August 27 – Floor joists

Today was a very busy, and productive day at the build site.   Our morning devotional from a local minister was about build site ‘punch lists’.   Every job (just like the list below) has a daily ‘punch list’.   We reflected on how God has a ‘punch list’ for every one of us and how we need to trust God by being his hands to do work for others.  After our morning devotion, we were split into two teams:  The Wall Crew and the Floor Crew (which Joe and I were on).

The wall crew came back to the Faith Lutheran Church pavilion to build all the walls.   The level concrete flooring and the covered roof make it an ideal place for assembly.  Bob’s hand drawn plans had detailed instructions with specific dimensions for each wall.    The wall team finished assembly of 11 out of the 22 walls for the house.  Their goal is to finish all wall assemblies tomorrow.

The Floor Crew stayed at the muddy site.  It rained again last night, so the mud was thick and slippery.   Our first task was to spread some mulch in the very wet areas to help dry them out.

We were able to borrow some boots from some of the Wall Crew volunteers since they were not going to use them today (our Amazon order for boot covers came today, so I’m sure we won’t have any more rain … hehe).   While it was nice to wear rubber boots, they got very hot and very heavy with the thick mud.  The morning was nice and cool to work, but by afternoon the sun had come out along with the humidity.   It did get hot to work, but the good news was that the mud began to dry up by the end of the day.  We hear that the weather should be fair for the rest of the week (of course it will, since we now have boots!)

Joe and I worked on finishing up the Front Wall RimBox, and then got to work helping to install the floor joists.  We had quite a system going.   There were some people in the ‘pit’ aligning the joists.  Joe and I were the drilling team, one of us on each side of the house.   Our job was to screw in each joist to the RimBox.

     By the end of the afternoon, we had all the floor joists installed.   Our next task was to pre-wire the crawl space with lights and switches.   We got started with the wiring, and will pick this job up first thing in the morning.  We need to finish the pre-wiring while the floor is still open.   The team will be installing the plywood tomorrow, so we will be on this job first thing in the morning.

After a successful workday, the team gathered for happy hour in the pavillion.  It had cooled down, so it was a nice relaxing afternoon.   A few of us decided to visit a local Mexican restaurant for dinner.

It was a good day.   We accomplished a lot.   As we said at the groundbreaking ceremony:  “O God, let us rise up (tomorrow) and build!”  🙂