OUR FIRST DAY OF WORK

We are working at two houses, that are very close to each other. We can walk back and forth between them, which is a good thing. At house one there is much to be done inside. There ate no completed interior walls. They are framed with 2x4s but that is it. They have only cold running water and can not have their electricty completed and their hot water heater turned on until there are walls. We are putting up tongue and groove pine walls and will try to get as much done as we can while we're here. There was a lot of cutting and measuring. We are getting pretty good at that. We also were very vareful and did a lot of detailed hammering and nail punching putting up the walls. We finished on of the bedrooms and a section of the hallway today. Tomorrow we hope to get another bedroom and the rest of the hallway done.

Since our job sites were so close to each other, we got to have lunch together. It was nice to get together as a whole group during the day. We got to compare notes with each other about what we were accomplishing.

At house two, before we could begin on the front porch we had to do some demolition. We tore out the old screen and lattice, and cut out the floor boards that were rotted. We also removed the stairs. In the back we were able to start without demolition, but we had to cut out some of the house siding to mount the header for the deck. You can't tell from the pictures, but it was pouring rain. Even so, we kept at it. We had canopies we brought so the tools wouldn't get ruined. The rain slowed us down some, but didn't stop us. By lunch time it finally stopped raining, which was good. The afternoon was hot and steamy, but we still worked hard. Just drank a lot of water.

The culmination of a hard days work. We are pretty proud of what we accomplished. We will complete both the front porch and back deck tomorrow. Have to build stairs for both and then also put rails on the back deck. When we finish that we will trim out all the windows on the house.

Even though we worked hard all day we entered the volleyball tournament at the camp. As I write this, the tournament is still going on. Team one was eliminated, but team 2 has yet to play. We'll let you know the results tomorrow night.