while on top of another Habitat house early today. The wind was fierce but they powered through it! Our troopers!


We consider Shawny to be our agent – we go wherever she sends us! Amazingly enough, she is able to put in a solid day of work and coordinate what will occur in the days that follow all at the same time


This was the view that we woke up to this morning, it was freezing but we all looked forward to a good day at work!


Amanda, Shane, Chris, and Sam enjoyed some relaxing time back at camp after dinner. We were treated to a great dinner of Turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes - It was delicious and well deserved!


Elijah was hard at work today putting up the decking at one of our favorite Habit houses.

Day Seventeen: January 2008

Day Seventeen: Thursday, January 24

Today’s Katie’s REAL birthday! We had her party on Tuesday, but we’ve kept the celebration going until now! Happy day again, Katie!

Because we crossed over our 4000-hour mark, we got to sleep in while Chris, Justin, and Shawny cooked breakfast for us. They made French toast out of all different kinds of bread, including raisin bread. They also bought bread and lunch meat for sandwiches for lunch, so that both the breakfast and lunch crews could skip the prep nightmare this morning. Just as we were awakening, a light rain began to fall.

We wondered if Habitat would call the day off, but we hustled onto the bus as if they would not. Just as we headed for the gate, one of the Habitat staffers called us and told us to skip out. We all headed to Rosie’s in the rain and kicked things into high gear.

The paint crew got new paint, some of which had to be used to correct the problems caused by yesterday’s improperly-mixed paint that didn’t match the rest of the walls. Though repainting was a drag, it meant that the walls that got two coats look really great. So do all of the painters, by the way, as they are covered head to toe in the paint color, which is called “Elegant White.” It looks less elegant when it is splattered all over people’s glasses and skunk-striped through their hair, but it is a nice indication of who is a painter and who is not. The paint team is loosely led by Serg and includes a range of other people such as Kate, Sam (who took on almost all of the trimwork in 4011 with no complaints), Lindsay R., Nicole, Lindsay S., Julie, Erik, and sometimes Elijah and Bryan. All in all, the painters have brought the houses to a state where they finally look “real” to us. We are pretty proud of what we’ve made happen inside the framed-out walls that greeted us when we arrived.

Apart from the painting, today was a day of unglorious jobs. No one got to be a hero, except maybe the people who scrubbed out the bathtub surrounds that had gotten covered with construction dust and footprints. Mark and Obi tackled this job and managed to make the tubs look like they had just been installed. No scratches, no marks, no dirt in sight.

Other than that task, all of our jobs today were pure drudgery. Some of us were scrubbing the floors (even though at this moment they are still only covered with plywood (technically OSB) to prep them for installation of vinyl flooring, possibly as early as tomorrow. Katie (on her birthday!), Matt W., Aaron, and Jed worked up quite a funky process to bring up all residue from the subfloor and remove it with a wet/dry vac. Even when it was still pretty light out Jed performed the procedure wearing a headlamp. Hopefully someone will post a picture or some video of this group doing its job.

Others continued to remove years and years of old paint from the original front doors that we chose to salvage. Briana and Brad have been committed to the sanding job for days now and Emily and Shawny joined in for the full day today. Almost everyone in the group has put in some time on the front doors and porch, so we all have a stake in their eventual beauty.

Outside the house, six yards of sand showed up today. The plan is to carry the sand into the backyard so that we can level the ground and plant some grass seed, bulbs, and other plants. We are, of course, experts at moving huge loads of sand, so another 15,000 pound pile doesn’t bother us a bit. Today’s floor crew is going to continue floor duty tomorrow, then take on the sand pile.

Our lunch today was a special one too: we actually had loaves of bread (Wow! We never have that!) and lunchmeat. The lunch crew (the Souljas) went into Rosie’s house and used the broiler to toast our sandwiches into ultimate yumminess. We needed some warmth on this chilly day and those sandwiches really hit the spot.

At the end of our workday, we headed home and waited for Chris, Matt, and Scott to return in the truck. They left with Rosie at about 4:00 to go pick up the flooring that we will install this weekend. As it turned out, though, they had to go to five different Lowe’s stores to find as much as we needed. They didn’t get home until almost 8:00 p.m.

