Habitat for Humanity UM - umhabitat

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Mike and Rachael took five volunteers to one of the newer projects for HVHFH on Harvest. Everybody braved the rain to clear the brush that was overtaking the yard. We also removed the remaining siding from the house. Inside the house, some worked on moving a doorway going from the kitchen to the laundry room. One task giving to us at the beginning of the day involved cleaning out the crawl space of the house. Outfitted in tyvex suits a few got the courage to venture below. However, after getting down there, it was decided to postpone this job due to the large amount of standing water present. The final task all the volunteers worked on was jacking up the front gable of the house then reinforcing its structure and replacing its sheathing.

Alpha Pi Mu joined Rachael and Mike today at the Taylor’s house on Harris. The dedication is tomorrow, so we had a lot to do to get the house ready. We cleaned the windows, scraped paint off the floor, and shoveled the driveway. A few volunteers painted the basement walls over the primer. The majority of the day was spent cleaning out the garage and shed, since there were so many tools and building materials. The shed was filled with a huge amount of aluminum siding, so everyone worked hard to flatten it and get it in the trailer to sell at a scrap metal yard.

Today we also split up since we had so many volunteers. Some of the volunteers and Mike G. worked at the Taylor's house on Harris doing multiple finishing touches.  This included a lot of touch up painting throughout the house ranging from small fixes to repainting the entire family room wall.  Other task included hanging the towel bars in the bathroom and installing metal plates on the floor for the sliding closet doors. Rachael, Sarah, and Mike K. took the other group and worked at Evelyn, demolishing walls and ripping out insulation. When they finished early, they went back to Harris and worked on painting the basement walls to brighten up the dark panels.

We had a group build today (Alpha Epsilon Delta)! The group was split into two where some went with Rachael and the others went with Mike. Mike and his crew worked at a recent purchase of HVHFH in Ypsilanti, with George as the house leader. The house had a major mold issue, so the entire house had to be gutted of everything, including bathroom, drywall, kitchen, and the limited amount of insulation. Remarkably, we were able to gut the entire house except for a very small segment of drywall around the gas meter. Due to a foil film behind the drywall, the mold on the drywall was unable to form on the actual structure of the house, which is really good news. By the end of day, the twenty-yard dumpster was packed full of debris from the house. Rachael and her crew worked on finishing touches at the Taylor family’s house, staining doors, varnishing doors, and caulking the baseboard

We worked at Harris, which is in its final stages for the Taylor Family, with Irvin as our house leader. Mike worked on a certain piece of wood to fit in on the floor by the stairs, which turned out to be a little more difficult than he had anticipated. Neil spent the day spreading spackle over small holes and unevenness in the walls. Jenny carefully painted the baseboards, and Rachael caulked many gaps between the wood and tile. Jon N. worked on the extremely tedious task of slicing the width of trim to be skinnier and installing it above the cupboards in the kitchen. Matt, a new Habitat member, learned how to use a power sander, and spent most of the day working hard and covered in sawdust. Scott and Jon C. installed doors to the bathroom and bedrooms, which was exciting for Kyanna, the homeowner! Our only injury today was Rachael’s broken nail, which she seemed to complain about every ten minutes.

Rachael, Michael, and Stephanie welcomed the LSA student government for a day of demolition at a new project in Ypsilanti. When we first arrived, the house was in the same condition it was when Habitat for Humanity purchased the property. With hammers and crowbars at hand, half the group completely gutted the family room’s walls of drywall and insulation. At the same time, the remaining crewmembers removed the ceiling and wood paneling from the upstairs room. While some were busy removing nails from the bare studs, some stripped the carpet and padding from the basement. At the end of the day, evidence of our hard work was visible by the completely full dumpster of removed building material. Good work LSA SG!

