Awesome Quote from Habitat for Humanity!!!

"I cannot tell you how much we enjoy it when SEI comes down. It is definitely a boost for us as we can all get a little down sometimes when things are slow here." - Erica - Volunteer Coordinator from Habitat for Humanity

Random Pictures

We are about to head off to the site for the last day of building and the dedication of the home. Here are some random pictures from the week.

Bill

More Thoughts from Jeff Pillar.....

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Work Day 4
Today we woke up to a raining day. Expectations were lots of interior work and mud, mud, and more mud. We got to the site and assignments were given out, I selected a off-sight project. About ten of us went to another house in Waveland, a hard hit area, to finish some task to get this house to its owner by EOY. We completed some siding, added installation, caulked. This was my first time using the power tools. I forgot the name, but it was to measure and cut the concrete singles to fix, which were then nailed into place and caulked. We arrived back to the main house at around 4PM, just in time to cleanup the job site. The house looked amazing, exterior had its final coats of pant, paint touch up was competed, the house numbers were nailed into place, interior window boxes, ceiling lights, soffet vents, some base flooring was nailed down. It finally looked like a home to be. We also were assigned some cleanup activities in an adjacent house, used for staging of cabinets and other stuff. Today we left the raining job site for dinner and hopefully another Phillies victory.
Posted by LJP at 6:34 PM

Other notes
While we were walking back to our car a lady pulled off to talk and thank us for our efforts and wanted to let us know this is still appreciated. As we walk to our jobsite we often get honked at, which just shows their appreciation. A family located across the street of our build site, daily stops by twice a day with goodies, chips, donuts. He is always cheerful and appreciative of our work to date. We see them throughout the day wishing us the best. Today he stopped over and talked to a group of us about how pleased he was of our work and accomplishments.
Posted by LJP at 6:30 PM

Work Day 3
Today we awoke to a very overcast day. Breakfast was unusual, bacon, sausage and donuts, sounds like a winning combination. Off to the work site and we are again split into many groups, some the same as yesterday and some different. I started out carrying drywall, this was a hard job to recruit for. Afterwards work with a couple guys cutting boards for the top of the soffet area, first large sheets were cut into strips, then those strips were cut out so that air vents would fit into them. Finally these sheets were given to another team to be applied to the roof. After a couple hours of this work, I moved on to painting. Did some touch up painting of the exterior then work on painting the first coat of the side deck wall. It was a pale green...This completed my day. The drywall contracts took a couple hours completing the whole interior house, it was amazing to watch them work, such precision and speed. They slapped the drywall up and nailed it into place, while cutting out all needed cutouts for windows, doors, vents, electrical boxes, etc. Then they applied mud and spread it out evenly, pointed corners were a must. Finally they completed the ceiling with a textured white ceiling material. Other contracts can to the site to compete the roof with shingles. I was told they completed in hours during the down pouring rain. Yes it rained for the most of the day, making Mississippi mud, hard to walk and work in this mess. I often made tasks difficult as many were working in the areas were rainfall wouldn't reach them. Scaffolding and exterior painting was pretty much off limits. During lunch we took our team picture with our trip t-shirts. After work we all rain for the showers as it was out to dinner, as Hancock bank sponsored a dinner at Shaggies, a local popular seafood restaurant on the coast of the Gulf. It was raining something fierce. Dinner was tastey and spicy, corn on the cob, shrimp, sausage, jumbolia, deserts, etc. Thank you Hancock for you hospitality. There were a couple birthdays which were celebrated with cake and a birthday song. Then it was game time! The rest of the night was spent support the fightens and celebrating their first world series victory since 1993. Off to bed for another working day.

24 hours to go

It's hard to believe it's Thursday already. This week has really flown by and we've made considerable progress on Willie's house, helped out with some cabinetry in another Habitat house next to his, and made some headway on another house about ten minutes away in Waveland.

I just have to say how amazing everyone is here. Between the Habitat construction crew, the AmeriCorp volunteers, the people of Bay St. Louis (who are so hospitable and grateful to have volunteers coming here still), and the Lagniappe staff, we have been enjoying every minute with the great company.

So, we have continued to make steady progress on the build blitz and managed to continue to indulge in the local cuisine. Last night Hancock Bank sponsored a dinner for us at Shaggy's, where we had a buffet of fresh seafood right along the bay. And, we commandeered the control of the TVs to catch the Phillies in the World Series...which we have been closely following, both last night and tonight!