When they arrived, they had a special treat: a cake for the birthday girl that they now call “Demolition Katie.” They decided that they wanted her cake to acknowledge how tough she is for working a ten-hour shift on her birthday. They actually got the bakery to let them draw some images on her cake, which included a unicycle (her vehicle of choice), a sleepy smiley face (she is always ready for a nap, though she rarely takes one), and some other rough and tumble images like explosions, etc. Everyone hooted and hollered when Chris explained the imagery of her cake, and now we are likely to call her “Demo K.”

It looks like we will make it to 5000 hours, as today we hit 291, taking us to a running total of 4464.


Brad works diligently on scraping the paint off of the front door.


Brad, Bri, Sam, and Erik try and finish the front room of 4011 so that we can complete the house.


Justin meticulously tries to scratch of the paint on the front door of 4009.


Thanks to Leo, Shane, and Tommy we were able to nearly complete the glass on 4009.


Our beautiful bus waiting for us to finish a hard days work at Rosies.


Nicole and Linzy played Cinderella for the day as they prepared the floor boards for the enamel flooring to be put in on Friday.


Rosie checking out the progress in the backyard.


what we do after a hard day of getting paint on us. It’s handy having a chauffeur.


Lindsay was part of the paint crew and is always happy to paint the trim.


Emily scraping the door to prepare it for paint.


The putty was difficult, but these window panes are going to look great after we’re done with them.


Bryan and Lindsay team up for a precise cut on closet baseboards. Precision is excellence in action.


Cleaning and prepping for flooring is collaborative effort.


Smile Brad! Great job on that door…it looks great.


Lunchtime in the back of the pick-up is always a great way to recharge and replenish body and mind.

Day Sixteen: January 2008

Day Sixteen: Wednesday, January 23

Yes! A warm morning with no rain! Things were grey and foggy, but not cold and wet. We’ll take it! We had leftover king cake for breakfast, prepped lunch, then headed out for Habitat. A few of us passed around Leo’s maddening metal dexterity puzzles (those brainteaser things where two curved pieces of metal are interlocked and the challenge is to separate them). These things have made the rounds through the whole group and some other peripheral folks. Even though we are sick of hearing the clinking of the parts, everyone still wants to try again whenever one of the puzzles is near.

Once at Habitat, the morning was full of jobs that were not exactly our dream tasks. One group blocked cabinets and closets in the house, which involves nailing boards between all the studs to serve as cabinet supports and closet structure supports. It’s an awful job that usually involves lots of hammer hits to our own fingers and hands. We persevered.

Another group applied weather stripping to the windows throughout the lot, while others worked on finishing the very highest parts of the siding on some of the houses whose exteriors are nearly finished. This job is particularly difficult, as it involves holding heavy strips of siding parallel off two ladders twenty or so feet in the air while also hammering them in. Matt P., Scott, and Lindsay S. were moving along swimmingly until we suffered our first hospital run of the year: Lindsay got an eye injury that seemed somewhat serious. Happily, it was not. She did not scratch her cornea as we suspected and has already recovered substantially just by using special drops.

While Lindsay headed to the ER, others kept working away at Habitat. Lindsay R. and Julie worked on truly beautiful signs for all of the houses in the Habitat block. And then our group was offered two special jobs: decking the double hip roof whose trusses have driven us crazy for a week and framing out walls on the house on which we built the floor system last week. We couldn’t finish either job, but tomorrow should bring both to an end.

The folks who went to Rosie’s house continued painting and working on those crackled front doors. We resorted to paint stripper and a pressure washer to move the sanding job along, with Brad as the chief paint removal specialist. Shane ordered replacement panes for all of the sections of the front doors. Some others cleared more parts of the area surrounding the house, including exposing a sidewalk that was almost entirely buried in muck and construction debris (not ours). Matt W. and Aaron got very artistic on a salvaged birdbath that we found at yesterday’s garden; once they have finished their artistry, we’ll show you their handiwork.