First Build Day of 2010! Last Build at the Michigan House! Rachael and Jess took nine volunteers to the Miller’s house on Shirley for the last time. It was good to wrap up work there, completing finishing touches and generally cleaning in preparation for the dedication of the house (which will be January 24^th). We spent a good part of the day clearing all the tools and trash from the basement, and using the garage and dumpster of the Habitat house on Harris to relocate it all. Jess drove, and Rocky, Mike, Jon N. and Jon C. went along to load and unload. Meanwhile, Lizzie and David worked diligently, painting baseboards throughout the house. Nikki and Anna worked together to completely clean out the basement, and later they dusted the walls, vacuumed, and looked for places that need touch-up work.  Rachael, Chris, and Jon N, cleaned out the shed, which had gotten pretty gross. Later, Jon C. did some caulking by the front door, and Mike scraped the kitchen floor.  Rocky and Mike vacuumed the ducts in the basement, while Chris and Jon N. painted the outer part of the stairs. Rachael tried to help George replace a broken window, but since the new window was too big, George had to put the old one back, but it broke even more when he did that. David worked on some touch-up painting on the walls. Jon C. and John N. painted the basement stairs and successfully prevented people from walking on them. We did a few more jobs here and there, ended early, and headed home.

Today was the last build day for the semester and the last build of 2009. Rocky, Kristine, Ayibatari, Scott, and Rachael came to help out. Rachael and Ayibatari painted the basement stairs. They could only paint every other stair so that they wouldn’t end up trapped in the basement, with no way of getting back except to step on the wet paint! They also worked on filling all the cracks between the window molding and the wall with caulk, which had to be done using their fingers since the area was so small. Kristine and Rocky installed beautiful shelving inside the kitchen pantry and bedroom closets. The cabinets are up in the kitchen, and the house is really looking close to being done.

We had six members—Mallory, Edward, Kate, Rachel, Julie, and Lindsey—of Alpha Phi Omega, a community service fraternity, building with us today. We stayed very busy and put up window casings, installed doorframes, sanded the floor, finished tiling the floor, and scraped paint. 

Neil and Rocky cleaned off the floors in the kitchen and the bathroom and put down plywood to prepare for flooring. Then they made a chalk line down the center of the room and worked from the middle, fitting tiles in the pattern that Erin (the homeowner) requested. George told us to work from the middle because the walls are not a perfect measurement to go by, even in professionally built homes. They had to use their geometry skills, as George always talks about, to cut and fit the floor.  Meanwhile, Larry (the homeowner) painted the outside wood of the windows. Ayibatari and Rachael worked outside, and luckily the weather was amazing (sunny and 65 degrees in November!). They worked off of scaffolding on the east side of the house and finished the soffit (the siding that goes underneath the overhang of the roof) and the fascia (the metal strip that covers the uneven edges of the soffit). It was funny to put up the metal, because we had to use a calibrated hammer (basically a cute, tiny hammer), since the metal was so likely to be dented. Unfortunately, George told us that we are never allowed to call a construction tool “cute.”

We had a group build today. Rachael and Alex took ten volunteers from Alpha Rho Chi, the architecture fraternity, to the build site. We painted a third coat on the all the ceilings. We painted all the walls with same white paint as the ceiling, but the wall paint had an eggshell finish (easier to wipe off if the kids get it messy), and the ceiling paint had a flat finish. When we started to bump elbows inside, some went outside to put special siding that looks like shingles on the front triangle that comes out from the roof, and others set up scaffolding and put more soffit up. 

Our work today was a little bit of a surprise…we painted, although none of us knew that we were going to paint, so most of us wore clothes that were fine if they got dirty, but not for painting. Oops! Luckily, the paint we were using washes out if you get it before it dries. Marissa, Matt, Blair, Rocky, Ayibatari, and Rachael painted all the ceilings (with two coats). Each room had to have the corners “cut in” (painting along the edges with a brush where the rollers can’t reach) and then the majority of it painted with a roller brush. We painted the ceilings in the kitchen, bathroom, three bedrooms, closets, entryway, and stairs!

Rachael and Danielle took three members—Meaghan, Stephen, and Erica—on the build today. Although we only had five (because of Fall Break), our group worked together very well and we were able to finish the siding, which is a big step. Rachael and Stephen left for a little bit in the morning to help clean up at another Habitat home on Harris. While everyone was doing siding, Pete and another man knocked out the old, gross basement windows and replaced them. We were very excited to be able to finish the siding, especially since it makes the house look a lot more complete on the outside. Pictures coming soon, I hope! 

