Habitat at Red Mill

We spent most of the week working with the Habitat for Humanity crew at Red Mill.  We originally planned on working Tuesday and Thursday but decided to work on Wednesday also.  Joe the construction manager, has upped the work days in hopes of getting as much done as possible in the next few days.  He worked all last week, through the weekend and then Mon-Fri this week.  The dedication ceremonies for the King house are this weekend so the pressure is on.

He had an ambitious week planned and from what we could tell, good things were happening.  On Tuesday, quite a few of the red hats were out there which helped quite a bit.  The red hats are volunteers who have been working here quite a while and have enough expertise and experience to lead work teams.

Some folks were dispatched outside to dig post holes for the fence.  They poured a bag of concrete into each hole and made sure the posts were plum.

The landscape folks came and did their magic one morning and leveled the yards and around the house doing a very good job.

The concrete guys came and cleaned out the area for the driveways and made the forms for the adjacent sidewalks.  The concrete was poured Wednesday and looks great.

We spent most of our time last week working with sheet rock on the downstairs bedroom, an upstairs bedroom, a couple of closets and the stairway.  It was a lot of lifting and measuring and putting screws in.

Each day is different because you never know who will show up.  They worked on both weekend days which is unusual but they are trying to get the houses done as much as they can for the dedication today. These are my two friends Pedro and Trenton.

Some of that work was later disrupted when the plumbing guys came and connected water pipes from the house to the street, but when we drove by on our day off yesterday, we could see that the front yards were covered with new sod and some shrubs.

Thursday was interesting because a large group of Navy volunteers came out to help.  They were split up into half a dozen groups and off they went to help on sheet rock and the fences.

At lunch time, the navy chaplain's office brought over lunch which was a nice touch.

We also had to work around the plaster guys who were really turning our handiwork into something beautiful.  They made our mistakes go away and put the finishing touches on the ceiling and walls using a series of swirl design strokes.  It is fun to see a master at work.

At the end of the day on Thursday, the owner came over and looked at the progress.  I coaxed Pam, Dotty and Joe to pose for me.

Dotty King, her husband and five boys are due to move in, hopefully by Thanksgiving.  We are working hard to make it happen!

We are enjoying the Habitat work and spent most of the week at it.  Thanks for joining us on the Roadrunner Chronicles.  Hope you have a great weekend.

What did one hot dog say to the other?  "Happy Halloweenie!