A side job also occupied a few people this afternoon: several of Rosie’s neighbors asked our crew to help eliminate the search party X’s that have been spray-painted on the fronts of their houses for two and a half years now. That means that some of us are learning to replace sections of vinyl siding without destroying the trim or the surrounding siding. Because we know how important it was for Rosie and our friend Sarah when we removed the markings from their houses, we knew that we wanted to help. It’s not as easy a job as it sounds, but it is worth it to us to figure it out. We worked past sundown, but hustled out quickly because we were hungry.

For dinner, we got to have lots of leftovers from Katie’s birthday bonfire, including chicken and vegetables that didn’t come out of cans! We’ve eaten well the last few days, which will help to keep us going as we make our final pushes at the Habitat site and at Rosie’s. There’s still a lot of work to do, but we are confident that we can make it happen.

Our hours for the day number at 295; our running total now is 4173.



Julie and Lindsay enjoy each others company as they make lovely signs for the Habitat work site.


Scott and Nicole work diligently on removing nails as they look to perfect their project.


The puppies get some much needed play time in the back of Jared’s truck. We can’t wait for their eyes to open!


Bri, Amanda, and Sam work on finishing the siding on the front of the house.


Bryan gets up close and personal with the stripper!


Dr. Aaron helps Lindsay S. before she heads to the emergency room to get debris out of her eye.


Leo and Stephanie take a break from working hard on the siding.


Julie paints beautiful signs to label the Habitat Homes.


In preparation for the wall raising ceremony, Amanda works to build the walls that will be brought up tomorrow.


Katie gracefully and courageously nails in the first piece of decking along the edge of the house.


Matt and Scottie reach great heights as they hammer in the siding of one of the habitat homes.


Mark and Aaron come down from the roof where they spent the day installing drainage.


Lindsay helps paint a sign displaying the address of one of soon to be completed Habitat for Humanity homes.


Elijah and Emily dangle from the trusses of the roof as they nail in the rest of the roof’s framing.


Amanda and Emily take part in the seemingly endless sanding of the large front door of Rosie’s house.


Lindsay R. working on signs for the habitat houses in the West bank village


Tommy Bell on the edge working on side fascia


Bryan working the chop saw at habitat for window rain diverters


Aaron and Mat hash out the plans for Rosie’s birdbath


Kate keeping moist after a day’s worth of painting

Day Fifteen: January 2008

Day Fifteen: Tuesday, January 22

Today is Katie’s birthday! Well, not really. Katie’s birthday is two days away. But we had such a beautiful summer-like day today that we decided to hold Katie’s birthday party tonight on a beach on the Mississippi River. But, of course, we worked all day first, so we’ll start there. . .

As usual, one person from each group went to Rosie’s house to keep the jobs going over there. Today was a big milestone, as the group at Rosie’s began the painting process in the first house. Things look really different (and really RIGHT) when a fresh coat of paint is applied. There were lots of other jobs to be done as well, including completing baseboards and continuing the sanding job on the porch.

The big group continued working with Parkway Partners, but at a different garden this time. This garden was in the Bywater neighborhood and it happens to be a garden that we restored back in January 2006. Back then, there was a huge tree in the middle of the space, but our group managed to bring it down with very few appropriate tools. Now the stump that we left behind is the home of a lovely thriving fern and the garden has changed dramatically since our last visit.

Now it is a microfarm run by a great guy named John. He wants to provide healthy food right in the Bywater neighborhood, where convenience stores are some of the only sources of groceries. He already had some beets started in one large section of the garden, and we helped him to supplement the soil in the other sections by spreading enormous amounts of used coffee grounds all over the lot. We also moved lots of debris from all around the garden and a few of us weeded the sections that were already planted. All in all it was a pretty easy morning for our hardworking crew, and we finished most of the job before lunchtime.