No rain today, which was good because we were outside all day. Inside, there were professionals putting up the drywall, which definitely makes it look like a real house. Kristine and Rachael started on the east side of the house, setting up scaffolding to put the F-channel up for siding, then nailing in the soffit pieces (I don’t know the real terms). Later in the day, they moved on to the back of the house, doing the same thing via some tricky cutting with the snips. Laura and Max planted some bushes, grass, and other plants in the yard, and then organized the tools & wood in basement. After lunch, they, along with Jill, put up Styrofoam insulation on the upper part of the west side of the house, with much difficulty because they only had one ladder and no scaffolding. Ayibatari, Nid, and Emily (came two weeks in a row!) sided a lot of back of the house and completed the entire east side with Pete’s help. They even learned how to use the circular saw. Riley and Jenn did siding on the front of the house under directions from Sam. Thank you to Nick who did the job that no one wanted to do! Nick worked on caulking the edges of all the cardboard we put in the soffit area the week before so the house can be as energy efficient as possible.

We started the day off by moving everything away from the walls inside the house to prepare for the people who were coming to put foam insulation in. While they were getting set up, we put in nailers (short pieces of 2 x 4 wood to attach cabinets to) on the walls in the kitchen. We also got to watch them put in the foam, which was pretty cool to see. They basically sprayed a liquid onto the walls, then the liquid expanded massively into thick foam, and finally they shaved the excess foam (flush to the studs) with a long knife. When the smell became too strong to work inside, we moved outside, and divided into two groups. Rachael, Ayibatari, and Emily worked on custom-fitting cardboard to put up between the roof rafters to seal the attic from the soffit. They did this so that, once the ceiling is in, when 15 inches of cellulose insulation is blown in, it will not come in to the house. A task for next week will be to caulk between the cardboard and the vent/wood to make a tight seal. Mike, Dennis, and Scott did the siding on the east side of the house (next to the driveway), after readjusting a hastily placed, well-attached, metal starter strip along the bottom of the house. They did J-channeling on 3 windows, and finished the siding up just beyond the windows. The girls finished the cardboard before the boys were done with siding, so Andy showed us how to put in Cat 5 cable, and we got three phone jacks put in. The biggest challenge of the day was working with the weather, since we had to constantly move from outside to inside and back! But for only six of us being there, we got quite a lot of work done!

Today we got a lot done, but also spent a lot of time learning! Jimmy and Rachael taped along the edges of the windows to prevent water from getting in. Then, they finished up the subfloor in the kitchen. This involved first putting paper down to prevent squeaking floorboards later, then measuring, cutting (using a table saw!), and nailing thick plywood. Sam and Ali joined the crew again this week and continued working on the windows, and later moved on to nailing up more foam insulation to the side of the house. We learned how to set up scaffolding (without any pinched fingers)! Ayibatari, Neil, and Dan (in the words of George, the house leader) “expertly sided the west side of the house and half of the front.” They got a chance to practice J-channel fitting. George tells us that pretty soon we won’t be able to recognize the house because it will look so good!

The weather was perfect for the Kick-Off build—no rain! We had to take several vehicles to Ypsilanti in order to transport all the food and people. First, we met Lynne (from Habitat Huron Valley), and she spoke to us about the house and safety rules and Habitat in general. We divided into groups for construction and wood clearing. The wood clearing group trimmed, cleaned, and cleared a plot of land next to Habitat for Humanity’s Community Garden. Some of the construction group nailed wood along the edge of the windows. Some worked on the subfloor; they tore up the old floor, then measured and cut paper and wood to fit, and finally nailed it down. One person worked on insulation with a full body suit! There were more construction projects that people worked on; I don’t even know what everyone did. While on break, people took advantage of the playground right across the street from the house. We broke for lunch around noon, and had a delicious BBQ, put together by Jess and JM. Kids from the neighborhood even dropped by to get food. After lunch, we switched people around so that everyone would get a chance to do construction. A canvassing group went out to apartments and houses to distribute fliers explaining the requirements to become a Habitat homeowner, because HFH Huron Valley is looking for more future homeowners. We had a great start to our upcoming year!

CORE started work at 1124 Shirley, despite our late arrival after being lost. We worked on the roof the entire day. First, we stripped off all the old shingles and the incredibly sticky paper underneath. Then we sawed the pieces of the old plywood away, and replaced it with new wood. Finally, we nailed down new paper in preparation for the roof to be re-shingled. We also got to meet Larry & Erin, the homeowners, since they were putting in their work hours. Each adult family member must put in 300 hours of sweat equity for a Habitat home. Lynne, the Huron Valley volunteer coordinator, gave us the “You Rock Award” for that day in her email.

Visit our official UM Habitat website to sign up for build days or donate!

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