Tuscaloosa Week 1

I arrived in Tuscaloosa Alabama during a rain storm, that continued for the first 3 days of the build.  That’s OK, it means inside work.

There are 6 RVers here, this is my first time as team lead.  What a great group!  2 couples and a single guy I met at the FROG rally and convinced to join a build.  Also with us is the team lead from the last group.  They were supposed to go to Aniston Georgia for their next build, but were rained out.  It’s nice to have his experience added to our group.

Joining us for the first week are two church groups from Illinois and Missouri.  We couldn’t have asked for a better group, everyone is so easy to work with and a pleasure to be around. 

Camp Y is a YMCA camp, I’m not sure if Habitat took it over or just gets to use it.  One of the site supervisors (Peter) lives here in a house called the Lion’s Den.  There are two bunk houses that the church group is occupying.  We have a bath house and a huge rec room/kitchen complete with fireplace, pool table and ping pong table.  Our RVs are set up on an old basketball court and we have water and power hookups.  There are picnic tables set back in the woods and a nice playground.  The place is pretty rustic looking, but very nice. 

On our first night the RVers and Peter headed to the rec room for a nice dinner in front of the fire, where we all met for the first time and got to know each other.  It was pouring rain and the fire sure helped take the chill out of the air.  I really like this crew, we’re going to have a great build!

This Habitat affiliate is one of the most organized I’ve ever seen.  It seems each site has a dedicated site supervisor.  Since the Tornado 2 year ago, the affiliate has gone from building 1-2 houses a year to 25 houses this year.  The tornado destroyed 5000 homes.  The city has rebuilt some of the commercial areas, but not too many residential areas. 

Monday morning was chilly and raining, so we were not disappointed at all to find we were not doing siding as planned.  The church group and the Care-A-Vanners were instead going to work together on the new office building for Habitat.  The affiliate was located in some warehouse space and the business next door recently relocated so Habitat took over their space.  Our tasks over the next 3 days included drywall, mudding, painting, trim work, running phone and electric wiring, building a room full of shelf space, putting together desks and moving furniture.  On Thursday a small group went to a warehouse to do some prefab building.  As I said, this is one organized affiliate!  Peter had built a template like you couldn’t believe.  He took a sheet of plywood and nailed 2x4’s in the shape of a roof truss.  Basically you slapped some precut wood into his frame and nailed away.  3 guys working on that project had about 50 of them done in one afternoon.  We had some college kids join us and we cut and built wall frames.  We looked like an assembly line at a house factory.  It was kind of funny working with this group of kids.  Most were girls, who had never held a hammer.  When they got to hammering on the walls, I’m not sure how they ever got a nail into the wood.  They would sort of tap, tap, tap on the nail, like they were afraid of hurting it. 

On Friday  the Care-A-Vanners went to Juanita Street where we found the foundation for a house and not much else.  Our new site leader is Roger.  He lives in Ohio and works about 9 month of the year at a property management company.  The rest of the time he works for Habitat at different locations.  Our first task was to install a vapor barrier.  This entailed rolling thick black plastic over the ground and around the footings.  No easy task, but the 7 of us managed to do a surprisingly good job considering no one had done it before.  Next came the floor joists.  We ran one long beam down the center and smaller 12-14 foot beams from the center to the outside edges.  This involved measuring, cutting and hammering about 70 pieces of wood, which took us about a day and a half.  I did most of the cutting since I’m a lousy measurer.  We also got started on the front deck.  The Care-A-Vanners typically work Monday – Friday, but I told Roger I would help him on Saturday.  They had scheduled about 17 college kids (30 showed up) but no experienced volunteers.  That left him in a bit of a pickle, but I was glad to help.  I really like working with the college kids and what the heck, I had nothing better to do.  Plus, Roger is fun to work with and to be honest, easy on the eyes! J  I thought it would give me a chance to get to know him better.  I almost have him convinced to come join the Kentucky build in April. 

The day with the college kids turned out better than expected.  Several of them had some construction experience, including one who had been there the previous week.  I took a group of girls and we got to work completing the flooring.  They did a great job, none had ever done construction work before.  The young lady doing the sawing got the hang of it in no time at all and was soon doing all the measuring and cutting by herself.  The other ladies doing the hammering had a harder job .  The nails all had to be driven in at an angle and they didn’t have much room to work with.  But they too soon got the hang of it and now the entire flooring is in.  After lunch most of the kids left and a small group of new kids came in.  I took 3 of the boys and we got to work putting in the sub floor.  We got a decent start to the project before it was time to go.  It was the funniest thing, at quitting time (4 pm) the kids literally just set down their tools and walked away.  Roger and I spent about 30 minutes cleaning up the job site and putting all the tools away. 

While we all worked hard, we did manage to have some fun too.  On Wednesday night the church group and RVers went to Dreamland BBQ.  Everyone said this was THE place to go for ribs.  On Thursday night we grilled some hotdogs and just hung out.  Friday night, half the church group left, the rest departed at 0500 Saturday morning.  Saturday afternoon we raided the kitchen and discovered they had left us a big batch of beef goulash, so Saturday night Roger joined us for dinner and more hanging out.  Poor Roger, he hurt himself last week and got 5 stitches in his leg.  I offered to pull them out for him but I didn’t really have small enough scissors to get under the stitches.  I’m not sure why they tied them so close to the skin.  All I succeeded in doing was to pull them out of the scabbed over wound which was a bit painful. 

I’m not sure if another group will be joining us here at Camp Y.  I’ll miss the last group, but I have some contact information. I’d love to catch up with them next year for another build.