Last Day!

This saturday was my last day. The whole week went by really fast. We roofed a house. I got to take a ride in our best volunteer's Corvette when he took us to lunch. And on that last day, there were two dedications. The second one was for the Belarussian guy with 7 kids, I don't know if I've mentioned him yet. His youngest son has cerebral palsy, and his wife left because she didn't want to take care of the son.
And he is the most appreciative homeowner of them all. So anyways, he had a lot of family members at the ceremony, and a lot of good food! It was a good end to the experience.

Yesterday, the other construction assistants, Justin, and I had a celebratory bbq together. D gave us little books about friendship. Our favorite memories mostly involved D getting yelled at (these were D's favorite too), or D having an upset stomach and no toilet paper in the portapotty after some volunteers brought bad Togo's. My favorites were with B, the "logistics supervisor," who was really just in charge of getting stuff from Home Depot and collecting trash from the sites. He had a lot of good war stories and silly jokes.

Thank you everyone for reading!

We are coming close to finishing three houses right now. Unfortunately, I can't get a clear answer of when the deadlines are, so it's harder to stay motivated than if I did.
Last week, I thought the deadline was the third week of June, so it was easier for me to keep going. "Sense of urgency" is how Ikea referred to it.

the end is near

Sorry it has been a while. believe it or not, my term is wrapping up. a little sooner than i expected though. after i finish my term, i only have to work the last week. in between that, and when i finish my hours, i can take time off.
i'm thinking of things to do.
1. sleep
2. camp
justin has wanted to since his birthday. i think it be fun, too. to see more (or see for the first time) of norcal.
3. practice some japanese

This week I did a lot more trim stuff. I used a jigsaw to cut sink holes. Hung cabinets. I learned a lot. Today was just cleaning and landscaping. I think the preschool thing made it a long week, ready for the weekend.

We have been doing our individual project- a garden for a preschool. It was fun, but exhausting, working with 150 little kids (not all at once). It's just one of our americorps fullfilments for the year.

All the americorps have been doing interior trim this week. Matt and I are professional closet-installers now. Some baseboard.
We went on a Habitour today. For potential donors, telling the homeowners stories.
Saturday I just found out I have off, so Justin and I are driving down to LA.

Today was a huge letdown. It's raining here, and there's still a storm watch, so we are still at the hotel. Unfortunately we still had to get up at the usual time, 5:30, and go down to the buses. They were making last minute decisions, we ended up going to another casino to take a big group picture with the Carters. That took an hour and a half. Then we went to a baseball stadium with a big tent and ate breakfast. They finally decided the sites were closed and we had to go back.
But I just won $7 on slots!
I found a litte blurb about the family we were rehabing for-
The water from Katrina "messed up everything we had." Eugene and Patricia tried to ride
out the storm in their house, but the water got so high they had to leave. The water was up to
his neck when he tired to walk outside. They made their way to the railroad tracks, which were
on higher groud, and followed them to a school where they took shelter.
He was really nice, always smiling, and made the work a lot easier to do. The hardwood floors we put in looked really nice with the off-white paint we used. Everyday, he'd come over to help a little, and he looked really pleased with all the stuff being done.
Next year, the build is in Indonesia. It has been a great trip, a little bit of nccc again.

i'm pretty tired, but really quick, just wanted to say that this week has been rewarding, but exhausting! I'm finally getting enough sleep. (it's hard when you're staying at a casino vs. a hotel, or a fema tent, or whatever).
I have been doing a lot of finish work that I haven't done before- laminate floor, tomorrow, i will do baseboards. tomorrow we are supposed to be finished with the house, but we'll be cutting it close. I hope we are able to, because there's also some sort of dedication ceremony, and it would be nice to have it done.
today there was also a tornado watch, but nothing really happened.

So today was just painting for me, nothing new, but I liked it a lot. We are rehabing a home in gulfport, in a neighborhood of about 40 other homes being rehabed. We met the homeowner, eugene, and some of his family. They are all very very nice.
Yesterday, at our commencement, Garth Brooks and Trisha yearwood showed up. And of course, jimmy and rosalind. Jimmy gave a very good speech. The rest was kind of corny.

It's been a week, but I can't think of anything too new that I learned during it.
The exciting news is that right now, I'm in Biloxi, Miss. in a Casino! I feel like I'm in Vegas.
We will be fixing up some houses over here for the Jimmy Carter build. But work doesn't start til Monday. Tomorrow, we'll probably go over to New Orleans. I will be able to see it and compare from last time I was there.
Hopefully I'll keep getting free internet here, and be able to post a bit more.

the rest of the week, I learned quite a bit now that I think about it. We sheathed the roof today. Before that, there were a lot of details that had to be done- putting up the barges (white 2 x 6 trim), putting up the starter boards (plywood on the very edges of the roof), putting plywood under the California "hips". I have become a lot more confident with the skil saw. I am Cut Girl.
I like working with measurments though. It seems like myself and the other americorps all have varying amounts of different qualities- Matt has all brawn/"monster" and no finesse, I have finess, but no brawn, Joel has some of both, David has none of either. So it all works out!

