Sheet Rock & Insulation

Tuesday: September 23, 2008

Far Reach

Wednesday: September 24, 2008

Drywall Project (Training Day 8) Thursday: September 25, 2008
Shingle Escalator
Roof Vent Installation

Friday: September 26, 2008

Sheet Rockers

Another fun week on the site. Started off the week with insulation. The group I worked with was small, only three, but a lot got done finishing up most of the attic spaces for the third floor of one of the homes. It helps to have an architect and engineer working together. After an entire day with my head back putting in stuffy insulation I got a fair share up my nose clinging to my nostrils. It was wonderful getting back to the house later to blow it out the right way.

This Thursday for training we learned how to do roofing. It's a lot like waterproofing a house with the crinkly plastic wrap from the bottom up. It's very straight forward and a lot like people I see who knit they don't have to think. And it's hard for that reason too since sometimes it's easy to forget that you missed a row until it looks funny an hour later. It was extremeley hot being up there for the whole day. It was only in the 80's but leaning and hammering in shingles over black tar with the sun beating down made it seem like 100! Later that evening I discovered my beautiful sunburned shoulders.

For the rest of the week it was an ongoing project of finishing up drywall in some of the more complete homes. For me it's a bit of a challenge to find out the best approach of teaching technique for drywalling. But I'm glad I had an entire week to work on it, because I'm finding what works and what doesn't.

The Important Things

Bedside Table

Everything for going to bed well, a good book, iPOD, backpack and helmet to throw on without thinking for next days work.

Fork Lift!

Bathtub Lift

INSULATORS!

Tired

More insulation today. Lucky everyone in my group for the most part had long sleeves. Kind of funny how the house from the start of the day was chilly, but by the end after insulating the entire house got so much warmer. It really does help! Insulations is on the list of fast paced jobs jobs for the construction site. We finished up the entire second and third floors with R-13 pink and thicker R-19 insulation.

Sheet Rock

Tight Corners

Fantastic Drywall

Drywall is like a bad scribble of a person. We see us everyday that it's easy to pick out the mistakes right away. Inside the house is where we spend our time so it's even more important to make the drywall fit as close as possible.

Progress for the first half of the day was a bit slow as I went over a series of demos learning technique. After lunch we really got rolling though, whether it was cutting unruly angles for the stairwell or making the pieces of drywall to fit snuggly into each of the window sills. One thing I'm learning is adjusting to the different paces on the construction site. One job might go by really fast, like painting or siding where you see huge results in a single day and with drywall it's just something that takes a bit more careful time.

Training Day 7: Stuffy Scratchy Feeling

Americorp Get Together

Insulation

Hammering in Window
Site

Today we installed our first insulation, my least favorite of our trainings so far. So much stuffy scratchiness from packing it up into the ceiling and walls. It's a bit deceiving at first since the insulation looks soft and cushy like cotton candy, but you definitely don't want to snuggle too close. After a while the fiber glass in the material starts settle in and feels like sand paper. We wore masks to keep from inhaling any of the loose bits swirling down from the the rafters. The steam from breathing my own hot breath fogged my glasses and made the job even more difficult.

Later it was a nice change of pace as we learned to install and water proof windows and hammered in roofing over the trusses in one of the houses. A nice breath of fresh air a little too high for comfort.

This evening the Americorp from Redwood City and San Francisco all met in Burlingame for our welcome party into Habitat of Greater San Francisco. It was a great time of croquet and smokey barbeque with lots of left overs to bring with us on the Cal Train back to Menlo Park.

Red Paint! (Day 2)

Precision

Paint Crew

Today was my second day of painting. Arch Stone came out for the day to help with the detail finishes that I had started working on yesterday for house number 8. At the beginning of each day Dawn gives us Americorp a "To Do" list and I'm never quite sure how much of it I'll get done since new volunteers come out every day. Today was pretty important since we had to completely finish the paint job on our house so that the scaffolding could be shifted over to the next home to be started. And we did a great job finishing up and more! I'm seeing how important it is to knock out each task to keep moving forward. If I can remember that my crew is like one giant person with 10 hands working together, I know I'll get better at utilizing them to their maximum.

