Evan and Carly here, filling you in on our Day 5 adventures from Santa Fe.
Everyone seems to have slept in this morning, with most alarms going off around 8 am. The entire group was exhausted from our previous day of service on site. We ate a quick breakfast and piled into the vans to see what the day had in store.
Once we arrived at the site, Rob (the boss) circled us up and had everyone say one thing they had learned yesterday… these ranged from learning how to use power tools to the difference between a framing hammer and a finish hammer.
Our first task of the day was to raise and place Habitat Santa Fe's first wall of their 100th house, what a memorable experience we were able to share with each other and "the regulars." Many pictures were taken to commemorate the special occasion, and soon after we were split into three groups to continue wall construction.
Pete and Jeffrey's groups focused on constructing the walls while Joyce's group placed them. This consisted of making sure the walls lined up with the bolts that were already embedded in the concrete floor slab and then determining whether the walls were "plum," aka straight up and down. We would then put caulk between each section and screw them together. We also placed several braces to make sure the walls wouldn't fall over, due to the 40 mph winds that were forecasted by Rob.
Lunch was generously provided for us by Habitat, a delicious variety of hamburgers and turkey burgers with plenty of toppings, chips and lemon sweet tea. We sat with everyone at the picnic tables on site and quickly devoured the scrumptious meal.
Immediately after finishing lunch, Rob instructed everyone on site to get ready to place a 40-foot long center section of wall that he had constructed all in about an hour… roughly the same amount of time it had taken 10 of us to build about three 8-foot sections (can you say amateurs??)
We then started anchoring the walls to the slab, requiring us to use a hammer drill to create holes for the anchor bolts. Alex and Emmitt seemed the most enthused about this task, but everyone quickly became discouraged after Ali managed to get the drill stuck deep in the trenches of the concrete. Despite Habitat Alex and Pete's efforts to remove it, we had no choice but to replace the bit and begin a new hole, leaving the old bit in the ground (with many suggestions to just leave it as a house decoration). No worries though, when Rob returned to the site, he was able to wrench the drill out of the ground, after making a bet with Alex to buy him dinner if he failed at removing it… way to go, Ali.
At about the same time the drill became entrapped, Alex accompanied Rob to Home Depot, where he was able to purchase many supplies for Habitat from the funds we had previously raised (thanks to our awesome friends and families!!!!) The idea behind this is that we aren't allowed to donate a flat check to the program, but we are allowed to donate supplies. This way, Habitat has more money available to purchase land for future homes.
Before we knew it, we had finished all of the exterior walls and the house began to come alive. We were instructed to start cleaning up around 4:15 and pose for a picture from within our newly constructed walls. After taking a normal picture, Rob told us to "point to that cloud" …whatever that means.
We got back to the church and promptly cleaned their outside porch as our "rent" for the week. About half the group took a stroll over to the Plaza, a quaint shopping center about two blocks away from the church, where an exotic street performance group was showing off (lucky us!!) Hannah, Emmitt and I (Evan) cooked pizza casserole and pineapple-cherry dump cake for dinner, it was fantastic if I do say so myself.
Our plans for the remainder of the night include showers and a movie of some sort, and hopefully another good night's rest (and early bedtime).
Tomorrow should include some sheet rocking and the construction of interior walls. We can't wait to learn even more from our amazing (and ridiculously patient) instructors.
That's all for now… MABe Back Soon!!!
Carly and Evan out!
Where's the pics please?
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