Long and Productive Day

Today was a very productive day for us. We had all the exterior walls up by the end of yesterday and put up less than half of the sheetrock on the outside of these walls. Today we started right off by going around the house and finishing nailing the plywood around the outside walls. Next, we all worked on building the inside walls and setting up the studs to make the individual rooms. This was a relatively long process with lots of different measurements and cuts.

Before we started working up on the walls, people were spread out between the ground and up on the sub flooring. Now, however, the only place with work was up on the subfloor so it was starting to get a little crowded and not much work for everyone to do. I managed to find some projects to do to keep myself busy and useful.

After the sheetrock was up around the exterior walls, we put Tyvek home wrap around the whole thing. All of the trusses for the roof (30 of them) were laying on the ground below the platform and we had been wondering how we were gonna lift them all up. There is over 12 feet to get them on the platform then another 7-8 feet over the walls, weighing over 100 lbs a piece. Luckily, we found some guys down the street who were operating a crane truck with a 45 foot arm, and we convinced them to help us out for a few hours. Those guys brought the trusses up in about 1/10 of the time that it would've taken us. Thank you!

So the project of setting up the trusses wasnt so simple, but with all the guys we had there we were able to put up and secure almost half of the trusses with all their supports in about 2 hours. Now the whole thing is starting to look like a real house! And I def got a sunburn today too. Oh well, it was in the 60's so I cant complain :-)

Alright we gotta go because dinner is coming real soon!

Back in the van outside the school hacking into their internet! I'm still bummed that I cant get into myspace or facebook but I guess I'll just have to live. Alright I dont know how much time I have but I wanna try to post a few pictures on. This home that we're building has to be 10 feet about the ground so that it is above the floodline, which poses a unique situation for framing. The picture below shows you the floor that we are starting to frame out for the house to sit on. The homes look funny on "stilts" down here but i guess its necessary because of the floods.


Well thats the only pic i could put up so far... We're about to pull away from the high school and loose internet for at least another day. I
promise to give more details when I get back.

We found Wi-Fi !!

So me, Dan, Steve the pastor, and his old college friend just finished driving around the neighborhood here in Lafitte, LA trying to find wireless internet at 10:45pm in a big blue church van. I felt like we were in some weird movie... very cool.

Well now that we finally found wireless internet outside of a local elementary school, I have just tried to log in, but they have myspace and facebook blocked!!! stupid wi-fi...

So I cant stay on very long to upload pictures or talk. Quick summary - last night we got into New Orleans airport and U.S. Airways lost one of my bags of luggage. I now have no underwear, t-shirts, etc. Luckily we drove to a local wal-mart to pick up some essentials. Work went well today even though it was raining for a while. Just kept working through it and it felt so much better to wear dry clothes when i got back! The people are all really nice and they serve us some great meals. Ok, we're driving back to our building now... man I'm going into myspace withdrawal! Later

Going to LA!

Ok, so I'm not going to Los Angeles. I'm actually going to Lafitte, Louisiana (LA). I have the opportunity to go with my buddy/roommate Dan to help rebuild a house that was destroyed in hurricane Rita over a year ago. We will be leaving with a group of about 5 people from a local church in Dartmouth Sunday January 21st and coming back the following Saturday the 27th.

I'm not sure if I will have any internet access while I'm down there (we might go to a local high school to use it). If this is the case, I am going to try and update this blog with interesting information and hopefully photos that I have taken. If not, I still want to send the info with my cell phone as much as I can.

This is only a quick intro because I have to go back to packing, but I would love to read any of your comments about my thoughts and photos from the week! This is a great opportunity I have right before my classes start in 8 days! Take care