On tomorrow's agenda, we'll finish up as much as we can on the house and about midday, Habitat will be holding a house dedication ceremony we'll get to witness. It will be rewarding to show Willie and his family their new house and the start of a new chapter in their lives.

Jeff Pillar's Thoughts from Mississippi

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Tuesday - Work Day2

Work up on time and got ready for the second day of work. I felt really good, surprisingly. Had the standard Continental breakfast and headed to the sight. This time we volunteered for a number of different jobs, I selected installing windows. We had about 10 windows to installing. First we carried then into there spots, made sure the were nice and level, nailed them into place and applied flashing. This was a pretty good experience. Then I we off to build the frames for the soffet around the end of the roofs, which ended the morning as lunch time came, a lot quicker this day. We headed to Wendy's for lunch. When returning to the job site, we completed the soffet installation around the entire house. Then end with a number of odds-n-end jobs, like carring drywall. The house now had tar paper on the roof, porch had it ceiling placed, complete siding and soffet was completed and painted. There were jobs of caulking, and many other contractors ran wire and plumbing throughout the house. When leaving today it look very close to a complete house, but there is much more to do. After this workday, we went to the bay saint Louis beach, relaxed in the sand and gulf of Mexico to wind down the day. Our group then went to Pizza Hut for the dinner buffet. Then most retired at the site in preparation to tomorrows tasks. I finally got caught up on most of the blogging
Posted by LJP at 8:31 PM

Tidbits

I all driving a minivan with 6 others....I will try to get there complete names but for now first names only, Joe, Mike, Bill, Angela, Vera, and Mike. I think we all get along very well and have had lots of good times to date. We travel to and from the job site and take our meals together.

The guys and girls have separate cabins with bunk beds, the guys have wooden bunks, beds are too bad, especially after a hard day of work. The showers and bathroom as connected to the main building, showers are trickles of hot water as long as you can hold the spiket on, but all is good after a hard days work.

I am now drink water from a can donated by Anheuser-Busch, never had their water or had water from a can, but it does the trick.
Posted by LJP at 8:24 PM

Monday - Work Day 1

Alarm went off early, earlier then expected 6AM EST, but 5AM here. I was probably the first to wake and wake others. Went back to bed for a quick rest and then got up and ready for breakfast. We had a continental breakfast and off to the worksite. We started with an introduction to the Habitat employees and other volunteers. We were given pieces of wood with number on it, which dictated the job and group we were assigned to. I was given group 4 and a star, the star meant a special initial project. The special project had to go offsite to perform some offload detail. The house that we were working on had the flooring established and a couple walls framed out nothing much more. My initial task was to off load a truck with a number of prefabricated framed walls. But before our work, the 4X4 got stuck in the red mud of Mississippi. We managed to set plywood and wood near the tires to eventually get the truck on solid ground. Then we spent about an hour of offloading the truck. Once that was finished we returned to the jobsite to join our group, #4. My task was to carry wall framing to their location in the house handing them over to another group for nailing, once that was done, we put up scaffolding to apply plywood to the exterior walls. Others were assigned many tasks, like painting, nailing, cutting, etc. Lunch time came and we went back to out site for shrimp poboys. After our hour break we headed back to the work site. There we were assigned carrying the trusses and stage then on top of the roof for another group nailing them down. Finally my last job of the day was getting cut plywood on the roof to get it all nailed in. We finished all the framing, exterior walls, roof, soffet painting and many more that I can't remember or know of. We decided to go out for dinner and hit a very good mexican restaurant and watched the Monday night game. Then returning to bed for some well over due rest. I felt really sore heading to bed and feared the next day. Not much time for blogging
Posted by LJP at 8:07 PM

Rejuvenate - Sunday Trip to Mississippi

-Disclaimer, I am not a blogger or creative writer, but doing so to communicate in one massive format and not have to send multiple emails. Some fact may not be true or entirely true read at your own risk.

