Category: Pictures

Fearing rain, we prepared for the worst, but we were happy to experience some cloud cover vs. the previous day’s heat.

We got to meet Diane, Bracky’s wife, who also introduced us to the Palm Nailer. A tool we wish we found on day 1. It’s the best thing in the world.. air powered hammering. Any of the guys that got to use didn’t want to go back to the elbow grease hammers.

Today was high-wire work for many, especially Gary and Mo. Working on the trusses, they lived high above our work. It’s amazing how much work is involved in setting up the framing for the roof paneling that we hope to install tomorrow.

New tool added today:

Chop Saw. That gave us straight cuts, and yes, Steve was eager to cut up any pieces of 2×4 that were requested. Still no major injuries to report.

The beginning of the day was squaring up the house. A string is placed around the outer walls, and we push/pull and secure the wall at various points to make sure the walls are lined up with the string.

We also learned today that using the Sawzall could allow us to cut nails when we would mess up our work. Don’t worry, we’re building this house with love and care and hopefully to withstand the terrors of a hurricane.

Almost every guy on the crew worked up on the trusses. Much appreciated, very exciting and hard work in the heat. Poor Gary for being the tallest guy had to take the highest point of the building at all times.

We hope that the slide shows give you some taste of the amount of work involved in building these homes. We appreciate our homes all the more.

This morning, we lost Dave our project foreman, and got his boss, “Bracky” for the morning. Dave had to take care of responsibilities at another site and joined us once he finished.

After Dennis and Steve joined us after lunch, Steve discovered many power tools, and if you look at the slide show.. Frank meets his match..

🙂

It was a good hard dirty hot day of work, but we all were satisfied with the work we’re doing and the reasons why. We pray for the neighborhoods we travel through, we let people know why we’re doing this, and we can’t help but be touched by the many prayers that we’re helping be a part of.

Many have prayed to help this region, many have prayed to be helped. We’re just helping out in a practical and spiritual way for this part.

Hopefully we’ll have some more video uploaded by tonight for you.. we’re beat and need our sleep, but want you to be involved with us! 🙂

Steve and Dennis stayed behind in the morning to do our commitment of KP.

It included washing down both our (Habitat for Humanity’s) and the Salvation Army’s Village

Steve got to use a power washer

Gary takes a 5 minute nap.

After our lunch, (we ran out of building materials so we had an early lunch) we were also waiting for Steve and Dennis to join us after their KP duty.

Lunchtime means eating the lunches we packed earlier today.

It’s hot. Hotter than yesterday

Hot!

We did a ton of work on Day 1

Originally we didn’t think we’d be doing any work on the walls, instead working on preparing to put down a slab…

But we were happy to find out that were going to be working on erecting walls on a nice clean slab

We’ve got a TON of pictures, and have put them in some scattered order that we hope to clean up, but right now, we’re trying to go to sleep, but wanted to share them with you.

Some things of note:

1. All 10 of us were able to work together and adopted Doug from another Baptist church.
2. It felt like we built two houses, but it was only one. The blueprints we had were reverse and mirrored from what we actually had, so it took a while to find out which way was left, right and up.
3. Heat’s not too bad.. yet.
4. Peter with the wrist problems experienced an equipment malfunction, launching a hammer at Steve. Yes, (I) Peter was hammering with my right hand, but know that I had that one in a wrist brace a month ago.
5. A wall almost fell on Gary and Peter when a gust of wind came. It missed them by four inches. Breaking one of the 2×4’s, but nothing on those two guys.
6. Steve’s Personality is showing quite a bit.. and yes, he’s now known as the “Cut Man” because he’s in charge of all (yes, all.. gulp) the power tools. We stand clear when he’s working…
7. The walls for our house was apparently built up in Washington by Expedia Inc. in June 2006
8. The shower that I (Peter) took was one of the best experiences in my life
9. Finally, at the end of the pictures is a series of shoes. My (Yes, me again, Peter), had a clothing malfunction, my favorite hiking shoes decided that 7 years was too long to live and fell apart/disintegrated/exploded, et al. Tommy tried to repair them with Saran Wrap, trying to pull upon his Macgyver skills.

Our walls are up, well almost. we put up the exterior walls and left one corner down for bringing in the interiors. each wall is strapped to the concrete for new hurricane codes.

Now it’s lunch time.

We’re putting up walls! we’re in Gautier and sunscreen and bugspray are required.

It seems you can tell a lot about a person by the kind of lunch they make!