We decided to eat lunch before moving over to Rosie’s house, so we placed ourselves all over a huge rockpile across the street and somehow got comfortable enough to enjoy our surprisingly great vegetarian sloppy joes (with the necessary addition of our most important pantry staple: Ritz crackers). As we enjoyed our time on the rockpile, we noticed that there was one of those rubber traffic barrels at just the right distance from us to make a great target. We seem to have an obsession with throwing things at targets, so of course we had to make the most of that pile of rocks and the nearby barrel. Almost every one of us took a few turns at trying to hit the target; we found that the thump that accompanied a hit was a triumph in itself. Jed meticulously cleaned up any stray rocks that had landed in the nearby roadway, so we left no trace of our lunchtime game behind.

When we joined the group at Rosie’s house, things just started cranking. Jobs were getting knocked off the list more quickly than ever and even new jobs that emerged proved to be no big challenge. At one point we recalled that the back step of the 4009 side of the duplex had too great a drop from the doorway. (Jack pointed this out before he left; we aren’t skilled enough to notice such a thing.) It looked a little too complicated to solve the problem with the materials that we had, but Chris, Brad, and Obi decided to give it a try. The end result looks great and evened out the distance of all of the steps out of the door. Huge progress was the name of the game today on every job.

As mentioned above, our great productivity was surpassed only by the beauty of the day. It was like a gorgeous summer day rather than a follow-up to the below freezing temps we experienced yesterday. We loved it. When we noticed that the forecast was for rain the next few days, we decided to capitalize on the climate and head out to Macon’s house for an early birthday party.

Our group has spent many wonderful evenings (and workdays!) with Macon, so we knew that we needed to schedule a night at his house. He lives on the river side of the levee, with a long, low beach on which we can build a bonfire and sit right on the banks of the Mississippi. There’s something magical about the place that only gets compounded when you add yummy cheeseburgers, barbecued chicken, and s’mores. As we sat there, a thick fog rolled in and actually dripped on us occasionally, but never to the point where we needed to run for cover. A few of us took spins in the canoe and did a little loop around a nearby pier. Whether or not we were floating on the water, we were all floating on air.

And we celebrated Katie’s birthday! We’ll save part of the celebration for her actual birthday on Thursday, but it was fun to make a special meal together and hang out around a huge bonfire in honor of our favorite unicyclist. Katie is a freshman Nursing major who has shown a lot of guts on this trip. She is happy and full of awe every day, helping to elevate our spirits when the jobs are getting tough. Happy, happy, day, Katie!

Total hours today = 235; Running total = 3878




The Parkway Partners garden that we worked on today


Lindsay and Kate busy at work hauling wet hay to the front of the garden.


Nicole, Lindsay, and Matt place a pathway in order to prevent weeds from growing.


Aaron, Jed, and Tommy help Macon deliver the coffee grounds to enrich to soil.


Part of the pile we made today, which consisted of hay, branches, and miscellaneous objects.


After a long day of work we were all surprised to find out we would be heading out to a bonfire at a friends house overlooking the Mississippi River.


Shawny and Scott helped lug out extra debris from the garden as others worked on various projects at a Parkway Partners garden on the West Bank.


Thanks to our handy laptops Elijah was able to sit out at the worksite with Lindsey as she landscaped Rosie’s backyard.


Here we see Shawny, Katie, and Matt Wheeler working on a plot at Parkway Partners.


Katie and LinZy helped unload the 1500 pound sack of coffee that would be used as compost for the garden.


Sam weeding the garden full of snow peas.


Obi and Brad work on the stairs in the back of Rosie’s house


As we cleaned up, Jed took charge and got us wrapped up quickly.


Our beautiful artwork made out of Rosie’s old ramp.


Bri sands the front door of Rosie’s house


As we arrive on the work site, Shawny gives out orders to the group to get the day started.


Katie and Jed at the bonfire celebrating Katie’s 19th birthday. Happy Birthday Katie!


Jed asnd Makon use their strength to lift the big pile of wood into the bed of the truck.


While working with Makon and Parkway Partners, we came across this interesting sign posted on the local dumpster.


Bri, Amanda, Brad, Bryan, Erik, and Sergio all sit around the bonfire at Makon’s house waiting for the tasty burgers to come off the grill.