Early Sunday morning 4AM - woke up, got ready finished packing then let for SEI to meet the shuttle which leaves for the airport at 6:45. Not much on the road at 4AM, so I made good time and was actually early for the shuttle. About 6 were taking this shuttle to the airport, we left little before 7AM and got a the airport around 7:30, checked in and waited for our 9:40 flight to New Orleans, we were so early I was able to exchange my seat for the emergency seats which had better leg room. We meet up with the rest of the 15+ at the airport. Flight was delayed on the landing pad as we were rerouted to bypass camp David as something top secret must have been going on. We still got to our destination on time. We got our luggage and rental car. Headed for lunch, we stopped at some restaurant called Cotter Brown's, watch some NFL highlights and had some grub. Menu was tasty, poboys, hoagies, awesome cheese fries, alligator, etc. While eating this person leaving said hello and asked me how i was doing, I replied back with a thank you. He stopped as if he knew me, so I just started to talk further. He just wanted to say thanks and show appreciation for all the work done and what we were about to do. -this was not the last time people showed there appreciation- We were on the cuff of the Mississippi rivers so we walked up the levy to see the river and barages being towed up and down the river. To waste some time we headed to a local park to see the river up close, there was lots going on, cook outs, football, volley ball, lots of fun. While walking in the park a couple people spoke up and asked us what we were doing and we talked for a while and they were extreme thankful for all that we were about to do. We left for the Langniappe site, which was about a hour drive. We arrived found our bunks and meet up with the rest of the group. Dinner was served around 6PM, sandwiches, soup, Mac-n-Cheese. I was all good and tasty. Orientation started around 7PM. This session lasted for about an hour, rules and regulations, short video about the going ons in bay Saint Louis, Langniappe projects, and Habitat projects. We were all excited to start working in the AM. Some headed out to watch the Sunday night football and ALCS games. We meet up with our Dublin counterpart, where else by the bar.

Day two

So I think the first day really wore us out, which is probably why none of us have blogged again yet! There are some great pictures of our first day of work located here, thanks to our Habitat photographer.

We woke up bright and early yesterday morning for breakfast and made it to the build site by 8 am to begin (luckily it's only about a five minute drive to get there). The foundation was in and there was a basic frame around the outside wall, so then our tasks for the day were to finish hammering together the walls, raise them up, and move on to putting up the roof. It was unbelievable to see how quickly the house was seeming to come together already, although the framing of the house is really only the start! By day's end, we had all put in a lot of sweat and hard work into the build, along with Willie, the soon-to-be resident of the house.

After a long day of being broken in to all the construction, we could not wait to sit down and eat dinner! As we've discovered, people in the south LOVE to fry anything and everything you can possibly think of, so most of our meals have consisted of something fried. But you better believe they have been some of the tastiest meals.

We went to check out some of the surrounding area after dinner and managed to fit 17 of us in a van (trunk included!) for the excursion...and I'm pretty sure the van was meant for 10. The locals here really appreciate the work we're doing and especially love having us come in to visit. For lunch today, we enjoyed some delicious BBQ and snacks at BB's Snak Shak. Some of the tasty southern food we had included sweet potato fries, fried green tomatoes, fried pickles (phenomenal!), snoballs, classic po' boys, and more. We'd definitely recommend the caf back in Oaks adopting some of the food!

Today's build included cutting and putting up siding, painting the siding, and preparing the roof and inside of the house for sub-contractors to come in later. Habitat does as much as the work as they can that is considered "volunteer friendly", so those who have never picked up a hammer before can easily get involved. Certain aspects, like the roof shingles and interior drywalls, need the kind of precision that professionals can offer since they are important to structural and safety elements of the house, so they sub-contract those pieces out. While we've made considerable progress (the SEI Blitz Build, as it's dubbed), there's still a lot to be done.

More pictures to come soon. For now, it's off to another local favorite (those who have been on the trip before will recall this place)--Third Base.

Gulf Trip V...Part 3

The second day was an amazing day to say the least.  A lot of things got accomplished and our house actually started to look like a house.  The siding went up and the porch posts were put in place, along with the ceiling.  Ben from Habitat was one of the main leaders on Tuesday as he was in charge of making sure anything related to the front porch was in place.  I was on his team and worked beside several others as it came together.  The luan and trim pieces that were painted on the previous day were put to use.  The luan is wood that was used for the ceiling of the porch.  The siding crews had the largest tasks because the whole house needed to be done.  This included putting up the siding, measuring, cutting it with the nibblers (or siding shears for those who like to be technical), caulking it, and finally putting on the first coat.  There were a lot of specialty cuts that needed to be done.  The task of doing the siding was very large and it had to carry over to day 3.

More on that to come so stay tuned...

Ben gives Curt C some cutting instructions

Sarah Y nails up some siding on the house

Jen E shows off her power tool of choice, The Nibbler...aka siding shears

John C also is a fan of the Nibbler...