We have been at an old house (dedicated 3 years ago), fixing up the bathroom and bedroom area. Just painting. Since I worked with a home owner who also is a professional painter, I've been liking painting a lot more; he gave me some tips.

Another concrete driveway today. It's starting to get very familiar (I was going to say boring, but it's not).

We were back at the same site today. There is a class from Consumnes River College (local CC) that helps out sometimes. They are all guys in their 20's, 30's, getting trained to do construction after. The teacher said CRC has a feeder program for architecture to places like Calpoly and Berkeley. He said he did it and went to a college in Oregon for it, but dropped out.
We "plumbed" the walls, using a 2x4 (people in the South called them "tubers," but I don't think I've heard that here) to hold the wall at precisely the right spot. We also used an $800 level!!
And then we sheathed, put up 3/8 boards of osb. That's about it. CRC was fun to work with.

framing with Lutherans

Saturday was crazy! the most volunteers at one time so far.
I just cut all day, the volunteers were the ones hammering.
all the walls got put up. they brought togo's for lunch.
there were just so many people there.
justin came too, he had fun. I think I hooked him on building, haha.

At the same house today. We got our framing package delivered. The flatbed comes with it, and it's on big pipes, and the truck takes off really quick, and the wood is hanging in the air for a millisecond, and then slams on the ground. We also got 20 yards of gravel delivered, and had to shovel that around. Did more "detail" on the floorplan, before all the volunteers arrive tomorrow.
There's supposed to be about 60. It's funny how everyone shows up on the day that we put up all the walls.
I relearned about king studs, and cripples (jack studs), how to mark them. Still a lot of fun.

today we decked the floor joist/foundation, and started putting the "plates" around the perimeter, and marking off all the walls with a chalk line. I liked this last part the most, because we were using the plans to figure it out. I like all the measuring and numbers.
The homeowner was there today, she still seems pretty excited. she has a preschooler and a first grader. She's ethiopian, super nice.
otherwise a pretty typical day. some accountants from HP volunteered. It was a sunny day, but not too hot.

Two Palms

Hopefully the posts will start to be regular again. Today we had fire extinguisher training.
I missed a class on emerging cooling technologies for the west! I will just have to look into that myself.
The rest of the day was spend plumbing with J and some Intel volunteers.
The day got much better when Intel bought everyone lunch, and I got to talk a little with the home owner, a really nice guy from Belaruse (sp?). . . he talked with me and Dick about living under Communist rule.
We also tested the plumbing system after lunch. After the plumbing is up, and all the ends capped, we turn on the water from outside somehow, didn't get to observe that part, and you can hear the water rushing in, from one side of the house to the other. Kind of like rain or something.
There was one leak due to a bad crimp.

ps. this post is called "Two Palms" because the homeowner has a dream to put two palms up in the backyard when the house is done. I think this is so great!

The end of last week, I helped with a foundation for a new house.
It's a TGI, I still don't know what that means. But it's different than the other houses so far, in that it's not a solid concrete slab. Instead, it has 2-3 foot concrete walls (which were poured) and then a wooden grid built within that. This is more labor intensive, but since we have a lumber grant, it's pretty much free. I also heard that it's less of an insulator (vs. a solid slab), but that's the trade off. It was good though. There was an architecture firm volunteering, they did a good job. Four people, about my age, graduates from UC Berkeley. Reminded me of the design students from Davis. And the lead associate seemed to know his stuff. He took over directing people as soon as T took his first smoke break.
I also stopped by the office this morning, to observe L, the in-house architect. I guess it was a slow day. From what I could gather though, his job was mostly organizing, making check-lists, putting together presentations.

So now I'm at Arden Fair Mall, relaxing in front of Sephora.
I've been doing a lot of plumbing. I think I'm pretty good at the water lines now, drilling holes through the studs, using the pipe cutter and the clamps, finding all the fittings.
After we finish all the piping, we cap off all the open ends, and test the whole system. I think that will be interesting.
One memorable thing in the past weeks has been a seminar I went to called Climate Change and Green Building. It wasn't a whole lot of anything I haven't heard before, but it was nice being with all those people and hearing about all those topics again. I learned that gas should be around $7/gallon in a year and a half. And that CA has a mandate to cut CO2 emissions by 80% less than what it was in 1990. This seems a little ambitious to me.