Day 4

We accomplished a lot yesterday. About half of the rafters are up! It is so exciting! Gary finally had a day off of work and was able to help out on one of the actual work days. I took a lot of pictures so I will just let you look through those and not say much.



This will eventually be my ceiling.



Here's the happy Debbie worker who will get after me when she sees this photo. She came to stand by me so I wouldn't get her in the photos I was taking. I made brownies to bring today, maybe that will help!



Getting ready to put the rafters up.








Here we are at the end of the day. Half the rafters up.

I don't like heights so I spent a lot of time carrying boards around and lifting them up to the people doing the roof work. I'll post more on todays work. Hopefully the rain will hold off again. We've been very lucky with the rain so far.

Week 2

Hi! Here is week 2 of the build. This week we are only working today (Friday) We got a lot done again thanks to all the volunteers that showed up. Thought I'd start off by showing you a little bit more of the yard.This is a little shaded area between our house and the neighbors. In the back you can just make out an old apple tree and to the right of it some sort of flowering bush that is very over grown. We may end up taking that out and planting something new there eventually. Just beyond the apple tree is the dirt area I showed last week that will eventually have grass planted there.


Here we are getting the end wall ready to go.


Here is the wall up. This is the back wall with the 2 bedroom windows. The plywood did get put on not too long after this went up.


Here is the front of the house with the walls up. All these smaller walls went together a lot faster than the bigger ones last week. We also new more of what we needed to do! The bumped out part is the dining area. Then you can see where the door will be and the living room window.


Here is the interior wall going the length of the house. Now I know where all the doors are and have an idea of how big the rooms will be. We also know where the stairs will be going. Gary stopped by on his lunch from work to see what was going on.

Oh, I also meant to thank Shirley for the cookies!! Everyone loved them.
I hope you will stop by again next week to see what we have gotten done on the house. Bye for now.

House Build Day 1 and 2

We have now finished the first 2 days of construction. It was a lot of work but exciting. The first day I forgot my camera. The first day a big group of college students came out from the campus chapter of Habitat. By the end of the day, we managed to get the flooring on over the basement. The site supervisor didn't think we would get that far the first day so he had to make a call to get more supplies delivered or there would be nothing to do on Saturday.

When I got to the site on Saturday, the truck was just delivering the supplies. We had another good size group from the college and various other people. We really appreciate every ones help. It was so much fun to see 2 walls go up today. By the end of the day, I was really sore and tired. I'm glad I remembered to pick up gloves on my way t the site yesterday. Some of the college kids didn't wear any and had some good blisters on their hands from all the hammering.

In the next couple of pictures, you can see how far we got Friday.



These next pictures show the raising of the first wall. Here, you can see Paul, the site supervisor, giving us instructions on how to raise the wall.





To give everyone an idea of where things are in the house, the first window is the living room, then two bedrooms.


Here is the second wall up. You can see the dining room window on the right. Then there is the kitchen window, bathroom (I'm assuming) and a bedroom. I think it is the master bedroom. I saw the house plans but it is hard to remember just where everything is.


This shows the end view of the house from the back of the property. Through the trees on the right side, you can just see the neighbors (last years Habitat build) house through the trees.


Here is what will eventually be our yard. Since it gets sunlight all day, I'm thinking it would be nice to put in a small garden. We will need to put up some kind of fencing to keep the wildlife out of it. We'll also need to put up some kind of fence to keep the dogs safe. We really don't need Ginger wandering off and running into something and Riley would make a good couple of bites for some of the bears and other animals out here.


I want to thank everyone again who came out here the last couple of days. We really appreciate all the help we received.
I hope you have enjoyed seeing how far we have gotten. I'll try to post things as they come up and keep pictures posted of our progress so stop by again to see what we have done.

Welcome to Our Home

I decided to write this blog to record the journey of building our home with Pemi-Valley Habitat for Humanity. This way I can show friends and family the progress we are making. We found out on April 15th, that we had been accepted for this house. It took a while for it to sink in. I kept waiting for someone to tell me that it had been a mistake. After talking to different people from Habitat, it finally did start feeling real.

The day after finding out, we drove up to the property and looked around. The foundation was already in. Not much to look at but it was fun to just go there.




Well, I have more to show tomorrow from the first two work days but I am just too tired right now. I hope you will come back from time to time to see the progress that is being made.