Red Paint!

Jagged Angle

Paint Crew

Spreading the Word: Whitney Young Housing in Bayview Community

South San Francisco

Certificate of Preference from 1975!

Youngblood Coleman Playground

Bayview Canvassing Group

It was a bit slow starting off and as a day in general for me, but my crew kept pushing along. I knew when I woke up that morning in my confusion to efficiently get myself breakfast that I might have a hard time today. For the life of me I could not hammer nails ahead of my crew so that they could keep going with painting. But they kept chugging along as I kept embarrassing myself, and suprisingly we got a whole lot done finishing the general painting of an entire two sides of the house.

Later that evening Erin and I headed over to South San Francisco to Bayview to hand out flyers to people living in the neihborhood about the new Whitney Young homes being built in neihborhood. Some girls from the local YMCA came to help out too. I went with Jamin and Emily from the office and we took our flyers to hand out to some of the local businesses and families walking down the street. We even had people stop in their cars along the road to pick up flyers. It was a great experience meeting people in the community.

Net Nest

Where I Spend Many Evenings

Internet at the house is scarce so I've been making my way to downtown for internet. I've found this great little spot at the Peet's there. It's a small upstairs corner window looking out onto the street. It's nice and private and it's great for people watching down below. It's perfect with a nice warm cup of coffee.

Hard Hat Design

This week I finally got around to personalizing my hat, every person on site does their own customization to create their own identity. Most important getting started is to have all my equipment ready to go, nothing worse than not having all your supplies right at hand. I can't help but feel like a little kid every day I put on my construction outfit, but it's lots of fun. And there is no more important part than a hard cap that speaks you.

Site Cleanup

Locker Surprise!
Assembly Line
Wall Lift

Drywall Crew

Site Work Crew, yah we Rock!

This morning was a huge surprise when Erin screamed and smacked me in the face reaching into the locker for our tools. Behind our tool belts a huge rat sat curled ready to pounce. It turned out being just a toy, but it was all linty with the scraggly remnants of what was once a tail to add to it's effect of nastiness. I can't imagine what strange child would want to own something like that.

Today my crew got the wonderful task of site cleanup. I never knew how much work it could be. Not only physical walking back and forth with scaffolding planks, but the huge variety of things to be done. We went from cutting and lugging back and forth of huge planks, to washing out helmets with spilled coffee, and moving lunch tables out from the sun. It all seemed very slow and like we would never get the entire list of things done, but by the end of the day, we did it! I'm so happy with everyone I got to work with, because they were so patient through all my confusingingness.

And as a highlight we got to help place our very last blind wall for the houses on the site. Those are the ones that you can't see since they are between each of the houses. It took 30 volunteers all lifting and pushing to get it done, but now they are all done.

Gable Lift

Safety Talk
Gable Trim
Focus

Gable Lift

Last Adjustments

Me!

Alex and I continued on our project from earlier in the week adding trim and painting the gable to get ready for erecting it. We worked with a small group today, working towards getting the gables all stood up. It was hard since they were so heavy and we had to be careful not to damage the siding we had worked so hard on while fitting it into place. But we did it, and it looks great. It's amazing to see how much you can do in just two days with a couple set of hands.

Training Day 6: Drywall

Cutting Drywall
Mary Through Lighting Hole

Using the Deadman

Every Thursday is training days for us, learning something new to add to our skills for building. This week we learned how to drywall and install the pieces. I've always thought drywalling was difficult, but it's so soft it's easy to work with.

We spent a lot of time refixing the drywall in one of the units that had been installed incorrectly, making sure nails had the right spacings and that they were going into something actually solid. It was a great experience. Even though fixing mistakes are never fun, now I know the right way of doing it.