I spent yesterday out on the Habitat site, with one of my good friends, Josh K, and about 20 other volunteers. This was a very different experience from what I'm used to on the site, because Thursday, when I usually go out, it is almost entirely regular volunteers, who are very experienced with construction work. This puts me in the less-experienced catagory. I do things like pound nails, and carry stuff. Sometimes I will work with someone who actually understands what is happening, but I'm rarely the person who knows the most about what is happening. Yesterday, I was actually one of the more clued-in people. It felt nice. Saturday had at best, 6 regulars. And that is counting Dad and I as regulars. Dad is far closer to the regular category than I am.
Enough about regularity. I feel like a progress update is in order. The two houses that are currently in the process are coming along quite nicely. All the OSB is up, and most of the windows and doors, have been routered out, so are now open, looking remarkably like real doors and windows. The roof trusses (the things that give the roof something to be built on top of, think of them as the roofing equivalent of studs.) are in place, and some plumbing is starting to go in place. Some of the walls also have something called "one-hour firewall". Wikipedia has a pretty good explanation of firewall, and fire partition, here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewall_(construction). Yesterday, I was putting on the roof sheathing, which is some pretty cool stuff (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiant_barrier). This will keep attic heat down by up to 20 percent in the summertime. I was doing a lot of the measurement work, and got to work with some good people on my roof. We got half of one the roofs done. So that was fun. There was also an excavator on site, preparing the two-bedroom lot foundation for the forms, and all that follows. Pretty cool to see the form of the house starting to take form, out of the ground. Cool!
On Thursday (this was written a week and a half ago) , the day that I am usually out on the site, we were putting on something called fascia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascia_(architecture) We were attaching the fascia to the rafters, where they projected past the walls. This serves the dual purpose of providing a nailing surface for the roof sheathing, as well as a nailing surface for the gutters. I had a lot of fun doing this. I'm getting pretty confident when it comes to leaning out to nail things, or cut things, and also just moving around on the trusses, and the roof and scaffolding. It was pretty intimidating at first, but I'm getting more comfortable.
I want to talk a little bit about the other people that are helping my family, and 5 others build their future houses. The site manager, Brent, and the two Americorps (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americorps) volunteers, John and Matt are great young guys. Brent started as an Americorps volunteer, and then got hired recently. All those guys are out on the site everyday. It is their job. But there is another group of people, volunteers, who come out on a semi-regular basis, and have a lot, lot, lot of skills. A bulk of this group are male, Caucasian retirees, who have some kind of experience in construction or engineering. They are also some of the nicest guys I've ever worked with. Occasionally a little frustrated with those that aren't as skilled (me), they are still great guys, and all very good at whatever it is they are doing. Whenever I try to describe one of the volunteers to my family, unless everyone knows their name, it is virtually impossible. It seems like a whole 1/3 of the men have 3 letter names. Hal, Tom, Jim, Les, etc. So confusing!! I'm going to highlight a few of volunteers that I particularly like, and enjoy working with. Carter used to be in the medical field, and is a very smart guy, who has retired from that, and now is immersing himself in the world of building houses. He is out on the site every day, and is really learning a lot. I admit, I am a little jealous that he gets to spend all his time learning this really cool thing. There is also Hal, who used to be a general contractor for 20 years. Kinda knows what he is doing. Frank, who used to be a roofing and siding contractor. And Mike, the unemployed, waiting for work, journeyman carpenter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journeyman. He is awesome. Much more spry than some of the older volunteers, and pretty impressive with the math and figuring he does in his head. I can see why some people would spend a career doing things like this. It really can be a challenge, and enjoyable, if you engage with it on a level past "I just hit nails."
Anyway, it's pretty late, and I need to get up at a decent time in the morning. I'll have more later. Good night!
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