Nina R and Matt S put up the siding on the house

Fall Gulf Trip 2008...Part 2 The First Actual Work Day.

So the the first day started bright and early at 7am on Monday morning...at least for some of us.  We headed out to the job site around 8.  Luckily for us on this trip the site was only 5 minutes away.  This time around the whole crew is actually working on the same site.  We started from scratch on this house, well almost from scratch.  The house did have some work on it from one of the previous volunteer groups that worked with Habitat last week.  We got there and we had to do all the frame work including the roof.  It was an intense first day.  There was a lot of hammering, hammering and even more hammering. Although not everyone did the hammering.  There was a group of us that did some painting.  I was one of those people.  We painted trim pieces for the porch and the siding along with the luan for the ceiling of the porch.  This was some much needed prep work for the next day.  At the end of the day it look like an actual house has been built...

Now comes the fun part...

Stay tuned...

The Lagniappe Church sign outside of camp

The Habitat and Americorp Construction Crew

The beginning of the construction of the house from the start

Angela Lester on the roof; nailing it on

Mike P reflects on the first day during dinner

And so it begins...

Greetings from Bay St. Louis (BSL), MS! I'm glad to say that we've made it safely to Lagniappe where we will be staying for the week. Since our check-in wasn't until 5 tonight, we used the day to explore New Orleans a bit.

Our first stop was Mother's Restaurant, which boasts the "world's best baked ham" and has a plethora of delicious New Orleans cuisine. According to Ted (better known as Ed-T after a mishap with his name when he ordered), it is worth the trip alone just to get their food. I guess no one truly cooks the best food like Mother does.

Most of the group split up after lunch and meandered around the city with the fellow passengers in their car. I'd like to give a special shout-out to my car: Victor (our fearless driver/questionable human GPS system), Pete, Ted, the Dubliners--Tom and Dave, and EJ. We definitely made the most of our afternoon with some good laughs and interesting sights along the way.

Later, we made our way to BSL, but not before making a stop at the Wal-Mart supercenter. Then we continued to Lagniappe for dinner, set-up our sleeping spaces, and kicked back for a bit (see below) before making our way back to the main building for orientation.



Our orientation consisted of an intro from two case managers at Lagniappe, meeting the lucky recipient of the house--William, a brief video on the area, and some more background on Habitat (click for a link to the local group we are working with this week). It was incredible to learn that Bay St. Louis and the surrounding city of Waveland received the full impact of Katrina back in 2005. Recently, the area had some additional damage from Gustav that came through a few months back. They've definitely had a lot of hardships but the community here seems incredibly energized to fix the broken pieces and make themselves even stronger. Apparently SEI has become a favorite with the construction crew and with Lagniappe for all of our efforts, and they had been counting down the days until we returned.

Well, that's all for tonight. We definitely have our work cut out for us, but I'm excited to see how much we can help accomplish and also learn about this unique city. Feel free to comment if there's anything you'd like to see us post pictures of this week. I'm sure we'll have a lot more once the building starts tomorrow.

Gulf Trip V...Arrival to New Orleans/Bay St. Louis

Ok so let me set the scene for you...It's sunday morning around 645am and it is cold in PA.  6 of us are waiting for the arrival of the shuttle...it shows up however we are one person short.  I won't mention any names but they know who they are.  Then that person shows up and off we go to the airport.  I seriously thought we would be the first to arrive, but we weren't. That's cool.  We were so early for the plane that some of us were able to see the earlier flight off.  

Now let's fast forward to 12pm Central Standard Time, we finally land.  However we know that we can go check in at Lagniappe yet until at least 5pm.  So we are adventures and explorers.  Luckily for us we have a local expert with us on our flight.  Not only did she used to live near New Orleans, she went to Tulane University.

She took us to a local eatery/bar where we could get something to eat and watch some of the football.  That was nice.  Just on the other side of the railroad tracks where we parked, was the great Mississippi River.  You can't see much from the hill, but she promised we would get a better view.  

So we took my rental van, A Chevy, to the Levy, but the levy wasn't dry like I thought it would be.  We got to spend some great time in the sun before heading to the church camp. We even got to play with a puppy.

We got to the church around 5pm or so. Had our dinner and then we had our orientation.  Of course some of us had to make our wonderful Wal-Mart run.  Now it is time to wind down as we look to the week ahead.  We are going to the job site around 8am.  From what we have been told it is really close this time and it will be a complete build. More details to come.  

Please stay tuned....