Bottom row - Dawn Watkins-Welcome, Melissa Detwiler, Kirsten Reed, Deirdre Holliday, Suzanne Shogren, Christin Morgan, and Lori Loriso (Shane Flowers not pictured)
This was such a truly wonderful experience!
We began our day by meeting at the volunteer build site at 8am. We all signed in and stuck on our duct-tape name tags and then headed over for a brief orientation. PK was our volunteer coordinator for the day and she was wonderful! You would have never known that she started 1 week prior. She was one of several AmeriCorps staff members that were working for Habitat. She assigned us all specific jobs and then sent us over to our group leaders.
Once we got on the actual site, we got straight to work. Some of us were finishing the cement wall on the back of the house, some were building walls and others were literally moving gravel. There were tons of jobs throughout the day as one job would morph into another, but regardless of a group here and a group there, I think we truly felt as if we were all working together in some sense. We would help out with other groups where needed and in the end, we were all working toward the same cause.
The morning flew by! We took lunch, and then got straight back to work. We worked until 3pm and then began our clean up. Once the clean up was complete we turned back to take a look at our work for the day. Wow! Spectacular. When we arrived at the build site, we were told we were building a 2 family duplex. We looked at it and the first floor had been framed with the floor of the 2nd floor nailed into place. At the end of the day, you could literally see the difference we had made. No longer could you easily see the building behind it b/c there was a huge wall of ICP and the house was becoming more of a house rather than just some wood beams linked together. What a spectacular feeling!!
There was a great sense of accomplishment at the end of the day, and I hope that goes for everyone involved.
Another great part of our day was that we were expecting rain, and didn't get a drop...until we got in our cars at the end of the day. Talk about divine intervention!! :)
I can't wait to have the opportunity of joining forces with Habitat again soon and I hope that even more of our employees have the chance of joining in on all the fun!
Take a look at some of our job tasks throughout the day:
Orientation
Working hard doesn't mean killing your knees, right Dawn? :)
Melissa hanging off the side of the house. "Safety 3rd" was sort of our motto for the day.
Watch out! Dee's got a hammer!
I guess Mark thought it was an appropriate time for some pull ups. Get back to work, sir!
Janine was a true professional with those power tools. I think she's done this before.
Lori and Marty = teamwork! Marty knew more about this than the group leaders. He was running the show!
Dawn modeling with her tool of choice for the day.
Vicki with a power saw. You'll notice that no one is even close to nearby. Speaks volumes! haha!
Another group photo!!
Steve was sneaky. He would not look at the camera all day.
Christin cheesing for the camera instead of doing work. She's probably missing valuable instructions right now.
Richy enjoying his time sorting the wood by size.
Janine and Christin taking a quick photo break from overlapping rebar
I wish we had a "before" photo...b/c this is our "after".
Encloures that were added during our build day.
The inside of 1 half of the duplex
Lori and Saundra (one of our team leaders) cleaning up for the day
David waving and Mark looking like he's having trouble with some heavy equipment. :)
Christin, Janine, and Richy modeling their work attire
Dawn wanted to model as well.
Since Steve was sneaking away from the camera all day, we were sneaky ourselves getting a photo of him during the group shot.
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