Happy First Day of Fall! The weather here definitely got the memo. It was more than 20 degrees cooler today, with a high reaching around 72 degrees. What a wonderful cool sunny day to be working outside! :-).
As usual, we gathered for our devotional, prayer and team motto …”Habitat is not a hand-out, but a hand-up”. It’s a great way to start every day! Bob then handed out our task sheets.
Our first goal was to clean out the house and prep for the ‘mudder’ (or, I guess the formal term is the Drywall finisher, which I only found out because that is what our sheet says). We thought he was going to get there around 10, so we’d have some time to clean out the house, but as it turned out he showed up before we had finished with our team meeting. Joe and I focused on removing everything off the floors, vacuuming out the outlet boxes and giving the whole house a final sweep. The mudder stayed for a couple of hours to plaster in some corners for the windows and giving the walls a first coat.
We then picked up where we left off a few days ago – continuing work on the East wall siding. By lunch time, we were almost to the top…
… and then ….
Well, I can show you a picture from the end of the day. Can you tell what changed…lol ????
With his ever careful eye to quality control Bob noticed that there was a piece of siding near the bottom of the window that was just a little bit too low. When he pulled on it, the piece unlocked from the rest of the siding….bummer! We thought we were very careful to make sure that each piece is locked in and level, but…. it had to be fixed. Look at the bright side. We now have a new skill – taking down siding :-0. The nails are purposely left loose when installing to allow some movement due to weather changes. Even though it’s not the goal – having loose nails makes it easier to remove. I got the job of laying out and numbering the pieces so we can reinstall.
When we got down to the problem area, Bob noticed that this row was running right along the wall seam where two sheets of OSB meet. This wall seam is sealed with silicone calk. We were wondering if that caused the issue, so we decided to remove the entire row to investigate further. As Joe was taking off the next piece on that row, he could literally pull the nails out with his hand! Our theory is that we nailed this row into the bead of silicone in the wall seam. This would explain why we did not notice it a few days ago. The temperature change could explain why the nails sagged, since they were not secured into the wood. It was close to the end of the day, so we decided to leave it right there … and take another quality control check before we reinstall.
While we were practicing our ‘taking down siding’ skills, other teams were making some progress. The electric company also came today to install power (just a note, that the trench digger that came a few days ago was actually the gas company).
It seemed to be ‘that kinda day’ for many of the team today. But, oh well, we learned new skills. It was a beautiful sunny day. We are working with amazing people…and, most importantly… God is good.
It really is amazing. In most cases those siding issues would be ignored and left without any correction. But it’s a habitat home and quality is the standard. So imperfections are corrected. This whole project is incredible. It’s a work of art and excellence . This team is entitled to a whole lot of gold stars.
I commend each and every one of you!!!!
Find a glitch- fix it together.
Looking on the bright side, it was a good day, overall learning from the mistakes and learning new skills. It’s always a positive.
Keep going with God on your side stay healthy and be safe.
God is good and many blessings.
🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