UW Habitat for Humanity Build Site

Hey again! I have to apologize for the lack of updates, I seem to have lost my camera, so I’ve been hoping to find it again and have some pictures to post. But it’s been over a month now, so I guess I’ll go ahead without them.

Work is coming along well on the house, and we’re getting close to the end. All of the siding is finished, and after the insulation was put in, we put in all the drywall too. This weekend we’ll be having a ton of volunteers come out for a painting party! After that, we’ll be putting in the flooring, and the trim will get put in.

The house blessing is coming up in just about a month too! It’ll be at 4 p.m. on Friday April 29th. There may still be a little more work to do of course, but I’m excited to see everyone come out, and to give Tina and Teeanna their house after all this work! It should be a pretty touching ceremony. There will be pictures from that to share, of course.

It’s been awhile since we had an update! A lot’s happened in the mean time. Particularly, we had our big Souper Bowl fundraiser, which raised about $28,200! Big thanks to everyone that helped out and all our sponsors.

And of course the house has also been coming along nicely over the last few weekends!

The day before Souper Bowl, volunteers from Theta Chi came out to build.

One of the things they did was to help finish this wall of drywall.

(Circle K and Society of Women Engineers also came out and helped, but I didn’t get any pictures on those days)

Volunteers installed the basement windows too.

We’ve also started siding!

It’s starting to look like a house!

As you can see in that last picture, not only is the house looking good, but so was the weather! It was a nice change of pace to build in the sun and mud instead of cold and snow, even if it was only for one weekend…

Something that has to do not so much with our house but with Habitat and volunteer service in the U.S. as a whole is AmeriCorps, and its future. AmeriCorps is the largest non-military national service organization in the country, putting 85,000 people to work each year serving communities with non-profits, schools, etc. to tackle all kinds of issues. It has been described by some as sort of a “domestic Peace Corps”. This past weekend, the US House of Representatives passed a budget resolution that would eliminate AmeriCorps entirely. We at Habitat are encouraging people to take action to try and save it by doing things like contacting Congressmen.  The easiest way to help is by signing this online petition.

Thank you for your support!

It’s been awhile since we had an update!

We had about a month off from building over Winter Break, and came back to a cold Wisconsin winter (surprise!), so our first weekend of building, 2 out of 3 shifts were cancelled due to the extreme cold.  But when we did get back, for the third (and not cancelled) shift, we found some work that had been done on the house in our absence:

Check it out! Windows and a door! (The door got put in the week after)

The basement windows haven’t been put in yet, but we’re hoping to put those in with the help of some volunteers this coming Friday.

Stairs to the basement! Thanks Arlie!

So we went to work!  Over that shift and then again this past weekend, we’ve done a lot of stuff:

We climbed around in the ceiling to put rat runs in the trusses…

…framed a room in the basement…

…began drywalling in the garage…

…and finished putting up insulation and house wrap in the gables.

We also began putting in soffit and fascia.

Of course, we did some other stuff too, such as taping off the windows to weatherproof them.

This weekend, we’ll only be building on Friday, because Saturday is Souper Bowl!  It’s our biggest fundraiser of the year, combining hand-made bowls, delicious food, live music, Bucky, and more, and it takes tons of volunteers.  It raises $20-30,000, and it’s largely what allows us to have a house to build on in the first place.  For more information on the event, check out www.uwhabitat.org/fundraise/souperbowl.html.  If you’re free, come by and either attend the event or buy a bowl and enjoy the food and entertainment!

Happy holidays!

We had our final builds of the calendar year this past weekend!  I don’t have any pictures to share this time, both because we were rushing to shingle since we won’t be back on site for over a month, and because, well, it was cold out there for taking pictures!

On Friday, we had some volunteers from the Alpha Phi sorority come out, and we helped work on the house around the corner from ours.  Our house and this one are being built simultaneously, and are the last two going up in the Twin Oaks neighborhood (the About the Build page has more info on the Twin Oaks project), so occasionally we help out on that house.  We worked on sheeting the roof to help catch it up to our own house, and got half of the main house finished!

On Saturday, a lot of our own board members (both current and past) signed up to come out and build, and they were accompanied by some of our most regular volunteers, as well as a couple first-timers.  We had a busy morning, sheeting the remaining half of the house and the entryway (we got one half and the garage sheeted last week).  Then in the afternoon we tarpapered and shingled the same area.  We didn’t work on the section we sheeted last week because it was snowy, icy, and slippery.  We also had a few volunteers putting in sub-fascia all around the house.

I’ll try to make it over there to take a picture to post before I head home for Winter Break, but for now, just picture a house that’s coming along great with the help of volunteer fundraising and labor, and fantastic community support!

Starting to feel a little bit like we’re in a house!

So this past weekend, we had the crane come out on Friday and got the trusses up on top of the house, and most of them set in place.  Then on Saturday, we started off by finishing setting them.

‘Truss’ me, things are coming along great.

Then we got up onto the roof and began sheeting it.

Working on sheeting.

We got most of the roof sheeted, and about half of it tarpapered, before it started raining and we had to call people down off the roof and stop for the day.  We also had a few volunteers down in the house installing hurricane clips.  Weather’s looking good this weekend to get it all closed up before break!

Halfway through Saturday. Imagine this, plus more sheeting, and tarpaper.