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.

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!

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!

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.

This house is in Wisconsin, after all.

Well Winter has officially declared itself to be here! Good thing a little snow doesn’t stop us from building! Our volunteers on Friday from Phi Gamma Delta made it just in time to avoid the snow, and sheeted up the wall between the house and the garage.

You can’t see through this wall any more (except the doorway).

Then on Saturday, we spent the first snowy day of the season (ignore the snow in the above picture, I didn’t get around to taking it until Saturday) doing things like…

…making beams and the garage header…

…and building and installing the front garage wall…

…and other various tasks.

We have two weekends left building before Winter Break, and right now our goal is to have the roof in place by then.  We got a start on the gables and trusses on Saturday in addition to our other work.

Unassembled.

Sheeted!

Even further along!

This coming weekend we’ll have more volunteers building, and more snow too! Friday, joining us will be IIE (Institute for Industrial Engineers).

Until then, enjoy the snow!

Volunteers everywhere!

Happy Thanksgiving!  I hope you’re all having delicious feasts!

This past weekend (this is a late update!), we got a lot done!  We ended up not building with an org on Friday after all, but we more than made up for that on Saturday!  It was a little cold, but we had a lot of volunteers out having a good time anyway.

We had volunteers all over the site working on a variety of different tasks.  Including some friends and family of Tina, our homeowner.

Tina working alongside a student volunteer.

All of the walls, interior and exterior, had second top plates installed.

At the same time, other volunteers were installing insulation around the outside of the house…

…and occasionally cutting out for windows.

Other volunteers sheeted the garage walls…

…and then raised them up!

Around back, volunteers installed more silt fence to prevent erosion from running down the hill.

We also had people installing OSB (oriented strand board, which is kind of like plywood) around the bottom of the outside of the exterior walls.

Arlie likes to say that we can all agree on "the power of the hammer.”

We won’t be building this weekend due to Thanksgiving, so we’ll see you again in two weeks!  Enjoy your holiday weekend!

We didn’t build back on Saturday the 6th, because we were out raking leaves for our big Rake-A-Thon fundraiser, which went really well!  But on that Friday, we had some volunteers from the Biomedical Engineering Society come out to the warehouse and help us frame up most of the remaining interior walls, and load all of the walls on the trailer so they could be transported to the build site.  So we should be done in the warehouse and just on site from here on out!

During our time away from the site, Dane County Habitat for Humanity sent some people out to help work on our house.

This is what the site looked like when we arrived on Friday.

So we arrived, along with volunteers from Women in Business, to find the deck in place and the first walls raised!  With the help of WIB, we sheeted and raised up almost all of the remaining exterior walls.

First the sheets had to be nailed to the outside of the walls…

…and sometimes windows had to be cut out with the circular saw…

…and then the walls could be raised…

…and nailed into place.

Along with them, WIB brought a construction worker to help out! He helped lead the group and enjoyed his first chance to swing a hammer in awhile.

James.

That guy watching him is Josh, he works for Dane County Habitat, and he’s former UW Habitat.  He likes to come work with us whenever he can.  If you’ve been following us for awhile you may recognize him.

Volunteers hard at work.

It looked pretty good by the end of the day!

On Saturday, we didn’t have the best weather.  But we went out there with some UW Habitat members and started sheeting and raising interior walls, while a few of us went over to help out a little on the other house.  We got rained on a little (which is why I don’t have pictures for you from that day), and went back and forth on whether to cancel the afternoon shift for the weather or not.  It ended up cancelled, but thanks to Justin, who stayed out to finish the interior walls, the day’s work got finished!

Justin. He’s committed. Did I mention he delivers babies?

This coming weekend, we’ll have volunteers from Alpha Kappa Psi on Friday, and on Saturday our volunteers will be working alongside some of the family members of Tina Jeremiason, future homeowner of the house we’re building!

If these are women IN business, does that mean our house is business?

And now I’ve ruined this post with a lame joke.

Saturday afternoon’s volunteers.

Happy (late) Halloween!  We had a fun Halloween weekend making some solid progress on our house!  Before I tell you about that though, I’m overdue for introducing you to someone very important to our building:

Arlie!

This is Arlie (as indicated by his name tag)!  He works for Habitat for Humanity of Dane County, our affiliate, and is our construction site supervisor, and he’s pretty awesome.  If you come out to build, there is a very high chance you’ll be privileged enough to hear some of his jokes.

Anyway on Friday, we had a group of law students from Phi Alpha Delta frame up the remaining exterior walls in the warehouse, and begin on the interior ones.  Next week we’ll be finishing those up and transporting them all to the build site!

On Saturday, we had a full day with volunteers out on the site, many of whom were out for their first time with Habitat, and had a lot of fun!

We laid out insulation on the basement floor…

…and had to custom-cut some to fit.

Volunteers got to use some power tools to do things like drill into the concrete.

And we finished installing window wells.

Other volunteers prepared plates…

…and laid them on the foundation.

Next Friday, we’ll be framing the rest of the interior walls and loading all of them to bring to the site.  Saturday, we won’t be building, because we’ll be focusing all of our volunteer efforts on our big Rake-A-Thon fundraiser!  (If you’d like to help out or live in the Madison area and have a lawn that needs raking for a good cause, contact Lindsay at rake@uwhabitat.org)

But the following week we’ll be back out there, installing support beams, the beginnings of the first floor, and more!

Kristen keeps her eyes safe…with style.

We have a foundation!

Hey!  I was gone this weekend, but as Ben’s earlier post showed, we still had volunteers building on Saturday. We also had some of the girls from Chi Omega come out on Friday and help out at our house, where we now have a foundation!

They were nice enough to send along some pictures of the site, which looks pretty different now than it did before.

Putting styrofoam on the foundation.

Possibly the first time anyone can be said to be standing in the new house.

Overview of the foundation.

This weekend, we’ll be framing more walls on Friday with Phi Alpha Delta and our volunteers on Saturday will be out on site helping to continue where Chi Omega left off. We’ll also be joined by some Comm Arts students that will be filming for a documentary they’re doing on us!

Til then!

-Devin