Sept 6 – Windows and Doors

It’s hard to believe that today is the last day of building with this amazing team in  Sullivan.    We had a surprise visit from Pastor Paul who is the previous pastor from Faith Lutheran Church where we are staying.   Even though Pastor Paul has moved out of Sullivan, he still coordinates all of the lodging and food details for the Care a Vanners.   Since he is not able to walk on the uneven ground at the build site, we decided to make our prayer circle with joined hands through his car.   It was a very special way to start our day.

As our first priority, I wanted to get a picture of Joe and I in an unfinished window.   It was one of my favorite pictures from our last build, and it’s now one of my favorites for this build now.

All hands were ‘on deck’ to get the house dried in today.   Bob had so many things on our punch list today, that we got an entire sheet of tasks (rather than the typical half sheet).

The team knew we had a lot to accomplish today, and we were all committed to getting this house ‘dried in’ before we left for the day.     Joe got right to work on the front and back door.   He had to rebuild both doors to extend them from a standard 2×4 framing to 2×6 framing.   Since the door had a dead bolt and a standard locking mechanism, there were two mortises that needed to be cut into the door.  The good news was that Mel had an extremely sharp 1/2″ chisel for the job.   He also had to cut out all of the door thresholds for all of the interior doors.

Debbie and Ty worked to finish the installation of the Duravents.   These are installed to allow air circulation once the foam insulation is blown into the attic.

We then had the job of sealing all of the top seams on all of the exterior walls.

You have to love it when a plan comes together.  By 3PM, all the windows and doors were in, and all of the items on that entire list were completed.   This crew rocks!

We had a few opportunities to meet the family that will be moving into the house.  Everyone took the opportunity to write the family some notes on the wall studs.

Time for some Team 1 photos!

The Habitat Affiliate hosted a Team 1 farewell dinner at a local Amish restaurant.    It was an awesome evening with good food, great friends and some touching speeches from both our team and Jennifer (the future homeowner).

It was an amazing build.   We get so many thanks for our work, but we feel that we are the ones that are so thankful to have this opportunity to help others by giving them ‘A hand up … not a hand out’.