On Thursday, I was wondering what I could write that would be new and different. Basically the week was going along at a regular pace doing the same as before with a few exceptions. Then Friday morning we had a wild and wet experience. Three of us were going to assemble some kitchen cabinets here at the MDS house and then transport them to the B house on Clouet St. Well, the guy that showed us how to assemble them said it would be better take them over in the boxes and work on them in the house and then he could install them. That sounds like a very good plan - protects the finished product and takes up less space on the truck. When we left there were very dark clouds in the sky and I was worried about driving 15 minutes on Interstate 10 and making it before the rain. It has not rained here for 10 days but today it poured and made up for lost time. When I got to the house where the others were working I saw a truck close to the building and so I called Rich's phone to ask them to move the truck so we could get closer. He said, " You are where?" I said, "Here at the house." The next thing I knew I was no longer talking to anyone and Rich and Keith were racing toward our truck in the street and grabbing cabinet boxes off the back. We (three of us) jumped out and helped lug these boxes into safe and dry shelter. Needless to say this is not what we envisioned when we thought about delivering cabinets to the work site. Five of us were soaked for a good portion of the day - I'm sure our shoes are not dry yet. The challenge then became getting them out of wet cardboard to prevent warping,vacuuming up water that we brought in to the house. It was a new and "exciting" experience. There were jokes and comments about our appearance but soon work was going on as usual.
Work was sort of going on as usual but there was a difference. The four college students that I have talked about before are now finished with their 8 weeks and this is their last day. They are happy to be going home but we are going to miss them. They were trying to get the drywalling and mudding in a good stage for us to finish next week. We were also trying to clean out 3 of the rooms to get ready for flooring next week. I do hope that is a success story I can report about next Friday.
Some floors were done this week. The kitchen, bathroom and laundry room were tiled. Rich did some of that for the first time ever. Looks good. So this house will probably be our project for the remainder of our stay and other short term volunteers coming will be starting to put on vinyl on a new project. We hope to be able to report about that later.
The one picture shows a house we are helping only with labor as the owner has funds. We painted his unique ceiling and walls. The other picture is assembling cabinets in our wet clothes.