Monday May 23, 2022`

 

This year we are mounting drywall.  Over the years, we have done just about every task that can be done.  We have framed houses, hung dry wall, connected the electricity, mudded the walls, tiled the floors, stained the wood work, painted the walls, built closests, nailed up the siding, and cleaned up the mess that other crews left behnd.  It is fascinating to see the exterior of the homes change over the years.  

What some of us remember as a concrete slab or some bare lumber have turned into places where people live.  There are cars, bikes, and toys out front.  Several of the owners enclosed the front porch.  One homeowner eliminated the porch entirely and extended her kitchen.  This gives a rough idea of how the interior of this house looked when we arrived.  Since we were here last year, not much has changed. We were the first post-Covid crew to come down last year, and there have been only a few since then.  A crew came in from California to frame this house. We are putting up drywall in the house we worked on last year.  JD the project manager held off on ordering the dry wall until we were scheduled to be down here.  There has not been a crew big enough or experienced enough to put it up.

We started nailing up plywood in House 48.  Before we started, Natalie, aka Tina Sparkle, had to make sure that the floor of the house met her exacting standards of cleanliness.  

Natalie brought down her granddaughter Lindsey to join the crew.  Lindsey immediately made her presence felt by inflicting injury on one of her teammates with a flying nail.  Dino claims he will carry the scar for life.  

The first thing we did was nail plywood to the outside of the house.  The whole crew took part.  Note Lindsey and her deadly hammer.  Kind of like Thor, the god of Thunder, but nobody has made movies about her (yet.)

For most of the houses, JD lays out a wooden frame for the concrete slab, then removes the frame.  This year, the California crew lead by the famous Bob the Builder came in before the frame was removed.  That crew always frames the houses.  We worked with them a couple of years.  So the frame remained in the ground until we arrived, and we had to pry it out. 

 It turns out that this is much easier to do with a tractor.

That got the job done, and for all his hard work, JD let Dino drive the tractor.  

This is our eighteenth trip to Tutwiler.  Lots of people have come and gone.  Last year we posted a memorial to four of our regulars who have passed away.  Their legacy will live on in the work they have done.  In his blessing sending us off a few years back, Fr. Kevin said that the people in Tutwiler have become part of our community and we have become part of theirs.  He's right.  We have built lots of long-lasting relationships here.  This year, Dino posted some drawings he made of people we have met over the years in the commons at Sheil, in an effort to attract some new volunteers.  (HINT!)

J.D. Smith has been the foreman down here since we started, and gotten to know us well enough that all the veterans had to line up for hugs when he dropped by on Monday morning.  On Tuesday, Dino presented JD with the picture he drew of him.